The Idea Blog - Residential Architecture in Charlotte, NC - Houghland Architecture

What Makes a House Look Good in 30 Years

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 15:36:24 GMT

A house design that still looks good after thirty years is not built around one particular style. It is built around a set of design principles that work regardless of style, including simple roof geometry, windows sized properly, beautiful proportions, and a limited material palette. These are some of the qualities that give a house a lasting presence, and they are also the things most likely to be compromised when design decisions are driven by fashion, trends, or the desire to make an impression. Good design does not announce itself; it simply and quietly holds up, year after year, while everything around it is screaming for attention. Good design takes restraint, maturity, wisdom, and self-assurance to be truly great. In the words of Teddy Roosevelt (not necessarily about architecture): "Speak softly and carry a big stick."

What does a well-designed house have in common with a self-assured person?

Think about the people you genuinely find impressive, and you will notice they are rarely the loudest ones in the room. The people who carry real authority tend to be quieter about it, not because they are holding back, but because they do not need to perform. That quality comes through without effort, and you recognize it immediately, just as you recognize its absence, even when you cannot quite put words to either one.

Houses work the same way. A house with genuine design authority has a presence that is difficult to describe but impossible to ignore, something settled and proportional and resolved about it, as though every decision was made with care and simply allowed to be. You notice the house without being instructed to notice it. A house without that quality tends to compensate through accumulation: more rooflines, more materials, stone veneer appearing on one corner and vanishing without explanation three feet later, tall windows stacked against short ones, decorative brackets on a facade that has no structural purpose. Every element is competing for attention, and the cumulative effect is exhausting rather than impressive.

The irony is that the houses working hardest to make an impression are usually the ones that look most dated within a decade. Drive through any Charlotte neighborhood built before 1980 and then drive through one built in the last ten years, and you will feel the difference before you can articulate it. The older neighborhood tends to be quieter and more refined. That is not nostalgia at work. It is the result of a different set of design priorities, ones that favored proportion and restraint over novelty and self-conscious gesture, and those priorities are just as available to architects and their clients today as they were many years ago.

History offers some guidance. The Roman architect Vitruvius argued that a building must satisfy three conditions simultaneously: firmitas, utilitas, and venustas, meaning strength, utility, and beauty. Not one of the three, and not two of the three. All three, in balance, which is a deceptively demanding standard. What makes this framework so durable is that it has nothing to do with style. Colonial revival, contemporary, farmhouse, none of that appears in Vitruvius because it does not matter to the underlying question, which is whether the building is solid, serves its occupants well, and has genuine aesthetic integrity. As an architect and devoted student of history, I could go on at considerable length, but I will not, and will offer some specifics for today's world instead.

Why does the roof shape matter?

Because the roof is the single largest visible element of most houses when seen from the street, and its geometry sets the tone for everything below it in a way that no other element quite matches.

A simple, well-proportioned roofline reads as calm and confident. A roof with six intersecting planes, competing gable directions, and a turret inserted somewhere for visual interest reads as restless and unresolved, regardless of how carefully any individual piece of it was detailed, because the problem is not in the details. It is in the composition. Adding more parts to a roof does not make it more interesting in any meaningful architectural sense; it makes it busier, and busy design ages poorly.

At Houghland Architecture, we design houses from both directions simultaneously: from the foundation up and from the roofline down, with both directions carrying equal weight throughout the process. This is not a workflow preference so much as a design conviction. The floor plan has to work, meaning the rooms have to be the right size, in the right relationship to each other, organized around how people actually live. The roofline also has to work at the same time, reading as a coherent form when seen from the street and resolving cleanly with the walls below it. A house where the roof is figured out only after the floor plan is finished tends to be obvious about it. The roofline ends up reacting to the walls below rather than controlling them, and the result is a house with a plan that functions well and an elevation that is forever unappealing.

The power of simplicity. There is a paradox at the heart of good architectural design that most people never see, and that is precisely the point. The houses and buildings that read as effortlessly simple are almost never the result of effortless thinking. They are the result of an enormous amount of work done to remove everything that did not need to be there, to resolve every competing idea into a single coherent decision, and to arrive at a composition that looks as though it could not have been any other way. What you are seeing is the end of a long process of subtraction, where the architect has made dozens of difficult decisions in order to make the result look as though no decision was required at all. The simplicity is real, but it is earned, and the effort that produced it is the part that stays invisible on purpose. To make your design feel timeless, do not try to do too much. Perhaps you are familiar with the quote from Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: "Less is more."

How do window proportions reveal whether a design is working?

Windows are the canary in the coal mine of residential design, because they are essentially the face of the house, and proportion is everything when it comes to faces.

A window that is the wrong size for the wall it sits in will throw off an entire elevation, not in a dramatic or obvious way, but in that persistent, hard-to-name way where something refuses to look right. The window itself might be a perfectly good window, and the wall might be a perfectly good wall, but if the relationship between them is off, if the glass area is too large for the surrounding material or the vertical proportion does not suit the height of the wall it occupies, the facade will look off. In architecture school the concept here is called the solid-to-void relationship, also referred to as positive and negative space. Solids are the physical elements like walls and columns, whereas voids are the empty spaces between them.

This challenge is particularly acute in current house design, where houses are often substantially taller than their traditional counterparts, with ceiling heights of ten or eleven feet and long wall runs between floors that older houses never had to face. The window proportions that read correctly on a house with eight-foot ceilings do not automatically translate to a taller wall, and simply scaling up the same window type without reconsidering its proportional relationship to the new wall height is one of the most common ways that contemporary facades end up looking slightly, or sometimes very, off. It is the architectural equivalent of someone who dresses carefully but without a mirror: each piece is fine on its own, but nothing quite goes together. For students of architectural history, if you want a lesson in ceiling heights, room proportion, and the compression and release of space, please study Frank Lloyd Wright's work .

Why limit the number of materials?

Restraint in the number of materials used on a house reads as confidence, while complexity in materials tends to read as design anxiety, the visual equivalent of over-explaining yourself to someone you are trying to impress.

The impulse to add materials usually comes from a real design problem, a wall surface that feels monotonous, a facade that lacks visual interest, or massing that needs something to give it hierarchy. These are legitimate challenges, but adding materials is rarely the most elegant solution. Better massing and a stronger proportional framework will solve the same problems with less visual chaos and far less maintenance. Every transition between exterior materials requires flashing, caulking, careful trim work, and ongoing attention to keep it looking good over time. Every one of those transitions is both a potential failure point and a real line item in the construction budget.

The Myers Park residence in our project portfolio is a useful example of this in practice. The clients wanted a traditional house that felt current without appearing to chase a trend, which is a more demanding assignment than it sounds. It requires knowing what makes a traditional house work and then operating within that understanding, rather than layering on contemporary accents in hopes that the combination reads as fresh. The solution was to simplify the roof form, get the window proportions right for the walls, and not overdo it. The result reads as confident rather than forced. That is always the goal.

Does this mean that architectural style does not matter?

Style matters quite a bit. It is simply not where a conversation about a house's design should begin, and it is not what determines whether a house succeeds or fails over the long run.

A colonial revival and a contemporary house can both age beautifully, and both can age terribly. The determining factor in either case is not the style but the quality of the design. Good proportion, honest use of materials, and restraint in complexity work in every architectural idiom without exception. A house that sacrifices those principles for stylistic novelty will look dated faster than its owners expect, because novelty is inherently self-consuming: the very quality that made it feel current at the moment of construction is what will make it feel dated later, since both qualities belong to the moment rather than to the design itself.

If you are planning a custom home and want to think through what this approach looks like applied to your specific site and program, the custom home process post is a useful place to start. And if you are curious about what an early conversation with an architect actually involves and costs, the answer may surprise you .

Houghland Architecture is a residential architecture firm based in Charlotte, NC. We design new homes, renovations and addtions for homeowners and custom builders throughout the greater Charlotte region.

Placing a House on a Mountain: Our Solution in Massies Mill, VA

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 20:30:43 GMT

Orienting a mountain house means finding the best views while avoiding the harshest solar exposure, usually to the west. On a project in Massies Mill, Virginia, we modeled the house in 3D and used Google Earth's terrain data to study the mountains, then designed windows from the inside out, room by room, to capture the best views and avoid the brightest sun.

Why Does Site Selection Matter So Much on Large Parcels?

When you're working with a large parcel of land, one of the great joys of architectural design is finding the ideal spot for the house. Views, slope, trees, rock outcroppings, driveway access, parking, and even future outbuildings all play a role in that decision, and rarely do they all point in the same direction. A flat building pad might sit in the worst spot for a view. The best view might sit on a slope that makes driveway grading a nightmare. Part of the architectural job is weighing all of that and picking the best path forward.

On our project in Massies Mill, we had the good fortune, and the good problem, of mountain views from nearly every face of the house. So the question became less about finding one good view and more about deciding which views mattered most, and how to get the house to face them without ignoring everything else the site was telling us.

How Do You Use Google Earth to Model Mountain Terrain?

To finalize the orientation, we modeled the house in 3D and imported it into Google Earth. Using Google's terrain data, we could see exactly how the land rose and fell around the house, and see the view out of each room before it was ever built. This matters more on mountain sites than almost anywhere else we work. A few degrees of rotation can be the difference between a view obscured by trees and one that's wide open, and not squandering the money view from the house.

We use this technique on most sloped or view-driven sites now. It's a fast, low-cost way to test orientation decisions digitally instead of guessing from a topo survey or a site visit alone, and it's one of the most meaningful tasks we perform.

Should You Design Elevations from the Outside In, or the Inside Out?

Some houses get designed from the outside in, where the massing and street presence drive the plan, and the interior layout adapts to fit. Other houses go the other direction. This one went inside out. We worked through window and door placement room by room, tweaking glass size and location as we studied the view from inside each space, so that every room earned its own moment with the mountains.

Neither approach is right or wrong. It depends on the site, the client, and what the house is trying to do. On a mountain lot like this one, where the views are the whole reason someone builds there in the first place, inside out made the most sense. On a large parcel, privacy is also less of a concern, since the closest neighbors are hundreds of yards away.

What Makes Cardinal Orientation Tricky on Mountain Sites?

The trickiest part, as it often is on a site like this, came down to cardinal orientation. The best sightline to The Priest, the highest peak in Nelson County at 4,063 feet, happened to face northwest. That sounds like a minor detail until you remember that west-facing glass can turn a room into a greenhouse by mid-afternoon in the summer.

Shading those windows without blocking the view is its own puzzle. Deep overhangs help in some orientations but can cut off the exact sightline you're trying to establish. We worked through several combinations of overhang depth and glass placement before landing on something that kept the room comfortable without sacrificing the view it was built around. The other solution, less elegant but very effective, was motorized awnings the homeowners can extend on late summer afternoons to cut down on what has become, more and more, a hot climate here in the South. Solar exposure like this is also part of why HVAC design has to be considered early rather than left entirely to the mechanical contractor after the house is framed.

How Do You Design for Mountain Wind You Can't Control?

You can orient a house toward the best view, but you can't orient it away from the wind. Mountain sites like this one see regular gusts in the hurricane wind speed range, and that has to shape the design and detailing even when it has nothing to do with the view. It's the same basic concern homeowners in coastal, high wind regions have to plan for , we're just applying beachfront thinking to a ridge line instead of a shoreline.

To put the issue in perspective, since the house was occupied, glass tabletops on the outdoor furniture have blown off and shattered, a Weber grill has ended up a hundred yards downwind, and heavy wood furniture has been tossed across the terrace. It's a fairly dramatic way to confirm how exposed a site really is, and a good reminder that wind doesn't announce itself the way a view does. You notice a bad view immediately but you don't always think about wind until something blows through the family room windows.

That kind of exposure changes real decisions and here is a direct connection between designing for high winds and providing good views. Between all of those windows there must be some wall remaining to do the heavy work of holding the house together. Window and door assemblies need to be rated for higher wind pressures, not just the view they're framing. Overhangs and any attached structures, pergolas, covered porches, outdoor kitchens, need bracing that accounts for uplift, not just weight. Even furniture and fixture choices on exposed decks or terraces should assume regular high wind, not just the occasional summer storm. Think of a mountain site the same way you'd think about a beachfront property.

None of this is glamorous. Nobody's Pinterest board is about wind bracing. But on a site with views this good, and really on any site in the mountains, the wind is the price of admission. Designing for it isn't optional, and it's a good example of what an architect is responsible for , as opposed to the interior designer or builder.

What's the Takeaway for Anyone Designing a Mountain House?

If you're designing or building on a mountain site, model the terrain in Google Earth early, before window placement is locked in. Then design from the inside out, room by room, so the house earns its views instead of just facing a general direction and hoping for the best. And don't stop at the glass. Plan for the wind the same way you plan for the view, because on a mountain lot, it's just as much a part of the site as the mountain itself.

All of this design fuss takes longer than picking a simple orientation off a survey, but on a lot like this one, those views are the big prize and well worth the effort.

Why Symmetry Feels Right, and When Architects Break the Rule on Purpose

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 19:24:11 GMT

Symmetry feels right because it is easy on the brain. A balanced facade lets your eye process one half and assume the other, so you understand the whole building in a glance. Architects break that rule on purpose when a site, a view, or a client's life doesn't come in matching pairs, and forcing balance would cost more than it gives.

Why Does Symmetry Feel "Right" to Us?

There's a reason Monticello, the White House, and half the houses in Charlotte's older neighborhoods all lean symmetrical. It's not fashion. It's wiring.

Human faces are a good example. We're built to scan for symmetry because, evolutionarily, it signaled health. A face with two matching eyes and a centered nose reads as normal, trustworthy, fine. A face that's off just reads as off, even if you can't say why. We do the same thing to buildings without realizing it. A center door, flanked by evenly spaced windows, with a roofline that mirrors itself, gives your brain a shortcut. It says "I already understand this," before you've consciously looked at more than a third of the facade.

That's not a bad thing. It's efficient. It's also, frankly, a little bit of a cheat code for making a house look put together, which is part of why so many production builders lean on symmetrical elevations. They're playing the odds. Symmetry rarely looks wrong. It just sometimes looks boring.

