Custom Home Design Advice

Custom home design is a unique and personal process that begins with a vision and is supported by the relationship between the homeowner or client and the design team.

Keith Baker offers his insights into this process in this article from SPRUCE, Victoria’s Home & Design Magazine.

Below is an excerpt from the publication. You can read the full article HERE.

What should people know before they embark on a custom home build?

Be open-minded. That’s a good place to start. Some people don’t have all the answers of how they want it to go together; they just know it needs to feel this way, and they need this number of rooms. And some people are very specific and very prescriptive — that’s actually harder. I encourage people to have an open mind in terms of the home showing up perhaps even better than they can imagine. Allow the design process to unfold in a positive way, rather than having tunnel vision about how you think it should go or what you think you have to have. Understanding the process means you move, take another step and then you find out, “Oh, there’s another question I need to ask.” It is iterative. It isn’t a straight line from A to B.

Legato wins the People’s Choice at the 2023 CARE Awards

The Victoria Residential Builders Association (VRBA) announced the Gold winners at the 2023 Construction Achievements and Renovations of Excellence (CARE) Awards of Vancouver Island on Friday, October 20th at the Fairmont Empress Hotel.

Keith Baker Design, along with custom home builder Terry Johal Developments, was awarded the People’s Choice Award as well as Best Single Family Detached Home $1,500,000 - $2,000,000

Congratulations to all of this year’s winners.

Design Inspiration

What does it mean to create an ‘inspired’ design and why is it important?

In considering how a new home design becomes realized, the simple answer is through a creative process, a journey whose outcome is intrinsically tied to its outset. The final outcome can always be traced back to the energetic quality established at that outset. This points to the importance of beginning the process of designing a new home with a positive energy, an optimism and a sense of excitement and anticipation.

Inspiration means to “create a positive feeling, to give rise to creativity”, and to “breathe in”. In short, a positive result begins with breathing in, taking in my clients’ needs, wishes, desires and the physical context – coming to fully understand the purposes and reasons that they are wishing to design and build a new home for themselves.

In many cases, besides the normal complement of room types, these purposes include creating a healthy, light-filled and supportive home that is well integrated into its site, one that considers its use of sustainable and environmentally considerate materials and systems, and that encourages relationship with the outdoors. A home that nurtures and belongs where it is.

With this purpose in focus and when positivity and possibility are engaged and honoured throughout the process, the end product will naturally embody and express those qualities. Further, when the builders and artisans have positive intention, ‘get the inspiration’ and purpose inherent in the design, the building itself can create a positive feeling. This positive feeling becomes intrinsic and has a profound daily impact on the home’s inhabitants. When we have the intention to influence in a healthy, positive way and to create a quality result, wonderful outcomes become realized.

-Keith Baker