Top 4 Benefits of Using an Achitect

Posted by Architect Your Home on 16th July 2021 -

To have an inspiring home design, you need to enlist the expertise of an architect. Architects are highly skilled, professionally trained, and ready to guide you through the design, planning, and construction process of your home project.

Whether you are constructing a new building or adapting an existing property, architects apply impartial, collaborative, and creative thinking to projects large and small. They add value, whether it’s maximising light and space, adding functionality, or achieving the best return on your investment. Take a look at our top four benefits of using one to help achieve your home design goals:

 Design and Drawings

When dreaming up ideas and possibilities for your home, it’s impossible to envisage them when staring at the existing fabric of the property. Walls dividing up spaces you want to create make it difficult, if not impossible, to visualise how the new space would work.

Design drawings based on a simple sketch survey are essential in providing you with the most vital information from which to develop ideas and design options. An architect understands how to produce scaled drawings and can carefully consider space and volume requirements from a practical point of view, as well as from a more technical perspective, looking ahead to planning, building regulations, and construction considerations. We go through all these criteria with you during our design visit so that you are integral to the decision making process.

Lateral Thinking

In any home renovation, there will always be implications related to each decision – these include factors such as loss and gain of daylight, structural considerations, planning issues party wall matters, building construction standards (Building Regulations), and so on. Having an architect produce sketch design options drawn to scale will not only help you envisage and test your ideas but will bring to light many of the implications listed above, with consideration of the broader issues.

As your design develops, an architect appreciates the knock-on effect your decisions will have on your project plans. These changes can be managed and coordinated with the invaluable information an architect can provide, covering general arrangements, electrical and drainage plans, and structural and civil aspects.

Project Control

Scaled plans are the first step and point of reference for the most important construction issues in your home project: time, quality, and cost. These three topics are key to the success of your project. An architect will guide you on prioritising these three topics and advise you on how to procure your project in the most appropriate way to suit the order of your priorities. An architect can help you with initial planning, through to deciding on the finer technical issues and even deciding on fixtures and fittings, at the same time taking into consideration all the factors mapped out on the scaled plans they have supplied.

A one-stop-shop provider, such as a loft conversion company, has its eye focused on the loft and the loft only. A lot of the time, these companies do not consider the rest of the rooms, the best use of each space, or the external appearance of the property. If it’s a coherent and complete design that you’re looking for, work with an architect who can advise you on how your design will impact the rest of your home.

Forewarned is Forearmed

An architect is also trained in building contract law. At the construction stage of your project, it is advisable (some might say imperative) to have a building contract set up and administered by a third party. It’s a useful record that helps you to manage all aspects of the relationship between you and your builder. The inevitable decision-making path ahead and discussions regarding payments are all taken care of in one big document before any work has been completed. An architect, who will have intimate knowledge of the design and detail of your project, is perfectly positioned to draw the contract up.