Do You Really Need to Design the Whole House Twice?

I had a professor in grad school who put it in a way I've never forgotten. He said that with a symmetrical composition, you only ever have to understand one half of the building. Mirror it, and you're done. Asymmetry, he said, forces you to visually digest the whole thing, so you get your money's worth.

I laughed at the time because it sounded like he was grading buildings on value, like a buffet. But he was right, and it's stuck with me through decades of practice. Symmetry is a shortcut for the viewer. Asymmetry demands attention, wing by wing, window by window, all the way across. Done well, that's a gift. You keep noticing new things every time you pull into the driveway. Done poorly, it just looks like nobody made a decision.

When Do Architects Break Symmetry on Purpose?

Real sites are rarely symmetrical, so a strictly balanced house is often a lie the building tells about the lot it sits on. I break symmetry on purpose in a few recurring situations.

The first is topography. Charlotte has plenty of sloped lots, especially in some of Charlotte's newer neighborhoods (less so in some neighborhoods like Myers Park, Eastover, and near SouthPark), and a perfectly mirrored facade on a sloped site usually means somebody poured a lot of extra concrete to fake it flat. I'd rather let the grade show and let the massing respond to it.

The second is program. A primary suite wing needs different volume than a garage and mudroom wing. Forcing those two very different functions into matching boxes usually means shrinking one and bloating the other until neither works right. I'd rather size each part of the house for what it actually does, then compose the asymmetry so it still reads as intentional rather than accidental.

The third is the view or sunlight. If the best sightline on the lot is to one side, or if you want your rooms arranged to benefit from sunlight over the course of the day, a rigidly centered house ignores its best assets just to look tidy from the street. That's a trade I'm rarely willing to make.

Is Asymmetry Riskier to Get Right?

Yes, and I'll say that plainly. Symmetry is forgiving. Asymmetry has more ways to go wrong, because there's no mirror to bail you out if a proportion is off on one side. As mentioned, that's exactly why so much production home design defaults to symmetrical elevations. It's a safer bet at scale, and there's nothing wrong with safe when you're building the same plan forty times across a subdivision.

But safe and interesting aren't the same goal, and for a custom home, interesting is usually closer to what the client is actually paying for. An asymmetrical composition that's balanced without being mirrored, using weight, texture, and proportion instead of a center line, is harder to design and harder to critique on paper. It's also, in my opinion, more often the difference between a house that looks like a house and a house that looks like your house.

There are, of course, degrees of asymmetry. Here are a few examples where our composition is "almost" symmetrical and it could be argued that, with these examples, you get the best of both worlds.

How Do We Decide at Houghland Architecture?

I don't start a design assuming symmetry or rejecting it. I start with the site, the program, and the view, and let the massing tell me which way it wants to lean. If a client's lot, budget, and lifestyle all point toward a formal, centered composition, I'll draw a good one. If the lot is sloped, the views are lopsided, or the program genuinely doesn't split into equal halves, I'll push toward an asymmetrical composition and make sure it still feels resolved rather than random.

The tell, honestly, is whether a design still looks intentional with the symmetry stripped away. A good asymmetrical house should feel like it couldn't be any other way once you understand the site. If it just feels like pieces stuck together, that's not architecture breaking the rule on purpose. That's just an unbalanced building.

Good design, in either direction, should look like a decision, not an accident.

Agree or disagree, please get in touch if you want to have this debate on your new custom house!

Evaluating cost-per-square-foot

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 17:29:24 GMT

Why Two Houses the Same Size Can Cost Wildly Different Amounts to Build

Two 3,500-square-foot houses can cost dramatically different amounts to design and build, because square footage only measures floor area, not complexity. Roofline, foundation type, finish level, site conditions, and structural choices often matter more than size, which is why cost-per-square-foot estimates are often unreliable, yet often quoted. You have heard this before but make sure to compare apples to apples.

I had some very thoughtful clients recently who started with a price per square foot fixed in their minds. A friend had built a house, similar size to what they wanted, give or take a couple hundred square feet, and had told them exactly what it cost per square foot. They had done the math on their own project and had a budget they felt good about.

After some investigation on the specifics of their friend’s house, we determined that we were, in fact, comparing apples and oranges. Their friend’s house was fairly large, but it was essentially a large starter home, which is a very common situation these days. There was nothing wrong with their friend’s house. It just had a dramatically different specification level and a very flat lot, both of which helped lower their price per square foot.

I often use the following example to illustrate how to quantify the accuracy of a square-foot estimate. Finishes can dramatically alter the price per square foot. Imagine we need to know what kind of toilet to install in the Primary Bathroom. A visit to the Kohler plumbing website for toilets delivered 139 results. There are options for smart toilets, continuous clean toilets, tall toilets, one-piece toilets, and two-piece toilets. There are prices from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. Quite a price difference depending on a seemingly simple decision on which toilet to buy. Now take that same range and apply it to your appliances, finishes, HVAC system, etc. (See our blog post on HVAC.) Cost-per-square-foot estimates get challenged quickly under this scenario.

So Why Doesn't Square Footage Tell the Whole Story?

Square footage is a science-sounding number. It's precise, it's easy to compare, and it feels like it should predict cost the way weight predicts shipping charges. But a house isn't a box of a certain size; it's a few thousand individual decisions, and most of those decisions have nothing to do with how many square feet you're heating and cooling.

This is where architecture stops behaving like a spreadsheet and starts behaving like what it actually is: part art, part science, both at once. The floor area is the science. Everything that happens within that floor area,how the roof comes together, how the rooms connect, how much natural light you're chasing, is closer to art, and art doesn't average out neatly across a per-square-foot number.

Cost-per-square-foot isn't useless. It's just a blunt average of somebody else's decisions, not a formula for yours.

What Actually Drives the Cost Difference?

If two houses are the same size but wildly different in price, it's almost always one or more of these:

Roof complexity. A simple gable roof and a roof with six planes, three dormers, and two valleys can sit over the exact same footprint, and cost nowhere near the same to frame, flash, and shingle.
Foundation and site conditions. A flat, easy lot and a sloped lot with drainage issues or tricky soil are two completely different foundation budgets before a single wall goes up. This is often the single biggest surprise for homeowners who fall in love with a lot before understanding what it's sitting on.
Structural spans. That open-concept great room with the wall of windows you keep pinning on Pinterest? Beautiful, and structurally a different animal than a house broken into smaller, load-bearing rooms. Bigger spans mean more steel, more engineering, more cost.
Finish level. The gap between builder-grade cabinetry and custom millwork, between a stock tile and a hand-selected stone, can swing a budget more than almost anything else on this list, and it has zero relationship to square footage.
Mechanical systems. A zoned, high-efficiency HVAC system designed around how a family actually lives in a house costs more up front than a one-size-fits-all system, and it's worth every penny in comfort and long-term efficiency. (If you want the deeper version of this argument, check out our blog post .)
Ceiling height and volume. Ten-foot ceilings versus eight-foot ceilings sound like a small aesthetic choice. They're actually more cubic footage of air to condition, more wall to build, and more material almost everywhere you look.

None of these show up in a "dollars per square foot" conversation. All of them show up on your final invoice.

Does Code or Zoning Ever Add to the Cost?

Sometimes, yes, and it's worth knowing this exists before you're surprised by it. Charlotte's Unified Development Ordinance and the NC Residential Code both carry requirements that have nothing to do with your taste and everything to do with the lot you're building on: setbacks, fire separation between structures, egress requirements, energy code minimums, wind load and earthquake requirements. None of this is dramatic on its own, but it can quietly shape, and occasionally add to, a budget in ways that a generic square-footage number never accounts for. For example, a house along the beach at Pine Knoll Shores will not compare on a cost-per-square-foot basis to one on Badin Lake because of the additional wind load requirements along the North Carolina coast.

These code-related requirements are usually a smaller factor than roofline or finish level, but they’re part of why identical house plans can price out differently depending on where they are located.

How Do You Get an Honest Number for Your Project?

Here's the honest answer: you don't get a real number from a friend's house, a magazine, or a per-square-foot rule of thumb. You get it from doing some real work and sitting down early with someone who can look at your actual lot, your actual wish list, and your actual priorities, and talk through where your money is likely to go before you've fallen in love with a design you can't build. There is no harm in doing some research on cost-per-square-foot, but understand that once a design is in motion and specification levels are established, your starting number will always shift, usually up but sometimes down. And also remember the only way cost-per-square-foot comparisons work is if you are, sorry for the repeated cliche, comparing apples to apples.

The Bottom Line

Cost-per-square-foot isn't a lie. It's just not a promise. Treating it like a fixed price is one of the more expensive mistakes homeowners make before they've even hired anyone, and it's an entirely avoidable one. If you're starting to think seriously about a custom home or a major addition, the most useful thing you can do isn't finding a better per-square-foot number. It's finding someone who'll walk your specific project through the decisions that actually set the price.

Have questions about what's driving the cost of your specific project? Reach out to schedule a conversation - no pressure, no sales pitch, just an honest look at what you're working with, or email us at gray@houghlandarchitecture.com

Understanding The Cost Of An Architect In Charlotte, NC

gray@houghlandarchitecture.com (Gray Houghland) — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 17:08:22 GMT

The Fee Question

In Charlotte, most residential architecture fees run 6% to 15% of construction cost. Our minimum fee for permit-ready drawings for a custom home is 6%. Full service through construction typically lands between 10% and 15%. Continue reading to peek behind the curtain.

Fee as Percentage of Construction Cost

To make sense of those percentages, it helps to start with how architects actually calculate fees. This method is the easiest way to discuss and understand architectural fees and is the most informative. Here is an example: your new house will cost $1,000,000 to build and the architecture fee for a construction set of drawings is 6% of the cost of construction. So, $1,000,000 x 6% = $60,000. That is easy math. And it makes some good sense. When the size and cost of construction go up the fee goes up. When the size and cost decrease, you guessed it, the fee goes down. But there is more.

Typical Fee Ranges

The next mystery that you will encounter when researching architecture fees is that fees are defined as a range. You will see ranges like 8% to 15%, or 6% to 10%, of the cost of construction. So why the range and the difference? Let’s imagine you are buying a car. The criteria affecting the price are the manufacturer, model, age, and features. A similar list of criteria will affect your architectural fee.

Scope of Services Make a Difference

Architectural projects come in all shapes and sizes. Some are small and simple, some large and complex. Sometimes final design solutions are understood from the beginning, sometimes they are harder and more time consuming to discover. Architects offer dozens of services across a project lifecycle, everything from site feasibility studies to construction administration to help selecting a toilet. The full list is at the end of this post if you're curious. The specifics really don’t matter, it's the wide range and variety of services offered that hopefully help explain why there is a corresponding range of architecture fees.

Minimum Fee

I imagine you still want to know a number, a cost. Let me start at the easiest fee level to define - permit or construction drawings. On average our lower end, but still custom, design services are 6% of the cost of construction. This will get you a minimum set of drawings with which your builder can get a permit and build the structure. There are many decisions these drawings will outline, but there are many that still need to be made.

Full Service

Full service fee ranges from 10% to 15% of the cost of construction. This range involves adding more detail and decisions to the planning process. Kitchens have more detail, cabinets and appliances get defined, lighting and electrical plans are developed, as well as specifications on materials and finishes.

The simple answer is how many of the hundreds of decisions that go into a house design do you want or need help to make? This comes down to an honest analysis of your strengths and weaknesses and the time you have available to come up with answers. Most clients end up in this middle ground, and most toward the upper end of the middle ground.

Here in Charlotte, good builders are very busy, especially those working in Myers Park, Eastover, and Foxcroft. When you search for a builder to work with, remember they are also searching for good clients. We can help make your pitch to attract the best builders. The extra steps we take to assist you with your resume, if you will, will push you up the fee ladder, but we are confident it is money well spent.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. See our chart of fee and corresponding tasks:

How to decide on a fee and a level of service

I am going to guide you by example. Imagine we need to know what kind of toilet to install in the Primary Bedroom. A visit to the Kohler plumbing website for toilets delivered 139 results. There are options for smart toilets, continuous clean toilets, tall toilets, one-piece toilets, and two piece toilets. There are prices from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. If that list does not scare you or bring you to tears then you are a candidate for a lower level of service and less assistance will be needed from the professionals involved in your house project.

In short there are three categories of professionals involved in your project that could potentially assist you with decisions, the architect, interior designer, or builder. If you do not make the decision yourself, one of those professionals is going to spend time and energy helping you, and that deserves payment.

Before you panic that there are too many decisions and no way to know how much help you will actually need, let me offer the following process and words of encouragement. At least with our architecture firm, you can sign up for a lower level of service to get things going. Once you reach the point where additional help is needed we will sound the alert and you can regroup and decide how you want to proceed. The decisions you will be asked to make are much easier to digest in small bites. We don’t expect you to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner in one sitting. Furthermore, we don’t expect our clients to have all the answers and know exactly what they want throughout the process. That would not be a fair or reasonable expectation. But we ask that you understand when you want and need additional assistance there is a fee associated with the effort.

Some Frequently Asked Questions on Fee

A Final Word

I hope we have helped you understand that architecture fees have a range. A range reflecting the variation of services we offer. Rarely, if ever, are two projects exactly alike, so to be fair, rarely are two fees exactly the same.

Every project is different, and cost depends on your site, scope, and finishes. If you're considering a project in the Charlotte area, we'd be glad to walk through what's realistic for your situation.

Maximizing a Myers Park Infill Lot

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 16:05:42 GMT

Some thoughts on designing new homes in Myers Park

Maximizing a Myers Park Infill Lot: Designing a Timeless Traditional New Home for Modern Living

At least recently and for the foreseeable future, maximizing a Myers Park infill lot involves tearing down an older structure and constructing an entirely new house. Most of the time that means designing a timeless, somewhat more traditional home that honors the neighborhood's historic streetscape while seamlessly introducing a slightly more open, highly functional floor plan optimized for modern family living. If done with restraint, finesse, and respect for your neighbors, you will have a very livable house in a great neighborhood that will grow significantly in value.

