Our unique custom home design process gives you the Full Picture

Our approach removes the stress and uncertainty from designing the home of your dreams.

Experience An Easier Way to Design Your Dream Home

When it comes to designing and building your custom home - process matters. Without a solid process in place, your project can spiral into endless meetings and project reviews, construction delays, budget creep, and worse. 


The result? Things get messy. Important details fall through the cracks. Nothing is consistent. Designing your dream home can easily turn into a nightmare.


At Marre Design, we believe you should enjoy the process of designing and building your dream home. And with 20 years of experience, and more than 300 projects under our belts, we’ve honed our process into three simple steps to make things as smooth and easy for you as possible. 

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Our Full Picture Process for Luxury Custom Homes

Our 3-step Full Picture Process is all about helping you and us get crystal clear about your vision from the beginning so we can avoid expensive changes down the line. 

While we include everything most other firms do, our approach is modeled around an accelerated design process that allows you to see our ideas earlier on, giving us the ability to focus and refine those ideas in detail, on paper, before any hammers start to swing. 


This makes the process less stressful, smoother, and faster for you. In most cases, we can reduce the design time by several months, with more detailed design documents, and without taking any shortcuts. 


All you have to do is enjoy the journey watching your luxury dream home come to life.


Below we have outlined our unique process and highlighted how it is different from what others typically do. We invite you to contact us with questions about how our process would work for you.

Discover

During the discovery phase, we uncover every tiny piece of the jigsaw puzzle, not only of your needs - but of your life. Explorative, curious, and expansive, this insightful phase leaves no piece unturned in the quest to develop your perfect home design. And when you see how we’ve formed a masterpiece by bringing the picture together, you’ll be blown away by just how intently we listened.

1. Kickstart

At the beginning of your project, we want to learn all about you: your personality, taste, how you live, what you want, what you need, and what’s most (and least) important to you for your luxury home.


This starts with a fun, casual, and engaging kick-off conversation that takes place in your home (so we can see how you currently interact with your space and what to keep, improve, or get rid of). This part of the process is crucial to helping us understand your expectations and vision for your new home. 


Of course, we’ll want to know what inspires you, so feel free to share your Pinterest Boards, floor plan ideas, carefully curated magazine images, and any other inspirations you may have gathered.  However, if you haven’t been feverishly “liking” design details on Instagram, not to worry!  We’re here to help with that, too… without adding to your busy plate! 


By the end of this meeting, you’ll have a full understanding of what to expect from us, and we’ll have enough information to get started sketching your luxury home design.  And yes, we start with pen and paper. 


Though we will work on many versions along the way, we only share a ‘first draft’ when we feel it’s ready.  “Ready”, for us, means that we’ve taken the time to consider every detail, to ensure the proposal could work perfectly for you, based on the many pages of notes from our initial meeting.  And “ready” also means that we never share until WE’RE just as excited about it as we hope you’ll be!


2. Reveal

One of the most exciting parts of the process is seeing the first draft for the first time. Your dream home will already be about 80% completed on paper, done in 3D and even set on your lot, with shadow studies and all.


We’ll present the design to you and talk through our rationale for every major feature, from gables to windows to floor layouts, and much more!  We’ll often already even have little surprise details and interior views to describe, to help even a first timer completely understand the vision. 


This meeting is just as vital as our first one because it’s at this stage that we refine, clarify, and reinforce everything we’ve learned from you. You’ll see that we’ve picked up on even the tiniest details in our conversations, leading to a design solution you’ll easily recognize as your own. 


After our presentation, we’ll both have a much better idea of what will and won’t work for you and your budget and timeline, so that the design can quickly progress in a more meaningful, understandable way.


Knowing what the full picture looks like, you’ll be able to give us concrete feedback - rather than just pieces of the puzzle - leading to quicker turnaround times, allowing us to move forward and focus on important design decisions.

Decide

Unlike many home designers, instead of presenting small sections of your home design puzzle - forcing you to fill in the blanks, we present The Full Picture in as much detail as possible. You won’t have to spend hours in countless meetings to see how the final design will look. You’ll know exactly how you feel about your new home and what you want to adjust, which we’ll work on in our decision phase!

