What I’m Designing Toward This Fall

I spend a surprising amount of time looking at floor plans.

Long before paint colours are chosen or furniture arrives, there are hours spent around tables like this one, talking through possibilities. We ask questions, sketch ideas, move walls, and imagine how someone might move through a home years from now. It’s probably the least glamorous part of the process, but I’ve come to believe it’s the most important.

August always feels like the season when those conversations become more frequent.

Summer is still very much here, but behind the scenes, my attention has already started shifting toward the projects that will carry us into the fall. Over the past few months I’ve been travelling, filming, meeting with clients, walking construction sites, and spending time in homes that are all at very different stages of becoming. Some are little more than framing, while others are just beginning to feel like someone’s home.

Being immersed in so many different projects at once has a way of revealing patterns. Every year I notice myself returning to certain ideas, and this year has been no different. What’s changed is that those ideas have less to do with how a home looks and much more to do with how it feels to live there.

That shift has been happening gradually for a while now, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt it more clearly than I do heading into this fall.