Why Tear Down and Build New on a Myers Park Infill Lot?

Tearing down an aging home on a Myers Park infill lot in Charlotte allows you to bypass the structural compromises of a remodel while securing a highly sought-after location. Often our clients, when asked what portion of their existing house is working and worthy of preservation, come up with very little and sometimes nothing. Building custom new construction from the ground up ensures you get modern energy efficiency, functional spatial flow, and tailored spaces without leaving your ideal neighborhood.

When homeowners debate between a whole-house renovation and a complete tear-down, the deciding factors are usually related to the floor plan and outdated room size and locations. Historic homes often feature low ceilings, cramped structural footprints, and major foundational hurdles that restrict more open living layouts. Let's face it, we now expect very different spaces in our homes than our parents and grandparents did when they were planning their homes.

By opting for a teardown, you gain a blank slate to engineer a home around your lifestyle. You can seamlessly integrate advanced construction details, specify proper high-performing insulation, and design rooms with generous daylighting. But before all the destruction happens, we will start with an analysis of the existing home and determine the options for renovating and adding on, then compare that to the cost of new construction to give you some financial guidance to add to the architectural advice.

Navigating Myers Park Architectural Rules and Charlotte UDO Guidelines

Navigating Charlotte’s Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) requires balancing maximum building coverage caps, strict front setbacks, deed restrictions, and historic tree canopy protection rules. To design a substantial modern home on a narrow infill lot, an architect must deploy clever spatial geometry to maximize the buildable footprint without triggering zoning violations.

The most common zoning hurdle on a neighborhood infill lot is the building coverage limitation. In classic Charlotte residential zones, all roofed footprints—including the primary dwelling, covered porches, and detached garages—cannot exceed a set percentage of the overall lot size.

Our design process maps these constraints before the first sketch is drawn. We ensure the house feels rooted in Myers Park’s heritage while securing every square foot allowed by local ordinance.

Designing Traditional Charlotte Exteriors for Modern Interior Lifestyles

Designing a traditional exterior for modern living means matching timeless classical proportions, such as steep gables, balanced dormers, and brickwork, with a flowing interior floor plan. The ultimate goal is a custom home that looks like it has always been part of the streetscape, yet functions with wide-open, interconnected spaces inside.

The exterior architecture should respect the local context by honoring classical Southern detailing, balanced fenestration, and authentic materials. Passing by, the home feels entirely native to its historic Charlotte surroundings.

Once inside, however, the layout shifts to favor modern family connectivity. We replace standard compartmentalized rooms with an intuitive, seamless flow between the main living area, a bright kitchen, and a custom scullery. Wide glass openings dissolve the boundaries between indoor spaces and the rear yard, creating private outdoor rooms even on tight city lots.

Essential Modern Spaces to Include in Your Custom Home Design

Modern custom home designs on infill lots often include dedicated sculleries, high-functioning home offices, and seamless screened porch additions to maximize utility. Integrating these flexible zones directly into the primary footprint keeps the home compact on the outside but incredibly expansive on the inside.

The Kitchen Scullery: Keeps the main open island clean during entertaining by hiding heavy prep work, large appliances, and secondary sinks and dishwashers out of sight.
Dual-Purpose Home Offices: Built-in cabinetry and soundproof pockets create a quiet daytime workspace that ideally transitions into family use in the evenings.
Integrated Screened Porches: Adding an outdoor fireplace and dining area extends your seasonal living space without exceeding tight rear setbacks. There is also one hidden zoning allowance involving rear setbacks and unheated spaces that can often be utilized.

Please get in touch if you would like to discuss our approach to renovating versus tearing down a home in Charlotte.

Where Can You Put an ADU on a Quarter-Acre Lot in Charlotte?

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 16:22:26 GMT

Thinking about an accessory dwelling unit in Myers Park, Eastover, Cotswold or surrounding neighborhoods?

On a typical quarter-acre lot in Charlotte, you can usually build an ADU up to about 1,000 heated square feet, shorter than 24 feet, placed behind the principal structure with 3-foot side setbacks and specific rear setbacks. The details, exceptions, and specific rules from Charlotte's UDO are below.

The most important factor controlling where an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) can go on your lot is the height of the structure. If the ADU is less than 24 feet in height it can be placed as close as 3 feet from the side and rear property lines. However, if the ADU is 24 feet high or taller, it must be placed further away from the property lines, a minimum of 15 feet from the rear property line and roughly 5 or 6 feet from the side property line (the side yard setback varies depending on the particular neighborhood). Yes, it is somewhat complicated, much easier when taken step by step.

There is a difference between an "Accessory Structure" and an "Accessory Dwelling Unit".

You will hear both definitions and it can get confusing. The two are different categories, and an ADU is both.

Accessory structure is a building/structure classification: a structure on the same lot as the principal building that is incidental and subordinate to its function. Sheds, detached garages, pool houses, carports, fences, decks. Governed by Article 17 of Charlotte's Unified Development Ordinance (UDO). City of Charlotte

Accessory dwelling unit (ADU) is a use, a listed use in Article 15 (UDO). An additional dwelling unit associated with and incidental to a principal dwelling, which must include separate cooking and sanitary facilities and be a complete, separate dwelling unit. It may be within or attached to the principal dwelling, or within a detached accessory structure such as a garage. Governed by the prescribed conditions in Section 15.6. City of Charlotte . Think of an ADU as being a small house, both in function and cost.

Does the distinction control where it can go?

Mostly no. Placement of a detached ADU is controlled by its status as an accessory structure, not by its ADU status. The ADU label does matter in determining the maximum size, however.

The categories overlap rather than compete. A detached ADU is an accessory structure, and it must satisfy both Article 17 (form/placement) and 15.6 (use conditions). Accessory structures that are not ADUs comply with Article 17.1; those that are ADUs must also comply with Article 15.6. Practically, the dividing line is whether the building has cooking and sanitary facilities and is used as a residence, when you declare an accessory structure "is not" an ADU on the permit application, you are confirming it won't be used as a dwelling for short or long-term durations.

Charlotte operates under its Unified Development Ordinance, or UDO, which took effect in 2023 and replaced the old zoning code that had governed the city for decades. The UDO reorganized how residential districts are labeled and how ADUs are treated, and the result is actually a fairly permissive framework for homeowners who want to add a second living unit on their property. That said, permissive doesn't mean unlimited. There are setbacks, height limits, size caps, and coverage rules that will directly determine where your ADU can go and whether it can go there at all.

This post is going to walk you through what those rules actually mean on a typical quarter-acre Charlotte lot. We'll cover placement, setbacks, height, floor area, and building coverage, because all of those pieces work together. Understanding them as a system, rather than as isolated rules, is what separates a project that sails through permitting from one that stalls out six months in because the design wasn't grounded in the realities of the lot.

So, let's do the homework. Because as we always say: do your homework… do your homework. And also always check for amendments to the UDO, which can add or subtract requirements.

First: What Exactly Is a Quarter-Acre Lot?

A quarter acre is 10,890 square feet. In Charlotte's older established neighborhoods, think Dilworth, Plaza Midwood, Commonwealth, Cotswold, Eastover, and many parts of South Charlotte, lots in this range are extremely common, and you might own one. They're the workhorses of the Charlotte housing stock, sized to hold a modest to substantial single-family home with a real yard on all four sides.

In the UDO's Neighborhood 1 districts, which cover most of Charlotte's single-family residential fabric, a quarter-acre lot at 10,890 square feet lands just above the minimum lot size threshold for an N1-A district, which requires a minimum of 10,000 square feet. That's important because it means your lot qualifies for all of the residential development rights that come with N1-A zoning, including the ability to add an ADU.

But before we talk about the ADU specifically, we need to understand the lot's buildable envelope. That's the area left over after all the required setbacks are applied to the principal structure. The ADU will then fit into whatever is left, and those two things don't compete with each other in the way many people assume. Let's walk through how that works.

Understanding the Setbacks on Your Principal Structure

In the N1-A zoning district, the primary structure on your lot is subject to the following minimum setbacks under the UDO:

Front setback: Typically 20 feet from the right-of-way, though this can vary based on the established blockface (the UDO allows some flexibility if neighboring homes are already set back differently). In no case can it be less than 10 feet.
Side setbacks: 5 feet minimum from each interior side lot line.
Rear setback: 40 feet minimum from the rear lot line.

On a quarter-acre lot, these setbacks carve away a meaningful portion of the usable area. Let's say the lot is roughly 80 feet wide and 136 feet deep, a common configuration in Charlotte's grid neighborhoods. Once you apply a 20-foot front setback and a 40-foot rear setback, you've already consumed 60 feet of that 136-foot depth. Add the two 5-foot side setbacks and you're left with a 70-foot-wide by 76-foot-deep buildable envelope for the primary home: about 5,320 square feet of gross footprint potential before building coverage rules apply.

That's for the principal structure . The ADU has its own separate placement rules, and they're meaningfully different, and in some ways more forgiving.

Where Can the ADU Actually Go?

Here is the fundamental principle that guides ADU placement in Charlotte: an ADU located within a detached accessory structure is generally subject to accessory structure setbacks, not the principal structure setbacks. For the purposes of this discussion we will focus on detached structures, versus attached to the house itself (and not considering through-lot conditions).

Under Article 17 of the Charlotte UDO, accessory structures in an established side or rear yard must be located a minimum of three feet from any lot line, side or rear. That's it. Three feet (but another foot or two will avoid the requirement for a fire rated wall or eave detail). Compared to the 40-foot rear setback required for the principal dwelling, this is a dramatic difference, and it opens up significant territory in the back of most quarter-acre lots.

Let's put that in context. On our hypothetical 80x136 lot, the rear 40 feet is entirely off-limits for the primary house. But it's largely available for an ADU, as long as the ADU maintains that 3-foot buffer from the rear and side property lines. In practice, that leaves you with roughly a 74-foot-wide by 37-foot-deep footprint zone in the rear yard. Do the math and you have approximately 2,738 square feet of potential ADU footprint territory. That's well more than enough for any ADU that complies with Charlotte's size limits.

There's an equally important point about where the ADU cannot go : it may not be located in the front setback or corner side setback along a street. In plain language, this means no ADU in the front yard, facing the street as a second primary structure. The only narrow exception in the UDO involves lots where the principal dwelling is set back at least 150 feet from the right-of-way, a situation that simply doesn't apply to most in-town Charlotte lots. There must also be a separation between the house and an ADU of at least 5 feet.

The ADU must also share a driveway with the principal structure , with some exceptions for corner lots and lots abutting alleys. You cannot carve out a separate curb cut and driveway for a detached ADU on a standard interior lot. This matters for site planning, and it's something to think about early in the design process.

The Height Question: This Is Where Things Get Specific

Height is one of the most important and most misunderstood pieces of the ADU puzzle in Charlotte. Get it right, and your design has maximum flexibility. Get it wrong, and you'll find yourself re-drawing plans you've already fallen in love with.

Here's the old rule: an ADU located within a detached accessory structure may not exceed the height of the principal dwelling. That condition was removed from the UDO by text amendment 2025-047. There is certainly lingering, false adherence to this rule, but now an accessory structure can be taller than the primary residence.

The remaining height-related rule, and this one affects setbacks, not just design: if an accessory structure reaches a height of 24 feet or more the setback requirements change significantly. In that case, the structure must be set back at least 15 feet from the rear lot line and at least the full required side setback (5 feet in N1-A) from any side lot line. That's a very different building location than the 3-foot minimum that applies to lower structures.

What this means in practice is that a taller ADU will be subject to tighter setbacks and may not work on a smaller or shallower lot. A shorter, single-story ADU designed to stay well under the 24-foot height threshold will have the most placement flexibility and the largest buildable footprint zone. This is often the most cost-effective path as well.

The takeaway here: design the ADU height with intentionality. Don't assume you can maximize height simply because the lot is large or the district allows taller buildings.

How Big Can the ADU Be? Understanding Floor Area Limits

Even when placement and height work out, there are firm size limits for ADUs in Charlotte. Under Article 15.6 of the UDO, a detached ADU, one located within a freestanding accessory structure, shall not exceed 600 heated square feet or 70% of the total floor area of the principal residential use, whichever is greater . However, in no case shall the ADU exceed 1,000 heated square feet.

Let's run through a few scenarios to make that concrete:

If your home is 1,200 square feet , 70% is 840 square feet. Your ADU cap is 840 square feet.

If your home is 2,000 square feet , 70% is 1,400 square feet. But your hard ADU max. cap is 1,000 square feet.

The 1,000-square-foot ceiling is the hard limit no matter the size of the primary home. This is actually a well-designed provision that reflects the underlying intent of the ADU framework: the unit should be genuinely subordinate to the primary residence. An ADU that rivals or exceeds the main house in size isn't really accessory to anything.

For most homeowners on a quarter-acre lot in Charlotte, the practical ADU size falls somewhere between 600 and 1,000 heated square feet. In that range, you can build a fully functional one- or two-bedroom unit with a kitchen, full bath, living area, and real storage. We've designed garage apartments, backyard cottages, and carriage house units in this size range, and the results are consistently livable, charming, and, done right, indistinguishable in quality from a small primary home. The 1,000-square-foot limit is not a constraint to lament. It's a framework to design well within.

It's also worth noting that this floor area limit applies specifically to an ADU within an accessory structure . Attached ADUs, those carved out of existing basement space, added above an attached garage, or built as an addition to the main house, operate under somewhat different provisions. If you're considering an attached ADU, that's a separate conversation worth having with your architect.

Building Coverage: The Often-Overlooked Variable

Here's the calculation that catches the most people off guard: overall building coverage.

In the N1-A district, Charlotte's UDO limits maximum building coverage to 40% of the lot area for lots of 10,000 square feet or greater. On a 10,890-square-foot lot, that means all structures combined, principal dwelling, detached ADU, garage, sheds, covered porches, and any other roofed structures, cannot collectively occupy more than 4,356 square feet of ground area.

