About Design First
Our Mission
At DesignFirst, good design is a passion! It drives us to create unique and elegant solutions that capture the essence of our clients' vision. We deliver original residential building concepts that combine many years of design experience with our hands‑on homebuilding and woodcraft skills. Our landscape designs are backed by years of plant knowledge, first-hand installation and maintenance know-how, and an ever-growing interest in native and sustainable landscapes.
We design with the persistent mission of always making sure we have worked out the best possible way to put together all the elements of your project. Whether that's a simple remodel or addition, a brand-new home, a refreshing new landscape, or a turnkey design package that gives you a place to call your own that is designed to work and flow together inside and out.
Our Expertise
With over 40 years of experience, our principal designer has the expertise to bring your ideas to life. Using both timeless design principles and the latest design techniques and technologies he creates designs that are not only beautiful, but also buildable, cost effective, code compliant, and able to be constructed within expected project timelines.
He has also had the opportunity to actually construct a number of his home designs. This knowledge of how things go together in the real world informs and improves his designs at every step.
Along with having designed homes in all corners of the Carolinas, he also has years of experience designing other complex projects such as churches, fire and police stations, and civic buildings. These have helped hone both his design and project management skills.
Our Process
We believe that good communication is key to creating great designs and in the design process we strive to create an environment of trust that lets us deeply understand your projects technical and fiscal needs as well as your unique spatial vision. Then, together, we can create a customized design that will meet your needs, not only now, but well into the future.
We use LIDAR based spatial capture software to document your existing home conditions, and then Chief Architect's As-Built software to put it in into a usable digital plan form.
We still use old-school hand sketches for some of the initial concepts, but transition quickly to the cutting-edge Chief Architect design and documentation software.
This platform not only creates the final construction documents for your project but also provides us, from almost the very beginning, with immediately accessible and exportable 3D views that we can use to continually refine the design.