Custom Homes

Your personal space is, well, personal. And it doesn’t get any better than designing a completely custom home from the ground up. Of course, there’s a lot to think through and thousands of decisions to be made, but don’t worry — we’ll dig deep to fully understand your wants, needs, and exactly how you’d like your world to work before we ever put pen to paper.

We know this is likely a once-in-a-lifetime experience, so why not make it enjoyable? The good news? We’ve done this before and are excited to guide you through the process. We are passionate about designing single-family homes, and it shows through in our collaborative process.

Our creative, experienced team will provide you with the information you need to handle decisions large and small, from inside to out. So, whether you want to be a part of every single detail, or prefer to let the professionals narrow things down for your final thumbs-up, we’ve got you.

Positioning a custom-built home on a property is both an art and a science. Before we even get into the building specifics, our integrated team does an in-depth site analysis to orient the home, taking full advantage of light, views, and changes of season. How your house is situated on the lot is a key factor in how we’ll create enjoyable spaces, both indoors and out.

Even if a home is not targeting specific sustainable credentials such as Net Zero or Passive House, we always look for optimal placement and take full advantage of the natural conditions and resources of the property. Passive strategies for heating and cooling existed long before much of the technology we have at our fingertips today, and there’s no good reason to pass up a simple way to make a home more pleasant to inhabit.

Beyond sustainable strategies, working with different municipalities, each with its own zoning requirements, environmentally critical area overlays, and diverse site constraints can require a certain amount of finesse to navigate. Shoreline environments have their own particular set of challenging nuances. We’ve traveled these paths before, and advocate for our clients to ensure a happy ending to your version of the story.

Building from the ground up requires a number of discrete teams, but when those teams are already closely connected and speak the same design language, everything is more seamless.

We get deeper into the work faster, project management is smoother, and we find efficiencies often missed when the pieces of the puzzle are scattered across separate design firms.

Our comprehensive design services cover all the bases so your project won’t get hung up in coordination across multiple companies, philosophies, and processes. There’s already enough complication in a custom-designed home project — why add when you can simplify?

Connected at the most fundamental level, our entire team is ready, experienced, and at your service.

Building a truly custom home should be the experience of a lifetime. These are deeply personal projects and our expertise, not to mention our passion, lies in working closely with our clients to deliver beautiful homes that simply feel “right.” Every single home Board & Vellum designs is a unique reflection of the people who live there. Designing details that delight you quite simply brings us joy.

Board & Vellum teams thrive on finding creative solutions to the complex design challenges a custom home presents. Collaboration is our secret sauce — the experience of our architecture, interiors, and landscape architecture teams, even when working independently on a project, is all backed up by our easy access to cross-disciplinary, in-house knowledge.

Successful projects share one thing in common: a balanced relationship between designer, contractor, and client. You are an essential part of the equation, and we’d love to show you how as we collaborate to bring your dream to life.