For many Charlotte homeowners, this number is tighter than it first appears. If the primary home has a first-floor footprint of 2,500 square feet, which is common for a 3,000- to 3,500-square-foot two-story house, you've already consumed roughly 57% of your coverage allowance before you've placed a single square foot of ADU. The ADU would need to be fully accounted for within whatever coverage headroom remains, which in this case is 1,856 square feet. The allowable area for the ADU then hits the 1,000 square foot maximum, subject also to the Rear Yard Coverage discussed below.

This is why we counsel clients to pull their as-built surveys and do this coverage math early, ideally before they've commissioned any ADU designs. The survey will tell you the existing building footprint. The lot dimensions will tell you the maximum coverage. The difference between those two numbers is your remaining buildable coverage, and that number sets the upper boundary on ADU footprint size more definitively than almost anything else.

It's also worth noting that the UDO has a separate provision governing the aggregate square footage of all accessory structures on a lot (excluding the ADU). That total cannot exceed the total heated area on the first floor of the principal structure. If you have an existing detached garage or workshop, that structure counts against this limit. Your design team needs to account for everything on the lot, not just the ADU in isolation.

The One-ADU Rule and Other Key Conditions

A few more items worth understanding clearly before you get too far down the planning road:

Only one ADU per lot. The UDO allows exactly one accessory dwelling unit per lot containing a single-family or qualifying duplex. You cannot layer an attached ADU and a detached ADU on the same property. Pick one configuration and design it well.

The ADU must include separate cooking and sanitary facilities. A structure without a kitchen and a private bathroom isn't an ADU under the code, it's a guesthouse or an accessory structure, which has different rules and restrictions. If income generation or independent living is the goal, the ADU must be fully self-contained.

Ownership requirements. The principal dwelling and the ADU must remain under the same ownership. You cannot subdivide the lot, sell off the ADU as a separate parcel, or separately deed the two structures. The ADU is, by definition, an accessory to the primary use of the lot.

Permits are required. This should go without saying, but it's worth emphasizing: building an ADU without permits creates serious problems, for liability, for insurance, for refinancing, and for eventual resale. The permitting process in Charlotte, through Mecklenburg County's CLT Development Center, has improved significantly and is manageable with the right team in place.

Charlotte's New Queen City ADU Program

One more piece of news that's genuinely exciting: in September 2025, the City of Charlotte launched the Queen City ADU Program , which offers qualifying homeowners up to $80,000 in forgivable, interest-free financing to help fund ADU construction. The loan forgives at a rate of $10,000 per year over up to eight years, with faster forgiveness available for landlords who house voucher holders or residents referred through supportive service agencies.

The program targets rental affordability, units must be rented to tenants earning no more than 80% of area median income, at rents capped at the city's published Fair Market Rent levels. It's not the right fit for every homeowner, but for those whose goals align with the affordability targets, this is a remarkable tool that changes the financial calculus of ADU construction significantly.

The City also offers a free online MyADU Eligibility Tool that lets you check whether your specific property appears eligible before you invest in design or planning work. That's a smart first step for anyone seriously considering the program.

Putting It All Together: What to Do Next

If you've read this far, you probably have a specific lot in mind, and a specific idea about what you'd like to build. Here's how we'd advise you to approach it:

Step 1: Pull your survey. Find your most recent as-built survey, which shows the lot dimensions, existing structures, easements, and setbacks. If you don't have one, order one. This is not an optional step.

Step 2: Confirm your zoning district. Charlotte's online mapping tools will tell you whether you're N1-A, N1-B, N1-C, or something else. Each district has its own setbacks and coverage limits. Know yours before you do anything else.

Step 3: Calculate your coverage headroom. Add up the footprint square footage of all existing structures. Compare that to your lot's 40% coverage ceiling. The difference is your available envelope.

Step 4: Hire an architect. Have a professional apply the placement rules to your specific survey, sketch one or two feasibility concepts, and tell you honestly whether your goals are achievable. This is far cheaper than commissioning full construction documents only to discover a fatal constraint three months into the design process. See our blog post on architecture fees .

Step 5: Hire a builder for a preliminary budget. Before you finalize the design, get a real cost number from a qualified contractor. The Charlotte construction market has remained competitive, and ADU costs vary enormously depending on finishes, site conditions, and utility connections.

Armed with accurate survey data, confirmed zoning information, a feasibility design, and a preliminary cost estimate, you'll be in a position to make a genuinely informed decision. That combination of professional inputs, done in the right sequence, is the homework. And doing the homework is the only reliable way to avoid the costly mistakes we see time and again when homeowners charge ahead without it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Thought

Charlotte's ADU rules are, on balance, working in your favor. The UDO framework is more permissive than many homeowners expect, the City has backed its commitment to ADUs with real financial tools, and a quarter-acre lot in most established Charlotte neighborhoods has the raw material to accommodate a well-designed additional unit.

The variable that will determine whether your project succeeds isn't the code. It's the quality of the team you assemble and the discipline you bring to the planning process. Get that right, and an ADU on a quarter-acre Charlotte lot is very much within reach.

When you're ready to have that conversation, we're here. Shoot us an email or give us a call.

Houghland Architecture is a Charlotte, NC–based architectural firm with three generations of experience in residential design. We work with homeowners, builders, and developers across North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. Call us at 704-650-1148 or email gray@houghlandarchitecture.com.

The zoning information in this post reflects the Charlotte Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) and City programs as understood in mid-2026. Regulations are subject to change. Always verify current standards with the City of Charlotte Planning and Development Department or a licensed design professional before making project decisions. New Paragraph

How Clients Can Find Answers to Common Construction Questions

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 13:39:47 GMT

Questions We Often Hear:

Question 1: Can I add an addition or a porch to this house?

Question 2: Can I add a second or third story to this house?

Question 3: Can I add an attached garage to this house?

Question 4: Can I add a detached garage or ‘she-shed’ to the property?

Question 5: Can I add a driveway to this property?

Question 6: Can we cut down these trees?

Question 7: Which improvements have to be reviewed by others?

Question 8: Can I put a fence around this yard?

Question 9: Can I build a solid wall at the back of my property?

Question 10: Can I put a duplex or triplex on this property?

Question 11: Can I put a pool on this property?

Some Common Sources for Answers:

Search Mecklenburg County Real Estate Records

Neighborhood Covenants/Restrictions/HOAs

Survey of Property - metes and bounds, topographic

Building Codes - residential and commercial codes describe the requirements for how to construct a building to meet particular standards.

North Carolina Building Codes - ICC Digital Codes (iccsafe.org)

Question 1: Can I add an addition to this house?

Is there room? Is there any available maximum coverage area? Is there available BUA (Built Upon Area or Impervious)? Will the neighborhood covenants, HOA and/or historic district allow such an addition? Will the zoning setbacks allow enough space for the addition?

Step 1 - Obtain a survey w/setbacks and deed restricted setbacks. Do not use Polaris (Mecklenburg County GIS) for reliable building size and location on the lot.

Step 2 - Search Polaris to determine the zoning district.

Step 3 - Search Charlotte Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) Home | Read The UDO (charlotteudo.org) to determine setbacks for the property.

Step 4 - Using Charlotte Unified Development Ordinance (UDO), determine if there is any available Maximum Coverage Area remaining.

Determine available Maximum Coverage Area (building footprint):

6729sf (from survey) x 50% = 3364sf

Determine current footprint:

1217sf + 324sf = 1541sf
3364sf - 1541sf = 1823sf available for new building addition footprint

Step 5 - Using Polaris and Charlotte Unified Development Ordinance (UDO), determine if there is available

BUA (Built Upon Area)

Great source (yet very complicated) for determining BUA:

determiningbua1114.pdf (charlottenc.gov)

Note: Properties developed in the City of Charlotte after July 1, 2008 or properties developed in Cornelius, Davidson, Huntersville, Matthews, Mint Hill and Pineville after July 1, 2007 are likely subject to built-upon area restrictions.

Contact Charlotte Stormwater to inquire about a parcel by calling: 311 or 704-336-7600

Conclusion - an addition is possible as described above. In this case there are no BUA restrictions (impervious), no neighborhood restrictions, no historic district, no HOA and neighborhood design review board. House must comply with zoning regulations and residential building codes.

There are certain conditions where a portion of a structure can be built over a setback:

From UDO - page 18-2:

Question 2: Can a second or third story be added to this house?

Step 1 - Check Zoning Code (UDO)

Step 2 - Check building code/structural review.

Need to hire a structural engineer to review the capacity of the existing house to support additional weight. They also need to evaluate the ceiling joists of the upper floor to see if they can support the additional construction and code requirements for floor strength.

Step 3 - Check deed restrictions

Question 3: Can I add an attached garage to this house?

Step 1 - determine lot coverage calculations (see Question 1)

Step 2 - determine BUA restrictions (see Question 1)

Step 3 - determine if garage will fit

Question 4: Can I add a detached garage or ‘she-shed’ to the property?

See Article 17 Accessory Structures of UDO for additional information.

Accessory Structure definition: A structure located on the same lot as the principal building that is incidental and subordinate to the function of the principal residence. Accessory dwelling unit (ADU) is a subset of accessory structures.

Key rules from UDO:

No accessory structures in the front yard (there are some exceptions for really big lots).
Accessory structures may be minimum of 3’ from property line (however, not a good idea)
Accessory structures are better if under 24’ tall.
If higher than 24’, they must be 15’ from property lines.
For lots in residential use, the cumulative square footage of all accessory structures on a lot shall not exceed the total square footage of the heated area located on the first floor of the principal structure. Accessory structures open to the sky such as, but not limited to, pools and tennis courts, do not count towards this square footage limitation.

Advantages -

Detached structures allow more area on which to build.
A good way to add space to a house that is otherwise hard to add onto.
By pulling the structure away from the main house, the main house floor plan will dramatically improve.
Detached structures provide physical and mental separation.

Other considerations:

To ensure adequate power line clearance, check with Duke Energy.
To connect a detached structure to the main house, add a breezeway.

Question 5: Can I add a driveway to this property?

Step 1: Check BUA (Built Upon Area or impervious)

Question 6: Can we cut down these trees?

Key Takeaways:

Heritage Trees – Regulations pertaining to Heritage Trees (native species, 30” in diameter at 4 ½’ mark) follow two different ordinances. For Heritage Trees on a lot that is undergoing development, the new UDO is triggered. For Heritage Trees on private property, the Charlotte Tree Ordinance is the place to go. An authorized removal of a Heritage Tree is $1500 along with planting a replacement tree that is a minimum of 6’ tall and 2” in caliper. Penalties for unauthorized removal are still in the works.
Trees in the ROW are considered City Trees and are protected as such. Charlotte Explorer offers views of lot lines and ROW distances to judge whether a tree is in the City’s or NCDOT ROW. Authorized removal of a City Tree is $200, while unauthorized removal has a penalty of $300 (per Laurie Reid, this has been the ordinance for City Trees since 2019 and remains unchanged with the new UDO).
As of June 1st – posted signage for Tree Protection Zones will be required.
Staffing has been in flux, but Urban Forestry has added two additional staff members (creating a 4-person team) to help with plan review. You can find a checklist (attached and link below) on the Charlotte Development Center website which helps builders/developers understand the different components needed for submittal. Review times for second round of comments and beyond are the same as the initial review time (10 business days).
Contiguous tree ordinances under the UDO have proven to have unintended consequences. A text amendment should be available for review in one week.

Link to Stormwater and Urban Forestry Checklists: https://charlotteudo.org/residential-reviews/

Question 7: What kinds of improvements to the property have to be reviewed by others?

Examples of residential projects now requiring City Storm Water and Urban Forestry review:

Construction of a new Single-Family Home
Construction of a new Duplex
Additions to existing residential buildings, or renovations that expand the footprint
Detached garages
Backyard storage buildings
Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs)
Retaining walls on residential lots
Pools
Installation, modification, creation, or connection to the existing City storm drainage system
Installation of storm drainage systems that convey runoff from a publicly-maintained street

Why is all of this regulation occurring? Significantly more is being built on each lot than in years past. Margin for error is smaller, and construction on any given lot has much more of an impact on the neighboring lots.

My advice - recommend that your clients contact the City with any improvements they want to make to their property. Make no changes to a property without a permit. (Except for adding trees and shrubs).

Currently there are methods available to compare aerial footprints and detect changes that could lead to questions about permitting and compliance.

Records for permits are now much easier to obtain, verify and search than in years past.

Question 8: Can I put a fence around this yard?

Neighborhood 1 Zoning Districts, Neighborhood 2 Zoning Districts, and MHP Zoning District Standards

The following standards apply unless a different standard is required by the landscape regulations of Article 20:

A fence or wall located in the established front setback or setback along a frontage shall be limited to a maximum height of five feet above grade.
A fence or wall located in the established side setback between the established front setback and established rear setback shall be limited to a maximum height of six feet above grade.
A fence or wall located in the established rear setback shall be limited to a maximum height of eight feet above grade.

Article 17. Fences and Walls | Read The UDO (charlotteudo.org)

Question 9: Can I build a solid wall at the back of my property?

Answer: Yes, but it must not block water flow. Therefore, the wall may need to have holes that allow water to drain.

Question 10: Can I put a duplex or triplex on this property?

Step 1: Check the deed restrictions/HOA, etc.

Step 2: Find the parcel on Polaris to determine the zoning district.

Step 3: Refer to the UDO Table 15-1: Use Matrix

Question 11: Can I put a pool on this property?

Step 1: Check deed restrictions/HOA, etc.

Step 2: Check BUA (Built Upon Area) - note, this is not a building coverage question, but just an impervious question. Water surface does not count towards the impervious area.

Step 3: Apply to Mecklenburg County Health Department for approval and submit pool design.

Pools | Public Health (mecknc.gov)

How to Determine How Much of Your House to Renovate

gray@houghlandarchitecture.com (Gray Houghland) — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 16:47:57 GMT

Figuring out how much of your Charlotte house to renovate comes down to one question: does the cost get you back at least as much value as you're putting in? The way to answer that isn't a gut check, it's a simple four-step process involving a real estate agent, an architect, and a builder, done before and after you know your design. If the math doesn't work, scale the project back.

Why Does This Even Matter Right Now?

