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Every Home Tells A Story
Custom Home Architecture and Design Blog
We believe custom home architecture is about seamlessly uniting your style, lifestyle needs, and budget. Every single-family home we design is entirely unique because our clients are individuals who value homes tailored specifically to how they live.
By listening to our clients and creatively solving design challenges together, we have crafted some remarkable homes each with its own story to tell. Read more about our clients' journeys here. We hope you'll find inspiration and guidance from what we've learned every step of the way.
Morning Dove: Designing a Purposeful Mountain-Valley Single-Family Custom Home in Young Harris, GA
In the spring of 2024, a young couple in Young Harris, GA, approached us to design a custom mountain-valley residence built from the ground up on their private 4.5-acre property in North Georgia. Rather than churning out a set of standard floor plans, they were seeking to partner with an architect for a carefully curated design that reflects their lifestyle, aesthetic preferences, construction budget, and family needs.
How to Speak "Architect": A Visual Guide to Windows & Architectural Terms
Windows are often one of the most expensive line items on a construction project. Worse yet, picking the wrong ones will continue to drain your wallet through lost energy savings and costly repairs down the road. Whether you are designing your permanent dream home or a short-term rental property, you want to get it right from the start.
If my time in the industry taught me anything, it’s that windows are definitely not created equal. They vary wildly in func
A Visual Guide: Architectural Terms for Roof Styles
When visualizing a house, the roof is likely one of the first things that comes to mind. Roofs do more than provide shelter. The roof line is often indicative of a home's character, style and speaks to its vernacular. During the Concept Phase of an architectural design project, it can be difficult to envision the ideal roof for your home. If you find yourself at a loss for words and start employing phrases such as "pointy" or "flat-ish", you're not alone. This visual guide co
Designing a Destination for Your Short Term Rental
The Architect Advantage: Why Design Matters
When you work with an award-winning architect like James Knight, you are investing in the "wow factor" that drives year-round demand. James and the Reynard Architectural Design team specialize in conceptualizing one-of-a-kind vacation retreats that prioritize guest experience from the very first blueprint.
Developing an Architectural Design Vocabulary
Do you have dozens of saved mood board photos but struggle to explain your ideas architectural design ideas? You know exactly how you want your future home to feel, but connecting the space between abstract emotions and a "buildable" form can be a challenge. To help you articulate your vision clearly, I want to share some steps for a framework for cultivating your own design vocabulary:
Focus on Emotion and Form Rather than agonizing over materials and technical details, thin
From Mood Board to Architectural Design: The Magic of Nailing the First Draft
We’ve all been there: a vibrant, messy, beautiful idea living in your head, just waiting to be brought to life. You try to explain it, share a dozen Pinterest links, and send a folder of Instagram screenshots in a desperate attempt to communicate your vision, hoping someone can make sense of the creative chaos.
Then comes the waiting game—a parade of “almost there” drafts and endless rounds of revisions. Each back-and-forth chips away at the original spark, leaving you won
Bringing Your Vision to Reality. Designing Your Dream Home
If you're following along in The Dream Home Handbook, you’ve gathered inspiration, sorted your "must-haves" from your "nice-to-haves," and identified the values that make a house a home. Now comes the most important part of the journey: transforming those abstract ideas into a clear, actionable plan. In these final planning stages, it’s time to move from dreaming to doing. Here’s how to distill your ideas into a "North Star" to guide every decision along the way.
How To Keep Short-Term Rental Booked Year-Round
To succeed in a competitive market, you need more than a cabin; you need a memorable destination. Reynard helps clients achieve this through site-specific, award-winning architectural design that keeps short-term rentals (STRs) booked year-round.
Home Design with Soul: A Collaboration with Seth and Hope Loeb (Soulhouse Interiors)
Soulhouse Interiors is about creating spaces as unique and vibrant as its clients'. However, Seth and Hope (Soulhouse co-founders)
6 Master Bath Trends: A Tour Inside Reynard’s Latest Homes
Every project at Reynard Architectural Designs begins with a unique vision. When working with architect James Knight, our goal is to translate that vision into a structural reality that balances form and function. Nowhere is this balance more critical than in the bathroom—a space that requires precision in materials and a grand perspective in style.
We are often asked, "Which style is right for my home?"
Transforming Your Dream Home Vision into Reality by Prioritizing Key Features
Designing your dream home is an exciting journey that starts long before construction begins. It begins with understanding how you live and what matters most in your daily life. Without a clear plan, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by endless design options and lose sight of what truly makes a house a home. To help you focus on what counts, this section of the Dream Home Handbook is designed to guide you through a simple two-step process to prioritize your custom home features
Thinking About Buying a Stock Floor Plans?
One of the most common—and stressful—situations we see homeowners fall into goes like this: You finally close on your dream piece of land. To save time, you buy a pre-designed "stock" floor plan online that you love. But when you hand it to a builder, you realize it’s going to cost a fortune in grading and foundation work just to make the house fit the land. If you are planning to build, especially on a lot with a view or unique topography, here is why a site-specific design
Kitchen Design Inspiration: The Timeless Charm of a Wood & White Culinary Haven
Whether you are planning a complete gut renovation, building from the ground up, or simply seeking ideas for a quick weekend refresh, this curated ideabook is designed to spark your creativity. Dive in to explore a diverse collection of stunning layouts, beautiful finishes, and clever design details drawn from a wide variety of home styles.
Stepping Into the Blueprint: A Life-Sized Walkthrough of "The Britt" at Walk Your Plans - Atlanta
We like to think this experience takes abstract concepts and transforms them into tangible moments. Our clients could finally feel the spatial relationship between the kitchen island and the living room where they’d host family gatherings, and they could see exactly how the morning light would filter into their master suite. It was no longer just a project on a screen—it was the place where their next chapter would unfold.
A Peak Inside the Architecture Studio - What's Trending in 2026? Pet Friendly Cinema
We all know the drill. You finally settle down on the couch, popcorn bowl in hand, ready for a three-hour epic movie marathon. Within five minutes, your Golden Retriever is resting his chin heavily on your knee, begging for a snack, or your cat has decided the perfect place to sit is directly in front of the TV screen. Luxury homeowners in 2026 have found the solution. Forget about sharing the "good" remote.
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