The Conversation You Should Have Before You Commit to a Home Designer
Choosing who will design your custom home is one of the most consequential decisions you'll make in the entire build process. More consequential, in many ways, than choosing your builder. Your designer shapes the vision before a single material is selected or a single nail is driven. Getting that relationship right — or wrong — echoes through every decision that follows.
Most people approach this decision by looking at portfolios and comparing quotes. Both matter. But they're not the conversation that tells you what you actually need to know.
Here's what that conversation looks like — and why it matters more than anything else you'll do before design begins.
Ask how they start
The first thing worth understanding about any designer you're considering is where they begin. Do they start with a floor plan or with your site? Do they show you precedent images before they've asked how you live? Do they have a standard layout they adapt to each project, or does each project genuinely start from scratch?
A designer who begins with your site and your life before they begin with drawings is telling you something important about how they think. The best custom homes aren't adapted from templates — they're grown from a specific place and a specific set of people. The designer's answer to "how do you start" will tell you more about what you're actually buying than their portfolio will.
Ask what they need from you
This question reveals how collaborative the process actually is. A designer who gives you a short, vague answer — "just your ideas and your budget" — may be telling you that your input will be acknowledged but not deeply integrated. A designer who asks thoughtful follow-up questions, who wants to understand your daily routines, how you entertain, whether you work from home, how much time you spend outdoors, what bothers you about the home you live in now — that designer is telling you that the process is genuinely about you.
The homes that feel most personal and most livable are almost always the ones where the designer asked better questions than the client expected. Before you commit, notice whether the conversation feels like an intake form or a real exchange.
Ask about their process from concept to permit
Understanding the full arc of the design process — and your designer's role at each stage — is essential before you sign anything. How many design concepts will you see? How are revisions handled? At what point does the design get locked and documentation begin? Who coordinates with your structural engineer? Who manages the permit submission?
These aren't administrative details. They're the framework within which your home gets designed and documented. A designer who can walk you through this clearly and confidently has done it enough times to have developed a process that works. A designer who is vague about what happens after the initial concept phase is telling you something worth paying attention to.
Ask how they handle the builder relationship
The relationship between your designer and your builder is one of the most important dynamics in your entire project — and one of the least discussed in early conversations. A designer who has established relationships with builders in your region, who understands how builders think about constructability and sequencing, and who is willing to be present and responsive during construction is a fundamentally different proposition from one who hands over drawings and considers their job done.
Ask directly: how do you work with builders? Do you have relationships with builders in this area? What happens if there's a conflict between the drawings and what the builder wants to do on site? The answers will tell you whether you're hiring a design partner or a drawing service.
Ask to see the work behind the work
A portfolio shows you finished homes. What it doesn't show you is the thinking that produced them. Ask to see early sketches, site analysis, precedent studies, or concept development from a past project. Ask the designer to walk you through how a specific home evolved from first conversation to finished building.
This isn't a test — it's an invitation. A designer who lights up talking about the process behind a project, who remembers the specific site challenges and the client conversations that shaped the outcome, is a designer who is genuinely invested in the work. That investment is what you're hiring. The drawings are how it gets expressed.
Ask what they won't do
This might be the most revealing question of all. A designer who is clear about what they're not — who they're not right for, what project types don't suit their practice, what compromises they won't make on design quality — is a designer operating from a position of genuine confidence. They're not trying to be everything to everyone.
The best client-designer relationships are ones where both parties chose each other deliberately. A designer who tells you honestly that your project isn't the right fit, or that your budget doesn't allow for the level of documentation your site requires, is giving you information that will save you significant time, money, and frustration. That kind of honesty before a contract is signed is a very good indicator of how the relationship will feel after.
The question underneath all the questions
All of these questions are really asking one thing: does this person understand what I'm trying to build, and do I trust them to get me there?
Trust in a design relationship isn't built on credentials or on a portfolio alone. It's built in conversation — in the quality of the questions someone asks, in how clearly they explain their process, in whether they seem genuinely curious about your life and your site or simply ready to start drawing.
A custom home is a long project. You will spend months, sometimes years, in a close working relationship with your designer. The conversation you have before you commit is a preview of every conversation that follows. Pay attention to how it feels.
Meraki Shane Design Studio is a boutique residential design studio designing custom homes across the Okanagan, Vancouver Island, and throughout British Columbia. We take on a limited number of projects each year — because the work we do requires full attention, and full attention requires limits.
