Preparing for Your Custom Home Design Wish List Meeting

The architectural design wish list meeting is one of the most exciting steps in creating a custom home. It’s where ideas start to take shape, inspiration becomes intentional, and your vision begins its transition from imagination to architecture. While you don’t need to arrive with answers to every design question, a little preparation will make this meeting more focused, collaborative, and productive.

At David Small Designs, we offer a few guiding principles to help you approach your wish list meeting with clarity, confidence, and creativity.

Start with a Feeling, Not a Floor Plan

Inspiration is everywhere, but the most important question to ask yourself isn’t what should my home look like?—it’s how should my home feel? Calm and retreat-like. Bright and energetic. Warm and timeless. That emotional goal becomes the lens through which every custom home design decision is made, from massing and materials to room proportions and light.

When you anchor your wish list to a feeling rather than a specific outcome, you give the architectural design process room to evolve while staying true to what matters most to you.

Separate Exterior Inspiration from Interior Inspiration

When gathering architectural inspiration, it helps to be intentional about what you’re responding to.

For exterior inspiration, focus on elements such as materials, color palettes, window rhythms, rooflines, and door details. These cues help establish the architectural language of the home.

For interior inspiration, look less at finishes and more at layouts and room configurations. Pay attention to how spaces connect, how rooms are scaled, and how light moves through the home. These references help us understand how you want to live in the space—not just how you want it to look.

Bring Us the Problem—We’ll Design the Solution

You don’t need to have a floor plan figured out before the meeting. In fact, that’s not expected. Your role is to explain what’s working in your current home, what isn’t, and what you hope will be different this time around.

Maybe your kitchen feels disconnected. Maybe storage is always lacking. Maybe entertaining feels cramped, or private spaces feel too exposed. These insights are invaluable. Translating them into architectural solutions is our job.

Know Your Room Requirements, Not Their Connections

It’s helpful to come prepared with a clear understanding of your rooms requirements and the features that matter most within them—bedroom counts, home offices, mudrooms, specialty spaces, or specific functionality.

What you don’t need to solve is how those rooms connect or flow together. Spatial relationships, adjacencies, and circulation are all part of the architectural process. Trust that these will be thoughtfully resolved through design.

Curate Your Inspiration

Inspiration images are powerful tools when they’re curated with intention. For your architectural wish list meeting, focus on a select group of images that clearly communicate your vision rather than an overwhelming collection. For exterior inspiration, aim for 5–10 images that express the overall look and feel—highlighting massing, materials, color palettes, and architectural character. When possible, note what draws you to each image so its purpose is clear.

For interior inspiration at this stage, fewer images are more effective. One or two images per key space is enough to communicate layout preferences and spatial qualities for the architectural wish list meeting. Additional interior detail and finish inspiration can be explored more deeply during the interior design phase, when the focus shifts to products and materials.

Leave Room for Creativity

The wish list meeting isn’t about locking in every decision—it’s about starting a conversation. Be open to ideas, questions, and suggestions that challenge assumptions or introduce new possibilities. Often, the most successful custom home designs emerge when collaboration leaves room for creative exploration.

Don’t Build Compromise into Your Wish List

This is the moment to clearly articulate the full scope of your custom home vision—but not without guidance. The wish list meeting is designed to set the project up for success, balancing aspirations with real-world considerations such as zoning, site constraints, and budget.

By approaching the wish list meeting as a collaborative and informed discussion, we can establish a clear, realistic foundation—one that allows creativity to thrive while keeping the design process focused, efficient, and rewarding for everyone involved.

Approached thoughtfully, your architectural design wish list meeting becomes the foundation for a home that is not only beautiful, but deeply aligned with how you live. Preparation doesn’t mean having all the answers—it means showing up ready to share your vision and trust the process that brings it to life.

Ready to start your custom home design? Visit us at www.davidsmalldesigns.com to take the first step toward a home designed around the way you live.