As architects, we’re here to help you figure out exactly what you want in a home and how to create it.
More importantly, we’re here to help you understand what you NEED (you know… well-designed, thoughtful homes, instead of just pretty ones…) and help you avoid all the back and forth with us.
To design a successful project, it’s important to understand your goals, needs, wants, and design style. It’s also important to be able to communicate all this to your architect, but still be open to new and evolving ideas.
3 Types of Residential Clients: Which one will you become?
Often, new potential clients fall into one of 3 categories:
- the ones that know EXACTLY what they want (the “know-it-alls”)
- the ones that have NO IDEA what they want, and
- the ones who fall somewhere in the middle (the dream client).
The ‘know-it-alls’ and the ‘no-idea’ clients can create major problems for an architect. The first kind will come to us with the fun stuff already “done”, a list of must-haves and wants, magazine clippings, and idea boards. They’ll point to a project in a magazine or on someone else’s website and say “I WANT THIS”, before even meeting with an architect or having defined their project goals.
These potential clients come to an architect almost as a dictator with a “do this, do that” approach without any real understanding of why certain designs ideas and floor plans might not work, or why copying someone else’s design right out of a magazine might not be the best idea. Their inflexibility generally gets them what they want, but is that really going to be the best thing for the project?
This approach puts the cart before the horse, in our opinion, and is not always the best way to get the best home design.
What the ‘Know-it-all’ client needs is to let the architect/designer get to know them and understand their vision as well as what drives them. Then, let the architect create a design WITH them (AND talk them out of any of their bad ideas).
Then, there is the second group of design clients who don’t know what they want at all. They expect the architect to read their mind. They can’t find anything they like because they don’t know what they like. Their minds are often jumbled messes of contradictory information. “I want this! No wait, I want that! NO WAIT”…. They say things like “I don’t know – just show me something!”
What the ‘No-idea’ client needs is a good architect to take them through a guided process to help them figure out what they want, and justify to them why certain decisions should be made regarding design style, budget, schedule, space requirements. And ultimately, the client needs to decide what they like and need at some point.
A dream client falls into neither of these categories. She has the best attributes of both. She has an idea of how she wants her house to look and to feel, but goes through the process with her architect to figure out what’s going to work, with the architect taking the lead.
A good way to not fall into the previous two categories is to have a clear idea of how you want your house to feel like and a general idea of the design style you like. Let your architect/designer guide you through a process of defining and refining your style better with idea boards and project examples so that you both can get on the same page. Creative problem solving, space planning, and designing are among the benefits of working with an architect, after all, and is within their expertise.
Finding design inspiration and creating Idea boards becomes a necessary (and fun) part of the process because it’s a visual way to communicate with your architect/designer.
Download our informational guide to learn how architects add value and save you time & money.
Get it here: The Value of Working With an Architect Guide
Communicating With Your Architect
Communication is critical in residential design projects. How well you and your architect communicate will affect how closely the design meets your needs and how much of your personality and tastes end up in the final project. No One Knows What You Love, More Than You Do. So make sure your architect understands you and your preferences.
Early on in the project during the conceptual design phase, the design idea is a bit fuzzy. It’s like that on purpose. Because you and your architect are discussing the project from 40,000 feet up, you don’t want to get into the nitty-gritty details just yet. Leaving the design a little fluid and some things “up in the air” is good because it gives you a chance to move things around, change things up, edit, remove, expand the design and so forth. It’s only when you feel comfortable with everything from this high up that you can move on to further design development phases at a zoomed in level. Each subsequent phase of design gets more refined and detailed. So big picture stuff is best solved in the beginning when changing things around doesn’t cost as much.
Why Communicating Only Verbally With an Architect Doesn’t Usually Work
The problem with communicating only verbally versus visually with an architect is that architects are visual people. You’ve heard the saying: “A picture is worth a thousand words”. It’s true for us. We can get so much more “feeling”, style, and vibe out of a photo than we can with only words. And words sometimes have different meanings to different people. For example, there are small nuances between “modern” and ‘contemporary” – hence why idea boards and sharing project examples are SO important.
How to Communicate Your lifestyle, Personality, and Tastes With Your Architect
- Invite your architect over for a home visit – You have chosen an architect because you like his or her style, right? But do they know yours? Your architect needs to get to know you and what sort of spaces you like. It’s important that you put some of you into the design and don’t just rely on your architect to design it without your input.
- Tell your architect who you are – As well as your style, your architect should know about who you are and what you value. Are you an outdoors person? Are sustainability issues important to you? Is energy efficiency a big concern? Make sure you tell your architect all of this at the start so it can be factored into the design.
- Tell them about your habits – Your daily habits might be relevant to the design. If you’re a morning person, this might affect the location of your bedroom. If you can’t stand to share your bathroom sink with your partner, better let your architect know sooner rather than later. If you cook once a year and never have guests over, you may only require a modest kitchen. But if you’re big on entertaining and regularly have dinner parties, make sure your architect knows about it…
- Tell them about your possessions Are you a minimalist? Do you have tons of books or a whole closet full of shoes? Have a large art collection? Or a room full of Star Wars collectibles? Whether you have a large family and lots of stuff, or a small family with only a few cherished things, let your architect know so they can create spaces to fit your needs.
- Introduce them to the family (and your pets) – It’s always a good idea for your architect should meet the whole family and know what all of their individual needs are. If you don’t want a vast room for yourself and tiny rooms for the kids, but prefer plenty of space for them as they become teenagers, let your architect know this. If you don’t have any kids now but are planning for them in the future, again, convey this to your architect. Or, if you’re planning on nudging your children out of home soon, perhaps the floor plan should reflect this.
HELPFUL ADVICE FOR WORKING WITH AN ARCHITECT:
When looking for an architect, find one that has a collaborative design process. Then, go through the design process with them and be as flexible and open as possible. It’s a team effort, you need to be guided out of your bad ideas and into the best version of your vision. Also keep in mind, an architect will probably not hit it out of the park the first time, and sometimes it takes quite a few times before you are speaking the same language, so be patient.
Download our informational guide to learn how architects add value and save you time & money.
Get it here: The Value of Working With an Architect Guide