Charlotte's real estate market, like most of the country, is stuck in a standstill. Rates are high enough that sellers don't want to give up their old mortgage, and buyers don't want to pay a premium to get one. Nobody wants to move.

That standstill is pushing a lot of homeowners into renovating who might not have otherwise. And when people feel backed into a corner, they don't always make their best decisions. Often they try to do too much.

I see two versions of this constantly. The first is a $200,000 kitchen renovation going into a $600,000 house in a $600,000 neighborhood. Beautiful kitchen. Terrible math. The second is a full second story stacked on top of a small 1950s ranch. Those old ranch floor plans have real structural and layout limitations, and sometimes there's no design that makes the addition work the way the homeowner is picturing it.

Neither of those projects is wrong on its own. They're wrong for that house, in that neighborhood, at that price point. That's the part people skip.

What's the Actual Risk of Overdoing It?

The risk isn't that your renovation looks bad. It's that you overbuild for your street. Every neighborhood has a ceiling on what buyers will pay, and it has nothing to do with how nice your addition is. Push past that ceiling and you're not adding value, you're just spending money you won't see again at resale. Admittedly, the ceiling in Charlotte is rising fast, but it still exists.

There's a rougher version of this test I use with clients: if a renovation doesn't pass the "sniff test," meaning your gut already suspects it's too much house for the lot or the neighborhood, it usually is. That instinct is worth listening to before you spend money proving yourself right or wrong.

Zoning plays a role here too. Under Charlotte's Unified Development Ordinance, lot coverage, setbacks, and height limits can cap how big an addition is even allowed to get, regardless of budget. Sometimes the market ceiling and the zoning ceiling land in the same place, which is at least a little bit of good news.

How Do You Actually Determine How Much to Renovate?

This is the part most homeowners skip, and it's the part that actually answers the question. It takes four steps, done in order.

1. Hire a real estate agent for a comparative market analysis (CMA). Get a real, current number on what your house is worth today, as-is. Online estimators like Zillow's Zestimate are a starting point at best. We've written before about why cost-per-square-foot pricing gets misleading fast , and the same logic applies here: an algorithm doesn't know your lot, your finishes, or what just sold two doors down. A local agent does. Since this exercise may or may not lead to a commission for the agent, I suggest compensating them for their expertise hourly or fixed rate.

2. Hire an architect to sketch one or two real design options. This is where "I want to add a primary suite" turns into an actual floor plan you can hand to a builder. A good architect will usually show you a range, a smaller option and a bigger one, so you can see what each level of investment actually buys you in space and function. Our firm offers this quick design sketch for about $1000 per option. If you want a deeper dive into our pricing take a look at we broke down typical architect fees in Charlotte here .

3. Hire a builder to price the design. Take the architect's plan(s) to a builder for a real cost estimate. Not a ballpark from memory, an actual number based on the actual drawings. This is also the point where structural surprises (that second-story addition on the old ranch, for instance) tend to surface.

4. Send the design back and hire your real estate agent for a second CMA. Now your agent estimates what the house is worth after the renovation, using the design and the builder's numbers. This is the step almost everyone skips, and it's the one that actually tells you whether the project pencils out.

Once you have all four numbers, the comparison is simple: does the projected increase in value clear the cost of the renovation by a comfortable enough margin? If yes, you've got a green light. If it's close or negative, you've just saved yourself from a very expensive lesson.

Isn't Paying Three Different Professionals Overkill?

I get this pushback a lot, and I understand it. But notice the word hire in every one of those four steps. Each of those professionals is doing real work and deserves to be paid for their time, especially given what's riding on the answer.

Here's the way I'd frame it: this whole exercise probably costs you a few thousand dollars total. Compare that to the alternative, which is spending $200,000 or more on an addition that doesn't come close to paying for itself when you sell. A few thousand dollars to avoid a six-figure mistake isn't overkill. It's smart and it’s cheap insurance.

Would This Have Mattered as Much a Few Years Ago?

Honestly, probably not as much. The market used to be fluid enough that homeowners rarely felt cornered into a renovation. If a house didn't quite fit anymore, you sold it and bought one that did.

That's not really an option for a lot of people right now. Construction costs are up, rates are up, and the safety net of "just sell and move" is thinner than it used to be. That's exactly why this four-step process matters more today than it did five years ago. The margin for error is smaller, and the cost of getting it wrong is bigger.

A Quick Way to Sanity-Check Your Project

If you're landing in the yellow column on more than one of these, that's not necessarily a stop sign, but it is a sign to slow down and get real numbers before you commit.

The Bottom Line

Renovating in a tight market isn't automatically a bad idea, but renovating without doing the homework almost always is. Get the CMA, get the design, get the builder's number, get the second CMA, then compare. It's not complicated. It's just a step most people skip because they're excited, or because they feel like they don't have another option.

So, in the words of our parents: do your homework, do your homework , do your homework.

Inspiration Overload - Help!

gray@houghlandarchitecture.com (Gray Houghland) — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 13:36:59 GMT

How Houghland Architecture can help sort through all the clutter...

Great question! With so many design ideas floating around on Pinterest and Instagram, clients can easily feel overwhelmed. Architects play a crucial role in helping them cut through the noise and refine their vision. Here's how:

1. Theme - Instead of focusing on individual images, architects can guide clients to articulate the mood, function, and overall feel they want. A home isn’t just a collection of cool ideas—it’s a cohesive story.

2. Patterns - Architects can analyze what clients are pinning or saving to find recurring patterns: Are they drawn to open-concept layouts? Natural materials? Dramatic lighting? Spotting trends helps define their true aesthetic.

3. Feasibility - Not everything online translates well in real life due to budget, climate, or structural limitations. Architects can bring practicality to dreamy concepts—offering alternative solutions that achieve similar effects within constraints.

4. Reduce - Instead of presenting an overload of options, architects can curate a shortlist of ideas, helping clients rank priorities—what’s essential, what’s flexible, and what’s purely decorative.

5. Organize - Once ideas are refined, architects can create custom collections that synthesize the client’s style into a cohesive design direction, making it easier to explore options and then make decisions.

Building a Custom Home in Charlotte, NC: What to Expect

gray@houghlandarchitecture.com (Gray Houghland) — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 16:58:21 GMT

Building a custom home in Charlotte typically takes 18 to 24 months from first meeting to move-in. The process runs through 10 phases, with your architect leading design and permitting while your builder joins the team by Phase 3. The work is collaborative, the decisions are many, and the result is a home built specifically for you.

That is the short version. If you want the version that actually prepares you for what is ahead, keep reading.

What Does the Custom Home Process Actually Look Like?

Most homeowners come to us with a general idea of what they want and almost no idea how to get there. That is not a criticism. Building a custom home is not something most people do more than once in a lifetime, so there is no reason to know the process cold before you start. That is what we are here for.

The process at Houghland Architecture moves through 10 phases. Some are short. Some take months. All of them are necessary, and all of them are sequential for a reason. Skipping ahead -- or rushing a phase to save time -- is one of the most reliable ways to create problems that cost real money to fix later.

Phase 1: Two Meetings Before Anything Gets Designed

The first meeting with us is free. It runs about 45 to 60 minutes and covers the basics: how we work, what your project generally involves, and whether we are a good fit for each other. No drawings, no contracts, no commitment on either side. Just a conversation.

If that goes well, we schedule a second meeting. This one has a fee (charged hourly), and it goes deeper. We work through your wish list, your budget targets, realistic timelines, and the specific details of your project. By the end of that second meeting, both parties know whether to move forward. If we do, we sign an architectural contract that spells out scope, responsibilities, and fees clearly. No fine print surprises.

Phase 2: Understanding Your Site Before Designing Your Home

Before a single sketch gets made, we study the land. In Charlotte, that means zoning code analysis, lot coverage calculations, built-upon area limits, and a reading of what the site itself is telling us. A tight infill lot in Myers Park behaves very differently from a half-acre in Foxcroft or a larger parcel further south. Topography, drainage, solar orientation, and views all shape what the house can and should be.

From there, we build a room list and block-out plans; a spatial overview showing how rooms relate to each other without locking in final dimensions yet. Think of it as a floor plan sketch that answers the big questions without committing to the small ones.

Phase 3: Why Your Builder Needs to Be in the Room Earlier Than You Think

This is the phase most homeowners wish they had started earlier. Good custom home builders in Charlotte, particularly those working in Myers Park, Eastover, and Foxcroft, are typically booked 12 months out. Waiting until the drawings are done to start that conversation is a mistake to avoid.

Builders bring cost reality to the table while designs are still easy to change. They can tell you that the roofline you love adds $80,000 to the framing estimate before you have fallen in love with it in the drawings. That conversation is much more productive at Phase 3 than at Phase 7. We facilitate builder meetings, provide context on what the design will require, and support you through the selection process. You make the final call.

Phases 4 and 5: Locking In the Interior, Then the Exterior

Phase 4 is where detailed floor plans get developed. Room sizes get confirmed, spatial relationships get refined, and you review and respond while we revise. This phase takes as long as it takes. The goal is a floor plan you are genuinely committed to before we move on.

Phase 5 turns attention to the outside of the house. Elevations, the four faces of the building, get drawn and worked through. Three-dimensional views help you understand massing and proportion before anything is built. In Charlotte neighborhoods with active HOA or ARB review, this phase also includes preparing materials for neighborhood approval, which has its own timeline that cannot be rushed.

Phase 6: The Budget Check Nobody Wants to Skip

Before committing to full construction documents, we stop and verify the numbers. Your builder produces rough cost estimates based on the concept plans. If things align with your budget, we move forward. If they do not, and this happens more often than people expect, especially in the current Charlotte construction market, we make adjustments now, while changes are inexpensive. Adjusting a window on a sketch costs nothing. Adjusting it in the field costs real money and real time.

Phase 7: Construction Documents | The Heart of the Work

This is the most time-intensive phase for our team. Construction documents (sometimes called permit drawings) are the complete technical package: floor plans, elevations, sections, structural notes, specifications, and details that tell your builder exactly what to build and how. Structural engineering, lighting design, material specifications, and product selections all get resolved here.

When these documents are finished, your builder assembles final pricing and consults substractors, submits the drawings for permits and signs a construction contract with you. That contract is the official start of the construction relationship (although many contractors have a preliminary contract that covers their involvement and assistance in the initial design and planning stages).

Phases 8 Through 10: Permits, Construction, and the Finish Line

Phase 8 is permitting. Your builder submits the drawings. Review timelines vary, spring and summer are consistently the busiest permitting seasons in Charlotte, and reviews can take four to eight weeks. We support the builder during this period and respond to any reviewer comments.

Phase 9 is construction. For clients who include construction observation in their service agreement, we make regular site visits, review submittals, and respond to builder questions. Having an architect who knows the drawings inside and out is useful here in ways that are hard to quantify until you need it. (Admittedly this section is greatly condensed, and a potential subject for a future post.)

Phase 10 is completion -- final inspections, punch list walkthroughs, and project sign-off. We are available to prepare as-built drawings reflecting any changes made during construction if the client wants a graphic record of the final project. This is especially helpful if there is a future phase of construction that interfaces with the current work.

What Is Your Job vs. the Architect's Job?

The most common source of friction in a custom home project is unclear expectations about who is responsible for what. Here is a simple way to think about it.

We handle the design, the drawings, the regulatory submissions, the permit support, and the construction observation. We coordinate our efforts with consultants (interior designer, structural engineer, landscape architect), manage the document set, and advocate for the design intent throughout the build.

You handle decisions. A custom home involves hundreds of them, some large (roofline, square footage, exterior material), many small (toilet model, light switch placement, cabinet pull finish). The pace of construction means delayed decisions create real schedule and cost consequences. Our job is to make sure you have good options and the right information at each decision point. Your job is to make the call in a timely way.

Here is a concrete example of what that looks like in practice. Go to the Kohler website and search for toilets. You will get 139 results. Smart toilets, continuous clean toilets, tall toilets, one-piece, two-piece, prices ranging from a few hundred to several thousand dollars. If that list does not concern you, you are probably well suited to make more decisions yourself and can benefit from a lower level of architectural service and more independence during the process. If it made you briefly consider a simpler life, perhaps a yurt, you probably want us more involved. Neither answer is wrong. That is exactly what the fee structure in our service agreement is designed to accommodate.

Does It Matter When the Builder Gets Involved?

It matters more than most people realize, and the answer is almost always: earlier.

Construction costs in Charlotte have shifted significantly over the past several years. A design that would have come in comfortably under budget three years ago may not today. Builders who are actively bidding work in the current Charlotte market know things that cost estimating software does not. They know which subcontractors are available, which materials are on extended lead times, and where the real costs in a given design are hiding.

Early builder involvement also helps navigate the growing complexity of mechanical and energy decisions. The number of choices for HVAC systems, energy recovery ventilators, whole-house surge protection, smart controls, humidification, and leak detection has expanded considerably. A builder who knows your design can advise on what makes sense for your specific house. Getting those decisions right during design costs nothing extra. Changing them during construction, or after, is expensive.

We have longstanding relationships with several Charlotte builders whose work we trust. When we encourage you to bring a builder into the conversation at Phase 3, it is not a formality. The projects that do this go better.

Ready to Start the Conversation?

Every project starts with a single meeting. Ours is at no cost, a chance to talk through your project, understand the process, and decide whether we are the right fit for each other. If you are thinking about building a custom home in Charlotte, we would be glad to talk.

Curious about what an architect costs before that conversation? See our guide to architecture fees for Charlotte residential projects.

Do You Need an Architect or an Interior Designer in Charlotte?

gray@houghlandarchitecture.com (Gray Houghland) — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 20:04:08 GMT

Architect vs. Interior Designer: What's the Difference, and Do You Need Both?

An architect designs the structure of your home - the layout, the roofline, the load-bearing walls, how it meets code. An interior designer shapes what happens inside that structure once it's built - furniture, finishes, color, lighting. On most larger custom homes in North Carolina, you'll work with both, often at the same time.

I get asked about this distinction almost every week, usually by a homeowner who's just started their project and isn't sure who to call first. So let's clear it up.

