WHAT TO KNOW BEFORE HIRING A Building Designer

Most people hiring a building designer for the first time have spent months, maybe years, thinking about their future home. They know what they want. They have a Pinterest board. They've watched enough renovation shows to have opinions about open floor plans and butler's pantries. What they usually haven't thought much about is the working relationship itself: how the design process actually unfolds, what makes it go smoothly, and what causes projects to stall, cost more than expected, or produce a result the client doesn't love.

This post is about that. Not the architecture. The working relationship. And more specifically, what you can do from your side to make the whole thing go well.

Do the hard thinking before you show up
The single most useful thing you can bring to a first meeting with a building designer isn't a mood board. It's a realistic answer to three questions: How do you actually live? What does this building need to do? And what is your real budget?

"How we live" sounds obvious until you try to answer it honestly. Do you actually cook elaborate meals, or does "open kitchen" just sound appealing? Do you work from home and need quiet, or do you just like the idea of a home office? Do you have people over twice a week or twice a year? The design decisions that follow from these answers are very different from each other, and a designer can't make them for you.

The budget conversation is harder, because most people are afraid to commit to a number before they understand what things cost. That's reasonable. But going into a design process with "we don't really have a budget yet" wastes time and money, because your designer might spend weeks developing a scheme that doesn't fit your financial reality. A rough, honest number, even if it shifts later, is more useful than no number at all.

If you don't know what things cost to build in Kittitas County right now, ask. A designer who works here regularly can give you a realistic range. Current construction costs in this region are not the same as national averages, and they are not the same as they were three or four years ago.

Bring your constraints, not just your wishes
Many clients arrive at a first meeting with a wish list and not much else. That's a reasonable starting point. But the most useful first-meeting information is actually your constraints: the site-specific facts that will shape every design decision downstream.

If you already own your lot, bring what you know about it: the slope, the utility situation, whether you're on well and septic or municipal services, any CC&Rs or design review requirements. Suncadia and Tumble Creek both have design review, and those requirements can meaningfully affect what your home looks like and what it costs to build. If there are any critical area designations, wetlands, or steep-slope buffers on your parcel, those matter early.

If you don't know these things yet, that's fine. But understanding that they need to be figured out early, before the design goes very far, is important. The cost of discovering a 50-foot wetland buffer after schematic design is complete is much higher than the cost of discovering it before you start.

Constraints aren't obstacles. They're the parameters that make a design specific to your site rather than generic. The home that works on a steep north-facing lot above Cle Elum looks nothing like the home that works on a flat sunny parcel outside Ellensburg. That's not a problem. That's the whole point of custom design.

Listen when your designer pushes back
Sometimes your designer will tell you that something you want is a bad idea. Not "we can't do that," but "here's why that's going to cause you problems."

It might be a feature that looks great in photos but adds cost out of proportion to its value. It might be a layout that feels spacious in a drawing but will feel awkward to actually live in. It might be a site placement decision that seems fine until your designer explains what the drainage looks like in March. It might be a roof form that works aesthetically but will hold snow in a way you'll regret.

You're not obligated to take the advice. It's your house. But you're paying for expertise, and the most productive design relationships are the ones where both sides feel free to say what they actually think. A designer who just draws whatever you ask for without any professional input isn't giving you the full value of the engagement.

Understand what "revisions" actually means
Design is an iterative process, and revisions are a normal part of it. Most design agreements include a defined number of revision rounds in the base scope. What those mean in practice varies, but the general principle is consistent: changes made early are cheap, and changes made late are expensive.

Changing the orientation of a house during schematic design costs a few hours of work. Changing it after construction documents are complete means redrawing most of the permit set. This is not a reason to avoid revisions. It's a reason to engage seriously and early, when the design is still fluid and your feedback has the most leverage.

The most common costly revision pattern is the client who says "looks good" at every check-in and then surfaces major concerns when the permit drawings are nearly done. If something doesn't feel right, say so as soon as you notice it. Your designer would rather hear it in week three than week fifteen.

It also helps to distinguish between "I'm not sure about this yet" and "this is definitely wrong." Both are useful, and they call for different responses. The first might mean you need to sit with a design longer before judging it. The second means it needs to change.

Stay involved, but let the designer drive
You'll hear advice to "stay involved" in your design project, and it's good advice. But there's a version of staying involved that actually slows things down: second guessing every decision, requesting updates before there's anything meaningful to show, or bringing in new opinions mid-process after the design direction has already been set.

The most useful involvement is front loaded. It happens at the beginning of each design phase, when you're reviewing concepts and giving feedback while things are still easy to change. It happens when you're asked to make decisions about things that matter to you: which rooms face the view, how the entry works, what the relationship between the kitchen and the outdoor space looks like.

The less useful involvement is the kind that happens in the middle of a work phase, when your designer is in the weeds of developing something based on decisions already made together. Letting that work happen, and then reviewing it seriously when it's ready, produces better results than checking in constantly.

Design projects also tend to go sideways when too many people get a vote. If you're building with a partner, align on priorities before you walk into a meeting, not during it. If you're getting input from family or friends, be clear about whose input actually drives decisions. A designer can't reconcile five competing visions. One or two decision-makers, with clear authority, works much better.

The short version
​The best design projects tend to share a few things: an honest budget conversation that happened early, a client who brought real site constraints to the table, and a working relationship where both sides felt comfortable saying what they actually thought.
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None of that requires a complete vision or years of planning. It just requires treating the working relationship as part of the project, not an afterthought to it. If you're thinking about starting a design project in Kittitas County and want to talk through what that process looks like, feel free to reach out.