5 Tips on How to Work with a Residential Architect

One of life’s most exciting adventures is building a new house, especially one tailor-made to your unique needs and desires. As a residential architect with more than thirty years in the business, I’m here to share five tips on how to work with an architect to ensure your new home turns out to be the home of your dreams. Here we go:

1. Spill the Tea

We want to hear it all. Residential architects possess a unique understanding of the many ways a house can enhance a client’s daily life, and take advantage of every opportunity to make it simpler, easier, more convenient, and more comfortable. By asking the right questions – lots of them – an architect will gain insight into how a family lives. And just as important, how they aspire to live. That’s because designing a house is as much about creating a wished-for lifestyle as it is about conceiving the residence itself. So go ahead: tell your architect if you’re a slob at heart. If TV noise bothers you while you cook. If you love the idea of having your kids’ friends sleep over but hate having to blow up mattresses when they do. These seemingly small insights can have outsize impact on the way we program space, allocate square footage, and devise storage – so please, tell us everything!

2. Push us

Okay, it’s true: we love it when clients fall in love with our ideas and decide without hesitation to go for them. But we all know that’s not going to happen every single time we propose something. If one of our ideas doesn’t’ feel quite right to you, tell us. Challenge us to find a better way. Really! We’re not going to mind. As residential architects, we love to flex our creative muscles and will enjoy being asked to find a better solution. It’s all part of the fun of practicing our craft

3. Be honest with yourself

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking your house “should” have space you know deep down you’re not going to use very often. Take living rooms, for example. Most people rarely use them anymore, preferring instead to hang out in family rooms that connect to kitchens. Our bravest clients give up the idea of a formal living room when they realize the money they save on square footage can be used toward things that will amplify the experience of living in their new home, such as beautifully detailed custom millwork, or a lifestyle-enhancing outdoor kitchen. What would you rather have: a formal living room you entertain in a couple times a year, or a pergola-shaded outdoor dining area where your family and friends can make memories every single summer day?

4. Allow us to problem-solve

Of course we want you to bring us your ideas, but we don’t need you to solve your own design dilemmas. That’s our job. You’ve hired us for our expertise, so let us put it to work for you! Tell us what’s not working for you in your current home and the ways you’d like to live differently. Give us that critical information, and we’ll come up with solutions for you – most likely in ways you never even considered.

Be realistic about budget

After more than thirty years in the business I can promise you one thing: there will be something – sometimes, many things – you decide to add or change along the way, and those things will cost money you hadn’t planned to spend. That’s why we always advise our clients to pad their budget by 15%. Or, conversely, to scale their wish list back a bit at the outset to ensure they’ve got a cushion for unexpected expenditures. Clients don’t always like to hear this advice, but I can’t recall a single time in the last thirty-plus years they haven’t thanked me for it afterward.

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Morgante Wilson Architects provides architectural and interior design services in Chicago, Deerfield, Evanston, Glencoe, Glenview, Highland Park, Kenilworth, Lake Bluff, Lake Forest, Northbrook, Northfield, Ravinia, Wilmette, and Winnetka – along with Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.