The Difference Between a Custom Home and One that Isn’t

What is a custom luxury home? It is an individually-dreamed and personally-designed home. It’s designed and built for a person or family in a particular location. Every detail– from the lot to the elevation, finishes, and more– are intentionally chosen by the family for whom the home is created.

This is the type of homes we build at P.L. Lyons Architectural Builders. We build homes using our specialized skills in innovative projects, and they demonstrate our experience and expertise at meeting our customer’s–and their family’s– unique needs.

Authentically Custom Homes

There are many firms that throw around the word “custom.” But they are really only “semi-custom” because their homes are stock house styles using stock floor plans that can only be slightly updated. Many of them only build in certain neighborhoods, so in these cases the buyer must find a builder that will work in their desired neighborhood. Then the buyer must select from the builder’s options and layout. Other changes can be made as long as it’s within the builder’s stock range.

This is not how we work at P.L. Lyons Architectural Builders. We do not do tract homes or stock house styles. We don’t have model floor plans for our customers to choose from. We will gladly showcase examples of our work that may inspire your home design, but we create a unique plan for every single person. In fact, our architect takes your ideas and completes a plan side-by-side with you.

Specializing in Custom, Luxury Homes

We really enjoy specializing in customized luxury homes because it often includes the most unique features. For example, we’ve built several temperature controlled wine rooms with spectacular storage and display options. With these custom luxury homes, everything from the floor plan to the type of light bulb you want is individualized to meet your high-end must-haves.

We are accustomed to working on unconventional and large tracts of land that most semi-custom builders are not experienced in.  It’s our goal to make every owner of a new home feel comfortable and excited no matter the needs of the project. That’s why our answer is rarely “No.” It’s almost always, “Let’s see how we can make it happen!”

The budget for a new home is determined solely by the choices a customer makes about the quality and experiences of their home. You set this standard! Then, we commit to meeting them every time.

A Custom Home Means a Custom Process Too

As we just mentioned, many customers think for a luxury custom home that they’ll still start with a floor plan that someone has given them. So they think they’re allowed to make only a few alterations. They think they’ll have a small arrangement of colors and products to choose between. On the contrary! The process of building a TRUE custom luxury home involves more decisions than other building projects, but it’s worth it.

Every one of your dreams go into your floor plan and project outline. We like to show you a 3-D rendering of your home early on, so that we can clearly see all the plans come together before we begin building.

Things to Remember in a Custom Home

It’s also good to remember that changes may occur throughout the process because of the custom plans. In order to meet modern code while also engineering the antique staircase you want might require us to go back to the drawing board or re-think the exact specifications. We will keep you involved on all of this, because we not only want to be sure you’re happy with the results, we want to keep you informed about your project. All of your goals and standards will determine the final length and budget of a project.

If you’ve never experienced what it’s like to pursue a genuine custom luxury home, we’d love to show you how we’ve done this for many years. We are proud of our portfolio of luxury homes. We are proud to be a top design-build firm for custom homes.

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