What Does an Architect Actually Do?

Architecture is where art meets science. Your architect is responsible for the bones of your home: structural design, spatial planning, how rooms connect, how light moves through the house, and how the whole thing holds up under North Carolina's building code and your local zoning rules. In Charlotte, that means working within the Charlotte UDO and the NC Residential Code (NCRC), which govern everything from setbacks to structural requirements.

Your architect is also usually the coordinator of your entire project. They're the ones outlining responsibilities between the interior designer, your structural engineer, and your builder, and making sure everyone is working from the same vision.

Here's what falls under an architect's scope:

Structural design and load-bearing systems
Spatial planning and room-to-room flow
Exterior aesthetic and how the home relates to its site
Code compliance and permit drawings
Coordinating the broader project team

What an architect typically won't touch unless you ask: furniture selection, window treatments, plumbing fixtures, or decorative finishes. That's not a gap in service, it's just a different skill set, and it's the one your interior designer fills.

What Does an Interior Designer Actually Do?

If architecture gives you the canvas, interior design is the paint. Once the structure exists, or while it's being planned, your interior designer works within that framework to shape how the space feels day to day: color palettes, furniture, textures, lighting fixtures, and how a room functions for the way you actually live.

A good interior designer is thinking about ergonomics and space utilization as much as style. Where does the sofa go so the room doesn't feel cramped? How does the lighting change the mood of a space at night versus during the day? These are questions that come after the architecture is largely set, which is why interior designers are typically working inside boundaries the architect has already drawn.

What falls outside their scope: building codes, structural engineering, plumbing layouts, and permit drawings. If your interior designer starts talking about moving a load-bearing wall, that conversation needs to loop back to your architect

Architect vs. Interior Designer: A Quick Comparison

Why Does This Distinction Actually Matter?

Because if you hire the wrong professional for the wrong problem, you waste time and money. I've had homeowners come to us wanting an "architect" to help pick paint colors, and others who hire an interior designer expecting them to move a wall. Neither is set up to fail you on purpose, they just have different training, different licensing, and different responsibilities under the law.

Think of it like baking: your architect is responsible for the recipe, getting the ratios right so the structure actually holds together. Your interior designer is the one decorating the finished cake. You need both to end up with something that's structurally sound and enjoyable to live in.

Do You Need Both an Architect and an Interior Designer?

For most higher-end custom builds, yes. Some architecture firms, including ours, work closely with a small group of designers we trust. Other times, you will bring in an outside interior design firm once the structural plans are further along. On some new homes and renovations, however, particularly where the homeowner is very creative and wants to be hands-on, there may not be an interior designer. About 50% of our smaller projects work that way. Check out some additional info on our what we do for homeowners page. If you are an interested homeowner who wants to be more involved, we do suggest that we review the responsibilities and truly understand the amount of work involved. There are literally hundreds of decisions that will be needed. In order to get good pricing on your construction the homeowner will need to show potential builders that there is a plan in place to answer the interior design-related questions. Builders, understandably, do not want to be held responsible for too many design decisions or have their schedule blown up by delayed choices about grout color.

Either way, three things tend to separate projects that go smoothly from ones that don't:

Role clarity from day one. Everyone should know who's making which decisions before construction starts, not halfway through.
Sequencing. Interior design decisions, especially anything that affects electrical, plumbing rough-ins, or built-ins, work best when they're made early enough to inform the architectural drawings, not bolted on afterward.
Direct communication between the two. The projects that struggle are usually the ones where the architect and interior designer are only talking through the homeowner instead of to each other.

The Bottom Line

Your architect builds the framework your home lives inside. Your interior designer makes that framework feel like yours. Confusing the two, or hiring one when you actually need the other, is one of the most common early missteps we see in custom home projects, and it's an easy one to avoid once you know the difference.

If you're not sure which conversation you need to have first, that's exactly the kind of question worth asking before you sign with anyone. Understanding what architects typically charge is a good next step, and if you're also budgeting for mechanical systems, our breakdown of HVAC cost drivers is worth a look too.

At Houghland Architecture, we work directly with homeowners and with the interior designers on their team, whether that's someone we've partnered with before or a firm you've already chosen. If you're starting a custom home or renovation in the Charlotte area, reach out. We're happy to talk through where your project stands and who you need in the room.

To find out more, reach out to our team in Charlotte, NC or apply for a FREE call today .

What a Custom Home Builder Could Expect From Their Architect

gray@houghlandarchitecture.com (Gray Houghland) — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 16:34:48 GMT

A good architect doesn't just hand a custom builder a set of permit drawings and disappear. Done right, the architect's documents reduce field questions, improve subcontractor coordination, tighten cost estimates, and give the homeowner a clearer picture of what they're getting before a single board gets cut. Here's what that actually looks like in practice.

Why Does This Matter More for Custom Builders Than Anyone Else?

Custom home building is unforgiving in a way that production building isn't. When you're building the same floor plan 40 times, you work out the kinks by the third house. When every project is different, you don't have that cushion. A custom builder's reputation lives or dies on how well a one-of-a-kind project gets executed, which means the quality of the architect's documents directly affects the quality of your finished product, your client relationship, and your bottom line.

Most builders have worked with architects who produce technically adequate drawings but leave a lot of decisions to be made in the field. That's where cost overruns start, where schedules slip, and where clients get frustrated. The question isn't whether your project has an architect. It's what you should actually be getting from one.

What Could the Drawings Actually Include?

"A set of drawings" can mean almost anything. As a builder I am sure you have an idea of what a decent set of drawings looks like. But what if we think a little deeper, imagine more, and more useful, information. In addition to the drawings you are familar receiving, here's what a thorough architect's documents might provide to a custom builder, and what each one is worth to you on the job.

1. 3D footing plans with concrete quantity takeoffs

A 3D footing plan does two things: it tells your crew exactly what to build, and it gives you a real number to take to your concrete sub before the job starts. No more ballpark estimates based on square footage.

2. 3D foundation with block counts

Specific wall dimensions and material quantities, down to the number of masonry blocks per wall. Your masonry sub will thank you, and so will your budget.

3. 3D floor framing plans

These are especially useful for the trades. Critical locations like toilet rough-ins, beam pockets, and cantilevers are called out with actual coordinates rather than left to interpretation on a flat plan.

4. Wall framing layouts

Window and door locations marked precisely, with sizes documented. Framing crews can move faster and with more confidence when they're not improvising around a vague dimension string.

5. 3D floor plans

Roof framing, foundation framing, and each floor shown in three dimensions so the builder, the subs, and the client are all looking at the same picture. This is also where you catch the conflicts, a duct that can't go where it needs to go because a beam is in the way, before those conflicts become changes required in the field.

6. Countertop and casework schedules

Preliminary kitchen and bath quantities for early budget conversations. You don't have to wait for the cabinet layout to be finalized before you can give the client a real ballpark on this line item.

7. Room data plans

Area, perimeter, and volume for every room. Your HVAC sub needs the volume numbers. Your client needs to understand why the bonus room they want costs more to condition than they expected.

8. Finish schedules with wall areas

Accurate square footages for flooring, tile, and paint. The difference between a finish schedule and a good finish schedule is whether your painter and tile sub are ordering the right amount of material the first time.

9. Floor finish plans

Which material goes where, shown graphically. Critical for houses with mixed flooring materials, which is nearly every custom home. When the client changes their mind about tile vs. hardwood in the mudroom, recalculating is a five-minute task instead of a back-of-the-napkin guess.

10. Mechanical schematics

Duct routing, plumbing coordination, and recessed lighting locations shown in relation to the structure. Mechanical and structural systems fight each other in every custom home. An architect who maps that coordination before framing is done saves you from the expensive version of that conversation.

How Does Better Documentation Actually Change the Job?

It can be argued that this extra planning by the builder is normally conducted by the subcontractor - so why would the builder want to have these services performed by their architect and engineers? Fair point, but the conflicts and problems often occur not within the framers work, but because it is that steel beam in the floor that prevents the plumber from reaching the wall below that a waste pipe needs to go in. It's the coordination between subs that is so critical and in our experience, that does not ever happen in the planning phase of construction. That is the time shift that makes the extra drawings and planning worth the effort and cost on the part of the builder.

Fewer questions from the field.

When a framer or plumber calls with a question, it usually means something wasn't clear in the drawings. On a custom home, that call often involves the architect anyway, it just happens at the most expensive possible time. Better upfront documentation means the question gets answered on paper before it becomes a phone call mid-framing

Easier, more accurate cost estimates.

Quantity takeoffs don't require a bid set. A builder who has concrete volumes, block counts, and floor finish areas can price a project with real numbers before the permit drawings are even submitted. That process and mindset is a competitive advantage for your firm moving forward.

Fewer client directed changes

Change orders hurt everyone, the client's budget, the builder's schedule, and the relationship between them. Most change orders on custom homes trace back to a client who didn't fully visualize what they were getting until they saw it framed up. 3D views and detailed schedules close that gap significantly. When a client can see what the kitchen will look like before cabinets are ordered, they make better decisions sooner.

Cleaner subcontractor coordination

Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing trades are most efficient when they're working from coordinated documents rather than each interpreting a 2D plan independently. An architect who builds those trades into the model and flags conflicts in advance is saving your subs real time on the job.

What's the Right Way to Work with an Architect as a Builder?

The builder-architect relationship works best when it starts early and stays collaborative, not transactional. A few things that make a real difference:

Get the architect involved before the client's expectations are locked in. A client who's been told "yes, that's buildable" by a sales team without an architect's input is a harder client to manage later when reality sets in.

Push for quantity takeoffs early, not as an afterthought. The earlier you have real numbers, the earlier you can have an honest budget conversation. That's good for the client and good for your schedule.

Use the drawings as the single source of truth. When the architect's model is thorough enough, it becomes the document everyone refers to, the client, the engineer, the subs, and the builder. That's a better outcome than everyone working from different versions of the same idea.

What Should You Ask an Architect Before Signing On?

Not every architect produces the same level of document detail, and it's worth asking directly before you commit to working together. A few questions worth putting to any architect you're considering:

Do your drawings include quantity takeoffs, or just dimensions?
How do you coordinate mechanical, electrical, and plumbing in the drawings?
Do you provide 3D views for the client during design, or only permit drawings?
How do you handle RFIs (requests for information) during construction?
Have you worked with custom home builders specifically, or primarily with developers or homeowners directly?

The last one matters more than it might seem. An architect who's accustomed to working directly with homeowners has a different rhythm than one who's set up to be a builder's partner. Neither is wrong, but you want to know which one you're getting.

The Bottom Line

A custom builder's best projects tend to have one thing in common: an architect whose documents made the job easier to build, not just easier to permit . The right architect isn't a line item to minimize. For a custom home, where every project is different and every client is watching closely, the architect's thoroughness is one of the few things you can control before the job starts. It's worth asking more of them.

If you're a custom builder in the Charlotte area and want to talk through how this works in practice, we're happy to start with a conversation . And if you're still working through what architect fees look like on a custom project, our breakdown of architect costs in Charlotte covers the full range.

The Renovation & Addition Process in Charlotte, NC

gray@houghlandarchitecture.com (Gray Houghland) — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 17:08:16 GMT

A Charlotte renovation or addition typically moves through six stages: an initial consultation, site and zoning analysis, design refinement, builder selection, permit drawings, and construction. Most projects take six months in design before a shovel ever hits the ground, and each stage builds directly on the one before it.

Where Does It Actually Start?

It starts with a conversation, not a drawing. Before anything gets sketched, we need to understand what's actually not working in your current house and perhaps what pieces are missing. Not enough light in the kitchen? No real mudroom? A primary suite that feels like an afterthought? That conversation shapes everything that follows.

In our office, the first consultation is free and usually runs about 45 minutes. In that meeting we outline the process of design and construction but don’t get into many specifics on your project. The next step is a site visit, 1.5 to 2 hours, for $600. That one costs more because our architect is actually walking your existing structure, looking at what's load-bearing, what's not, and what your renovation is realistically up against. That $600 is credited to your overall fee if you proceed with the design.

We cover a lot in this first site meeting:

Your goals for the project, in your own words
What's not working in the current layout
A rough process checklist and cost overview
Who else needs to be on the team (builder, engineer, interior designer, surveyor)
What construction will actually involve, start to finish

What Hapens Before Any Design Work Begins?

This is the step people don't expect, and it's arguably the one that matters most. Before we draw anything, we do the homework: a full site analysis, a zoning code review against Charlotte's Unified Development Ordinance, and a base plan showing your lot lines and existing landscape.

Skipping this step is how homeowners end up designing an addition their lot can't legally support. Setbacks, height limits, and lot coverage rules aren't optional, and finding out about them after you've fallen in love with a floor plan is a bad way to start a project.

Once that groundwork is done, we bring you three options: small, medium, and large. Same core idea, three different levels of investment, so you can see what each one actually buys you before committing. This is also a good moment to loop in a builder for rough cost estimates on each version, which ties directly into how we recommend evaluating whether a renovation is worth the cost .

How Does a Rough Concept Become a Real Design?

Once you've picked a direction, we get specific. Detailed floor plans, 3D views, the kind of drawings where you can actually picture yourself standing in the new space instead of squinting at a diagram.

This is a back-and-forth phase, and it should be. If something feels off, say so now. It's much cheaper to change your mind about a window placement on paper than it is once framing is up. We'd rather have an honest, slightly awkward conversation in this phase than an expensive one during construction

How Do You Pick the Right Builder?

The design is only half the equation. The builder you choose determines whether that design actually gets executed the way it was drawn. We help with this part too, we have a network of contractors we trust in the Charlotte area, and we'll tell you honestly whether a builder you're considering is a good fit for our process. Ideally the builder is part of the team from the start. But that’s a subject for another day.

Before final design approval, we want any builder on the team to check a few boxes:

Can give rough cost estimates early, not just after everything's finalized
Is willing to work with us on design adjustments as they come up
Can actually align with our schedule
Has a track record of quality craftsmanship
Knows local codes and permitting inside and out

One thing worth knowing: not all builders are interchangeable across project types. A contractor who's great at multi-family isn't necessarily the right fit for a luxury second-story addition or a detached pool house. Ask about specific past projects, not just years in business.

