Design Meets Construction: Life With a Builder

What living alongside a builder has taught me about creating homes that are just as thoughtful behind the walls as they are beautiful when finished.

There’s a pretty good chance that on any given day in our house, we’re talking about cabinetry over dinner, looking at floor plans from the couch, or debating a construction detail that most people probably never think twice about.

That’s life when an interior designer is married to a builder.

My husband, Lukas, is the builder behind Bigger Construction, and over the years our two worlds have naturally become intertwined. While I’m thinking about how a space should look, feel, and function, he’s thinking about how it will actually come together. And somewhere between the two is where some of my favorite design happens.

Being so close to the building process has given me the opportunity to see a home take shape long before the pretty finishes ever go in.

I’ve walked homes when they were nothing more than framing. I’ve watched something that looked perfect on paper need to be reconsidered once we could physically stand in the space. I’ve seen how a decision made early in a build can affect cabinetry, lighting, furniture placement, or the overall feeling of a room months later.

And it has taught me one thing over and over again:

Good design starts long before decorating.

It starts with how you move through a home. Where the windows land. How cabinetry functions. Where a light fixture needs to be centered. Whether there’s enough room for the furniture you envision. And whether all of those individual decisions are working toward the same overall vision.

That’s why I love being involved early in a new construction or remodeling project.

There are so many decisions when you build a home. Flooring, cabinetry, countertops, tile, plumbing, lighting, hardware, paint—the list goes on. Each selection may seem small on its own, but together they determine whether a home ultimately feels cohesive.

My job is to keep that bigger picture in mind.

And having a builder just a conversation away has also taught me to respect the other side of the process. A beautiful idea still has to be buildable. There are budgets, timelines, trades, measurements, lead times, and about a hundred things happening behind the scenes to turn a design into a real home.

I think understanding that makes the designer-builder relationship incredibly important.

The best projects aren't created by design and construction working separately. They're created when the homeowner, designer, builder, and trades are communicating early and working toward the same goal.

At the end of the day, Lukas and I may look at a house through slightly different lenses—but we both care about the same thing: creating homes that are thoughtfully built and meant to be lived in.

And yes, sometimes that means we're still talking about cabinetry at the dinner table.