3. Revision

With over 300 completed custom home design projects and more than 20 years of experience honing our Full Picture Process, it’s no wonder our Principal, Tom Chute has been referred to by clients and contractors as having a “Magic Pen”. While there are always tweaks and adjustments, it’s rare that our clients don’t love our revised design. 


At this stage, we will fine-tune your design based on your input and feedback to get your custom home design to 95-98% completion. You’ll see detailed floor plans, with consideration already given to structure, millwork, interior aesthetics, lighting, ceiling details, windows, framing, and so much more. 


After final revisions for your luxury custom home design, we’ll be ready to move on to the third and final phase where all those details come together in extremely detailed drawings.

Detail

Now it’s the time when every micro element comes together to form your final dream home design, perfectly tuned to your exact desires and ready to submit for planning permits. Your masterpiece is now complete with no further changes needed because every detail has been carefully considered and couldn’t be more “you” already. It’s construction time - meaning the home you’ve been fantasizing about is finally coming to life, down to the final piece of the puzzle.

4. Planning

At this stage, we will have what we need to start the process of planning approval and submitting for permits. It’s important to understand that your local authorities control this process, and, in some cases, the process can be complicated. 


That’s why we start with a planning approval strategy meeting to answer your questions, provide clarity about the process, and set your project up for a smooth and successful approval.


We provide all the documentation needed for planning and building approval, including site surveys and detailed design drawings. Our team will also be on hand through the process to promptly respond to all questions and requests from your local authorities. 


We have a long history of working with these offices, and our aim is to move the process forward as swiftly as possible. To do that, we provide the right amount of detail and clarity about the design to answer many of the questions that may come up. As a result, we often receive positive comments from these offices about the quality of our work… and have even gotten referrals from them!

5. Finalize

While we’re working with the municipality on approvals, it’s time for our final design meeting! 


We’ve collated everything we’ve learned from our past discussions, reviews, design meetings, and collaboration with structural and construction teams, as well as all the other contractors and consultants involved, to create the most accurate set of construction documents and design drawings possible. 


Traditionally known as ‘blueprints’, these documents are essentially a precise set of instructions for how to build your dream home. Every detail is included, as these documents are vital in ensuring that the home we designed is the home that gets built. 


During our final review meeting, we’ll work out all details to create a 100% complete set of drawings for your contractors to refer to during construction.  Because we do all the detailing up front, your contractors are able to provide much closer cost estimates, you’ll need few (if any) costly change orders along the way, and you’re able to understand the budget well ahead of construction starting.


At this time, we’ll have already designed all your millwork, built-ins, and custom cabinetry, but we will also work together with an interior designer who will help you select final colors, finishes, lighting fixtures, countertops, tile patterns, window coverings, furniture, and fine-tune those truly bespoke details. 

6. Construction

After just a few months*, we’re ready for construction to begin! In many cases, our timeline takes about half the time, and provides better results with more detailed documentation than most of our competitors.


During this stage, our focus will turn to the construction of your home. Throughout this process we will be on hand and on site to review your project’s progress. Essentially, we will act as your ambassador on the project, as well as help with managing any variables. 


We will also respond to Requests for Information (RFIs) from your contractors extremely quickly to provide further clarity on design details, when needed, to help keep your project running smoothly and accurately. We’re constantly involved during this time to ensure the construction matches up to our exact specifications and to avoid any unexpected compromises. 


After the contractors complete the final construction and finishing of your luxury home, we finally arrive at the moment you have been waiting so patiently for, the final walkthrough. During this detailed walkthrough, we will guide you through your new home, reviewing every detail with you to ensure everything is up to spec. Once you are satisfied, keys are turned over and you’re ready to enjoy your dream home. 


We’re always here to help, even after move in day, and we love hearing excited stories of your experiences actually living there!


*On average, our process takes six to eight months from start of design to start of construction. The actual timeline of your project can vary due to many factors. Our goal is work as quickly and efficiently as possible, but we cannot guarantee your project will be ready for construction within six months.

“There are some very good architectural firms in the San Francisco Bay area.  Yet Tom sets himself apart.  He makes himself available to the builder with prompt responses.  Tom, more than other architects we have worked with, understands that this is key to a successful project”

Kieran Muldowney|Muldowney Custom Homes, Burlingame, CA

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