What Should You Be Doing While We Handle Permitting?

Behind the scenes, we're preparing and submitting your permit drawings and responding to whatever Mecklenburg County asks for. That part's on us, and it's genuinely why you hired an architect and a builder in the first place, you shouldn't have to think about it.

What's actually worth your attention during this window is everything on your side of the fence, because this is the last stretch where changes are still cheap. Once the permit is submitted, the design is essentially locked. Changing your mind after that costs real time and real money.

So while permitting is moving along, this is the window to:

Give the drawing set one last real look. Not a skim, an actual walk-through. This is your last free chance to catch something before it's locked in.
Finish making finish and material selections. Flooring, cabinetry, fixtures, tile. If you wait until construction starts to pick these, you risk holding up your own builder.
Get clear on your contingency budget. Decide now what you'll do if something unexpected turns up mid-construction, not in the middle of a stressful moment when it actually happens.

Think of this stage as the calm before before the storm. Permitting takes patience, but the choices you make (or put off) during it are part of what determines how smoothly construction actually feels once it starts.

How Long Does All of This Actually Take

Design typically takes longer than most homeowners expect, often four to eight months depending on project complexity and how many rounds of revisions are needed. Permitting and final construction contracts add more time on top of that and it's largely out of anyone's direct control since it depends on the county's review queue. Construction timelines vary widely based on scope, but a well-planned and thoughtful design phase is what keeps the construction phase from running into surprises.

It should not go unsaid that clients themselves have a great deal of control and influence over the schedule. Clients will be faced with many decision points and while the architect, interior designer, and builder can provide data and guidance, at some point client decisions must be made. How long that takes, how busy the client is with work and family, can greatly influence the overall timeline, and are out of the control of the construction professionals.

The Bottom Line

A renovation or addition isn't one big decision, it's six smaller ones, made in sequence: understand the goals, study the site, refine the design, pick the right builder, get through permitting, then build. There is, of course, nuance and variation in these steps, but hopefully this helps you understand the basics.

If you're earlier in this process and still deciding whether your project makes financial sense in the first place, our guide to figuring out how much of your house to renovate is the right place to start before this one.

Why New Homes Have HVAC Problems (And How to Design Around Them)

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 18:39:00 GMT

Most comfort complaints in new houses, too hot upstairs, too cold in the corner bedroom, higher bills than expected, trace back to HVAC design and engineering decisions and sometimes to the very absence of design and engineering. Getting it right takes coordination between the architect, the builder, and the HVAC contractor from the earliest design phase, not after the walls are framed.

Why do so many new homes have HVAC problems?

Here's the uncomfortable truth: most of it comes down to who's responsible for what, and how early they get involved. For decades, architects treated HVAC as the builder's problem and the builder treated it as the subcontractor's problem. Nobody owned the coordination, so the duct system ended up wherever it could fit after everything else was already designed.

That approach mostly worked when houses were simple two story boxes. Ducts ran through the crawl space to serve the first floor and through the attic to serve the second. Easy enough.

It stops working the moment you add a slab on grade, a third floor, or a basement plus two or three stories above it. Now there's real competition for space between structure, plumbing, and mechanical systems, and if nobody planned for that competition on day one, something loses. Usually it's the HVAC system, and usually the homeowner feels it for the next twenty years.

What should architects be doing differently?

We've changed how we approach this at Houghland Architecture, and I'd argue every residential architect needs to. We now model HVAC systems in 3D during schematic design, not as an afterthought once the layout is locked. That means figuring out early where structural elements can run without blocking duct paths, where plumbing waste lines can exit the house without colliding with ductwork, and where condensers can sit outside in a spot that's both accessible and not sitting in the middle of someone's patio view.

To be clear, architects aren't trying to become HVAC engineers. Done properly, HVAC design is a genuinely complex discipline, and it's not ours to own. But we can and should set the basic conditions: where the system runs, how much space it gets, and how it coexists with everything else in the house. That's a design responsibility, not an engineering one, and too many firms still skip it. You wouldn’t design a ship without an engine room!

What is Manual J, S, and D, and why do they matter?

If you want a properly sized and functioning HVAC system, three calculations from the Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA) do the heavy lifting. They're widely available and criminally underused. They should be developed by the HVAC subcontractor and shared with the team.

Manual J calculates the actual heating and cooling load of the house based on square footage, insulation, window performance, wall assemblies, and orientation. It replaces the old rule of thumb sizing that HVAC contractors have leaned on for years, the one where a house gets sized off square footage alone with no regard for how it's actually built or the volume of air inside the house.

Manual S takes the Manual J load and matches it to specific equipment, verifying the system can maintain the target comfort conditions and that the blower has enough capacity to move the required airflow through the ducts. This step requires someone who actually knows how to read manufacturer equipment data, which is not a given.

Manual D designs the duct layout and sizing itself, using the load and equipment decisions from the first two steps. This is where the system goes from a spec sheet to an actual plan for how air moves through the house.

Requiring all three will get pushback from subcontractors, partly because it costs more and partly because it's more work. An even cleaner solution is hiring an independent engineer to design the system separate from whoever installs it. It's a harder sell to clients, but today's systems and today's construction costs don't leave much room for guesswork.

If a contractor tells you "that's just how we've always done it," take that as your cue to push back.

What do builders and homeowners need to do?

Architects can set the framework, but we're not the only ones with a role here.

Builders who are involved in the design phase can push for better engineering from their subs and review mechanical drawings with the same scrutiny they'd give a structural detail. That takes time most builders don't feel like they have, but the alternative is a system that underperforms for the life of the house and is uncomfortable.

Homeowners , and I say this as someone who genuinely sympathizes with homeowners, tend to spend their attention and budget on what they can see: finishes, fixtures, appliances. The internal bones of the house, the ductwork buried in the walls, get far less scrutiny even though they determine whether the house is actually comfortable to live in. Good systems cost more than cheap ones. That's just true, and no amount of clever design changes it. If comfort matters to you, it has to show up in the budget, not just the finish schedule.

What separates a good HVAC system from a great one?

Geography matters a lot here, and Charlotte's climate has its own demands, but a general good, better, best framework is a useful starting point for conversations with your builder or HVAC contractor.

Good

Stand alone dehumidifier
Single stage heat pump meeting the current federal minimum: 14.3 SEER2 for units under 45,000 BTU/h, 13.8 SEER2 for units at or above 45,000 BTU/h, Heat Pump Cooling: Requires a minimum of 15.0 SEER2 for split systems, Heat Pump Heating: Requires a minimum of 8.1 HSPF2, Gas Furnaces: Requires a minimum of 80% AFUE (these are U.S. Department of Energy minimums for our region, not a number set by North Carolina's energy code itself, but they're the legal floor for anything installed here)
Fresh air source ducted to the return side of the air handler
Properly sized central returns

Better

Permanent dehumidifier
Two stage compressor on an 18+ SEER heat pump
Fresh air to return, with an air cycler piped to the dehumidifier
MERV 6 to 8 air filtration
Central returns supplemented by individual returns in key rooms with doors

Best

Permanent dehumidifier for summer, humidifier for winter
Variable refrigerant flow (VRF) heat pump, which matches output to actual load rather than cycling on and off at full capacity
Fresh air to return with air cycler piped to dehumidifier
Energy recovery ventilator (ERV)
UV light air purification
Individual room returns
MERV 9 to 13 filtration

A few highly recommended conditions regardless of tier :

Get the system engineered independently of the installing contractor when possible.
Use rigid ductwork wherever the layout allows it.
Keep all ductwork inside the conditioned building envelope, not in an unconditioned attic or crawl space.
Limit flex duct to the last ten feet or so of run, right before the air terminal
Share a room data plan (created by the architect) with your engineer or HVAC subcontractor that shows the volume of air in each room.

Rebates and Tax Credits

Rebates from your power company and federal tax credits, if they exist, are worth discovering. I say "if" because they are a bit of a moving target. Worth some research time but not stable enough for us to make too many claims here. Here in North Carolina and more specifically the Charlotte area the following websites are worthy of a visit:

Duke Energy Rebates (North Carolina)

Main Program Hub : Review available rebates, equipment requirements, and application rules on the Duke Energy Home Improvement Rebates Portal .
Contractor Match Network : Find pre-screened, certified local HVAC professionals who handle the efficiency paperwork for you using the Find It Duke Referral Service .
Direct Application Portal : Submit and track individual equipment rebate filings within 60 days of installation at the Duke Energy Smart $aver Reward Center.

Federal Tax Credits (Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit)

Product Efficiency Rules : Look up the mandatory 25C tax credit criteria, maximum limits ($2,000 for heat pumps), and qualifying system tiers on the ENERGY STAR Federal Tax Credits Directory .
IRS Tax Filing Portal : Review structural limits and download the necessary tax forms directly via the IRS Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit Hub .

The bottom line

If you want a genuinely comfortable house, the design and engineering have to catch up to how complex modern HVAC systems have become. As architects, our job is to build in the space and the strategy from day one. Builders need to coordinate a more demanding mechanical scope than they may be used to. And homeowners need to treat the systems they can't see as seriously as the finishes they can.

Curious what a project like this costs to design properly? Here's what to expect from an architect's fee in Charlotte , and here's how we walk clients through the renovation and addition process from first conversation to final drawings or our custom home design process .

Our Tenth Houzz Award Just In

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 15:46:00 GMT

Houghland Architecture Awarded Best of Houzz 2023

The annual people’s choice award recognizes professionals among the Houzz community who stand out in both talent and customer service

Charlotte, NC February 15, 2023 – Houghland Architecture of Charlotte, NC has won a “Best of Houzz” award for Design on Houzz ®, the leading platform for home remodeling and design. This is the tenth award Houzz has given the design firm and was chosen by the millions of homeowners that comprise the Houzz community from among more than 3 million active home building, remodeling and design industry professionals.

Best of Houzz awards are given annually, in three categories: Design, Customer Service and Photography. Design awards honor professionals whose work was the most popular among the Houzz community.

“Best of Houzz 2023” badges appear on winners’ profiles as a sign of their commitment to excellence. These badges help the more than 65 million homeowners and home design enthusiasts on Houzz to identify popular and top-rated home professionals for their projects.

"We are thrilled to highlight incredibly talented and customer-driven pros from the Houzz community through the Best of Houzz awards," said Liza Hausman, vice president of Industry Marketing for Houzz. "At Houzz, we strive to support professionals from building their brands and attracting clients, to managing their business efficiently and profitably, and collaborating with clients. The Best of Houzz awards provide a distinctive mark of credibility for homeowners looking for pros on Houzz. We congratulate all the winners for everything they’ve accomplished in 2022 and look forward to seeing their work and positive reviews in the year ahead."

Best Product Design Award

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 20:15:00 GMT

We are honored to announce one of our best clients, Chelsea Building Group, won the Home Builders Association of Greater Charlotte’s 2022 Major Achievement in Marketing Excellence Award for Best Product Design of an Attached Home for our contemporary, luxury duplex designs at Cityside West!

This project was an infill development on Mattoon Street in Charlotte, NC, which is just minutes from uptown. It includes twenty new construction units ranging from 2,281 - 2,464 square feet.

Our design objective was to provide more affordable luxury living very close to the center of Charlotte. Duplexes are a perfect way to achieve that, as land in Charlotte is scarce and expensive. Duplexes lower the land costs dramatically while still providing a housing unit that feels like a single family residence.

Open floor plans, outdoor spaces, and beautiful kitchens make these units perfect for entertaining.

The exteriors are contemporary. Shed roofs, stucco finishes, wood siding accents and brightly colored front doors are just some of the design features on the exterior.

Careful placement of these materials allowed the builder, Chelsea Design Build, to build simple, more affordable exterior shapes that still provided a great deal of visual interest and variety.

Who do you hire first - the architect or the builder?

Tue, 18 Oct 2022 19:50:00 GMT

Who Do You Hire First: The Architect or the Builder?

Hire your architect first. A good architect scopes the project, explores a few design directions, and gets rough builder pricing on each one before a single final drawing gets made. That sequence protects you from over-designing something a builder later tells you is unaffordable, or under-designing something that could've been so much better. This applies to renovations and additions; new home construction follows a similar sequence, which I'll cover in a future post.

I say this a lot: I wouldn't want an architect building my house, and I wouldn't want a contractor designing it. We each spent years getting good at one thing, not both. So, before a builder can tell you what something costs, they need to know, even roughly, what's actually being proposed. That's the architect's first job. (See a picture of "the Architect" below on a recent trip to Boston, Cambridge and Harvard Yard with the family)

What Happens at the First Architectural Meeting?

This is a feasibility conversation, not a design commitment. Plan on one to two hours, on-site, walking the property together. If you have a survey and any deed restrictions handy (sometimes they're buried in your closing documents), bring them. It saves a step later.

Most homeowners show up with a handful of ideas, and a few of them usually contradict each other. That's completely normal. The more you bring to that first meeting, the more useful it is. My job at this stage is to sort through what you're describing, tell you which directions show real promise, and give you rough cost parameters, not a number you can build a budget around yet, but enough to know whether the project is worth pursuing further. By the end of that meeting, you'll know if what you're picturing is realistic.

How Do You Decide What to Actually Build?

This is usually the hardest step, and it's where a lot of projects either get it right or waste months. If your scope is small and simple, one concept might be all you need. But most renovations and additions benefit from exploring a few directions before locking anything in.

This is where I introduce homeowners to what I call, for lack of a better name, the "Small, Medium, and Large" approach:

By the end of this step, you're not choosing blind. You have three distinct, realistic options, sketched enough to price. (see a sample below of a "small" floor plan for a house in the Myers Park neighborhood in Charlotte)

Time to Get a Builder Involved?

Once you have those three rough concepts in hand, it's time to bring in a builder (or better, two) to price them out. Some builders will give you a number on the spot, and that's fine for a gut check, but I'd recommend paying for their time and asking for a more thorough estimate instead. A rough guess costs you nothing and is worth not too much more than that.

At this stage, don't expect precision. You're looking at ranges, something like $150K for the small option, $200K for medium, $400K for large. The value isn't the exact number; it's understanding what each level of ambition actually costs, before you've committed a dollar to final drawings.

(See below for a hypothetical estimate from a hypothetical builder for, you guessed it, a hypothetic project)

What Happens After You Have the Rough Numbers?

Now the architect goes back to work, but with a real budget attached to real design intent. Maybe you pick the medium option outright, or maybe you land on a combination of medium and a couple of moves from the large version. Either way, design continues from here with something most projects never get early enough: confidence that what's being drawn and what it costs to build actually match.

This is also where I'd point you toward our blog post, Evaluating Cost Per Square Foot , and Understand the Cost of an Architect in Charlotte, NC if you want to get ahead of the budget conversation before that first site visit.

Nice to be on the list…

Wed, 12 Oct 2022 20:36:00 GMT

Houghland Architecture named one of the best residential firms in Charlotte:

The Best Architects in Charlotte (with Photographs) | Residential Projects (charlottearchitects.org)

Do Architects Charge for an Initial Consultation?

Mon, 22 Aug 2022 14:18:00 GMT

Yes and no. At Houghland Architecture, we offer a free 30-minute overview of the design process, and a paid consultation ($300 in-office, $600 at your home or lot) that digs into your specific project, feasibility, and real cost ranges. Which one makes sense for you depends on how far along you already are.

What Do You Get for Free?

The no-charge option is a general conversation, not a working session on your project. Come by our office and we'll walk through how the design process works: what an architect actually does, how to find a good builder, roughly how much the whole thing costs, and how long you should expect it to take.

It's capped at about 30 minutes on purpose. We're covering the process, not your house. If you're early in deciding whether to even start down this road, this is the right place to begin. No pressure, no pitch, just a straight answer to "how does this work?"

When Does It Make Sense to Pay?

Once you already know you want to build or renovate, and you have a specific lot or a specific house in mind, the free conversation stops being enough. That's when the paid consultation earns its keep.

This is where we get into your project specifically. We'll talk through whether your ideas are actually feasible on your lot or in your existing structure, and give you real cost ranges and strategies, not the vague "it depends" you'd get from a general chat. Two ways to do it:

In our office — $300, about 90 minutes.
At your lot or home — $600 (Charlotte area).

The on-site version costs more for an obvious reason: we're now factoring in your actual site conditions, not a hypothetical one. Trees, slope, setbacks, that weird easement nobody mentioned in the listing, all of it changes the advice.

Why Charge for This at All?

I'll admit, some architects don't charge for a first project-specific meeting. We do, and here's my honest reasoning: a free 30-minute overview costs us relatively little to give, because we're not researching your property or thinking through your specific design problem beforehand. A project-specific consultation is different. We're doing real analysis, on your lot, for your goals, before you've hired us for anything.

Charging for that time isn't a money grab. It's what separates a casual chat from advice you can actually act on. If we're going to tell you whether your renovation idea is realistic, or whether your lot can support the addition you're picturing, that deserves the same care we'd put into a paying client's project. Because at that point, you are one.

What's the Practical Difference Between the Two?

How Do You Decide Which One You Need?

Ask yourself one question: do you have a specific piece of property in mind, or are you still thinking in the abstract? If you're still in the "we might want to build someday" phase, come in for the free overview. There's no reason to pay for feasibility advice on a project that doesn't exist yet.

If you've got a lot under contract, or you're staring at your current house wondering whether that second story is realistic, book the paid session. You'll walk away with actual answers instead of general encouragement, which, respectfully, isn't worth much when you're about to spend six figures.

How Does This Fit Into the Bigger Picture?

This consultation is really the front door to two decisions we've written about before. If you're weighing whether to renovate at all versus how much, our piece on determining how much of your house to renovate walks through the four-step process, agent, architect, builder, agent again, that a paid consultation feeds directly into. And if you're wondering what you'll pay an architect overall, not just for this first meeting, our breakdown of architect fees in Charlotte covers the full range.

The Bottom Line

Free gets you the map. Paid gets you directions for your specific address. Neither one obligates you to hire us afterward, and we're not going to pretend either meeting is the hard part of building or renovating a house. It's just the first honest conversation, and it's worth having before you fall in love with an idea your lot, or your budget, can't actually support.

Dormer Design Guide for Charlotte Homes

Wed, 17 Aug 2022 20:39:00 GMT

Dormer Design

In residential design, there is a plethora of really bad stuff being built. Of the concepts that many designers (and some architects) mishandle are dormers. I cringe at the majority of the dormers being constructed.

Oftentimes, the cost to construct dormers outweighs their benefits. They are expensive and typically assembled using one window, three walls, roof, siding, eaves, gutters, flashing and trim. They are complex little structures and more times than not are designed poorly - making them an inefficient use of construction dollars.

In newer construction, there are fewer dormers as of late in part because of a more modern direction architects and their clients are wanting. There are certainly times, however, when dormers are helpful. They provide additional living spaces within a roof area – a useful way to provide extra space without affecting the overall scale of a house. Dormers can let in daylight in just the right area as well.

So, when conditions call for a dormer, let’s get it right:

No siding on the front of a dormer
No “pork chops

Instead:

Ensure the overall width of the dormer equals the width of the windows below.
Make sure the dormers don’t overpower the roof.
Design the face of dormers with window trim, not siding.
Provide adequate spacing between dormers.
Be certain the pediment has equal trim projection on all three sides.

Some other guidelines:

Design dormers so that the dormer ridge line does not compete with the main ridgeline of the house.
Don’t use brick in the front of a dormer and siding on the sides – ever!
Create the eave width on a dormer approximately 50% of the main house eave width.

Admittedly these examples are stylistically on the traditional side. Other rules apply to craftsman style or modern houses, for example. The main point is that designers (and their clients) should pay much more attention to dormer design. Dormers are not just an afterthought that are way up high and not seen. They, in fact, play quite an important role in the aesthetics of a house, and if designed properly, can be money well spent.

Beware of “Trends”

Thu, 16 Jun 2022 15:13:00 GMT

In Architecture, It’s Better to Favor Timeless Design Over Passing Trends

As consumers, we are constantly bombarded by products marketed as “trendy”, “new”, “the latest, the greatest”, and “critical” to our lives. In the fashion world, our clothes go out of style each year - long before the stitching is worn, or the fabric frayed. In architecture, designs are often under some of the same scrutiny to be trendy or current. But it is recommended we resist that pressure and instead establish a timeframe for architecture – one that is more in keeping with a long-term role. This design should create a better relationship to the financial commitment that is made when building a home.

So, instead of being trendy, we should be timeless. How do we create timeless architecture and resist the superficial pursuit of the newest idea? Let’s start by discussing “timeless” architecture. Timeless architecture is not determined by architectural style. There are renowned, timeless buildings built in every style imaginable - Classical, Victorian, Tudor, Greek Revival, etc. Secondly, timeless does not equate to being traditional with classical proportions and materials. And thirdly, timeless does not blindly recreate a style from the past, not unlike a bad movie sequel (think Police Academy 7). Timeless architecture looks both directions - into the past that pulls from the history of building design and into the future with consideration of how we live today and are likely to live in the future. We should be thinking of houses as 100-year-old structures.

Architecture should tell the story of its time through thoughtful ideas along with durable and sustainable materials that utilize the best technologies available at the time. Therefore, architects must have the maturity and self-confidence to bypass fashion and instead rely on the timeless rules of proportion, light, emotion, function, and space. Architects strive to achieve designs without outsourcing ideas from flashy pictures on Pinterest, TikTok or relying on, for example, Sherwin Williams to tell us the hot new color of the year. We aspire for more sophisticated design ideas that will outlast the next news cycle.

An architect’s intent is to consider how spaces function and contemplate the reasons why they are created in the first place. This approach takes courage and earnest effort, resulting in timeless homes to pass along to generations to come.

Williamsburg - a different version of “timeless”

Thu, 02 Jun 2022 15:12:00 GMT

Timeless Architecture is About Taking A Long View

Before I even thought about becoming an architect, I was surrounded by timeless buildings. I grew up in Williamsburg, VA. As you may know, Williamsburg is frozen in time and preserved for a vision of life in the 18th century. Its transition into a time capsule was not intentional, but interesting nonetheless.

Williamsburg was once the capital of Virginia and a very prominent, important city - at least until 1780 when the capital was moved to Richmond. Then Williamsburg became just a normal little town - its significance deflated like a balloon. Much of the wealth and intellectual strength moved on, and over the years many buildings were literally abandoned. It was somewhat preserved, like a woolly mammoth falling into the tar pits for later discovery.

My grandmother, Maxwell Brockenbrough Houghland (GranMax as we called her), grew up on a farm near Tappahannock, and attended the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. Her memory of Williamsburg was of the time when it was struggling and had reverted to just a sleepy college town and rural county seat. In fact, her description of the Duke of Gloucester Street (Main Street in any other town) sounded rather rough with whore houses (although I’m sure she used a different term) and pool halls.

Soon after she graduated from William and Mary, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. funded and led the massive reconstruction of the 18th century city. And during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1934 visit to Williamsburg, my grandmother’s familiar Duke of Gloucester Street was proclaimed “the most historic avenue in America”.

Fast forward to me as a boy and then a teenager, wearing a tricorne hat working as a shepherd, tour guide, and Fife and Drum drummer surrounded by buildings that were literally hundreds of years old. It all had quite an effect on me. A great respect for history, preservation, city planning, architecture, (and a dislike of hot, uncomfortable clothing) was subtly introduced into my psyche.

This is a rather literal take on “timeless” since Williamsburg is now part of a protected historic area. But it does not diminish my belief in the value of timeless architecture and believing that, when we design and build, we need to take a longer view.

The Idea Blog - Residential Architecture in Charlotte, NC - Houghland Architecture

What Makes a House Look Good in 30 Years

﻿ What does a well-designed house have in common with a self-assured person?

﻿ Why does the roof shape matter?

﻿ How do window proportions reveal whether a design is working?

﻿ Why limit the number of materials?

﻿ Does this mean that architectural style does not matter?

Placing a House on a Mountain: Our Solution in Massies Mill, VA

Why Does Site Selection Matter So Much on Large Parcels?

How Do You Use Google Earth to Model Mountain Terrain?

Should You Design Elevations from the Outside In, or the Inside Out?

What Makes Cardinal Orientation Tricky on Mountain Sites?

How Do You Design for Mountain Wind You Can't Control?

What's the Takeaway for Anyone Designing a Mountain House?

Why Symmetry Feels Right, and When Architects Break the Rule on Purpose

Why Does Symmetry Feel "Right" to Us?

Do You Really Need to Design the Whole House Twice?

When Do Architects Break Symmetry on Purpose?

Is Asymmetry Riskier to Get Right?

How Do We Decide at Houghland Architecture?

Evaluating cost-per-square-foot

Why Two Houses the Same Size Can Cost Wildly Different Amounts to Build

So Why Doesn't Square Footage Tell the Whole Story?

What Actually Drives the Cost Difference?

Does Code or Zoning Ever Add to the Cost?

How Do You Get an Honest Number for Your Project?

The Bottom Line

Understanding The Cost Of An Architect In Charlotte, NC

The Fee Question

Fee as Percentage of Construction Cost

Typical Fee Ranges

Scope of Services Make a Difference

Minimum Fee

Full Service

How to decide on a fee and a level of service

Some Frequently Asked Questions on Fee

A Final Word

Maximizing a Myers Park Infill Lot

Some thoughts on designing new homes in Myers Park

Maximizing a Myers Park Infill Lot: Designing a Timeless Traditional New Home for Modern Living

Why Tear Down and Build New on a Myers Park Infill Lot?

Navigating Myers Park Architectural Rules and Charlotte UDO Guidelines

Designing Traditional Charlotte Exteriors for Modern Interior Lifestyles

Essential Modern Spaces to Include in Your Custom Home Design

Where Can You Put an ADU on a Quarter-Acre Lot in Charlotte?

Thinking about an accessory dwelling unit in Myers Park, Eastover, Cotswold or surrounding neighborhoods?

There is a difference between an "Accessory Structure" and an "Accessory Dwelling Unit".

Does the distinction control where it can go?

First: What Exactly Is a Quarter-Acre Lot?

Understanding the Setbacks on Your Principal Structure

Where Can the ADU Actually Go?

The Height Question: This Is Where Things Get Specific

How Big Can the ADU Be? Understanding Floor Area Limits

Building Coverage: The Often-Overlooked Variable

The One-ADU Rule and Other Key Conditions

Charlotte's New Queen City ADU Program

Putting It All Together: What to Do Next

Frequently Asked Questions

﻿ Final Thought

How Clients Can Find Answers to Common Construction Questions

Questions We Often Hear:

Some Common Sources for Answers:

Question 1: Can I add an addition to this house?

There are certain conditions where a portion of a structure can be built over a setback:

Question 2: Can a second or third story be added to this house?

Question 3: Can I add an attached garage to this house?

Question 4: Can I add a detached garage or ‘she-shed’ to the property?

Question 5: Can I add a driveway to this property?

Question 6: Can we cut down these trees?

Question 7: What kinds of improvements to the property have to be reviewed by others?

Question 8: Can I put a fence around this yard?

Question 9: Can I build a solid wall at the back of my property?

Question 10: Can I put a duplex or triplex on this property?

Question 11: Can I put a pool on this property?

How to Determine How Much of Your House to Renovate

Why Does This Even Matter Right Now?

What's the Actual Risk of Overdoing It?

How Do You Actually Determine How Much to Renovate?

Isn't Paying Three Different Professionals Overkill?

Would This Have Mattered as Much a Few Years Ago?

What does a well-designed house have in common with a self-assured person?

Why does the roof shape matter?

How do window proportions reveal whether a design is working?

Why limit the number of materials?

Does this mean that architectural style does not matter?

Final Thought

Architect vs. Interior Designer: A Quick Comparison

3. 3D floor framing plans

4. Wall framing layouts

5. 3D floor plans

6. Countertop and casework schedules

7. Room data plans