A home should be more than a well-built structure. It should amplify the way you live, frame the views that matter to you, and feel right the moment you walk through the door. At Whitmore & Associates, residential design is where our practice began, and it remains the heart of what we do.
Our Residential Approach
Every custom home project starts with a deep conversation about how you use space. We study your daily routines, how you entertain, where natural light matters most, and how your needs may change over the next decade. That understanding becomes the foundation of a design that is specific to you — not a variation on someone else's house.
- Site-responsive design — We study topography, solar orientation, prevailing winds, and existing vegetation before drawing a single line. The land informs the architecture.
- Material honesty — We favor natural materials that age gracefully: stone, timber, weathering steel, and concrete. Each material is chosen for how it performs and how it feels.
- Indoor-outdoor integration — Colorado living demands a seamless relationship between interior spaces and the landscape. Sliding walls, covered terraces, and courtyards extend your living area into the outdoors.
- Energy performance — High-performance envelopes, optimized glazing, and passive solar strategies reduce your operating costs while keeping the house comfortable year-round.
Project Types
We design across the full range of residential work: new custom homes, mountain retreats, urban infills, accessory dwelling units, and multi-family housing. Project budgets typically range from $500,000 to $5 million in construction cost, though we take on select smaller projects when the design challenge is compelling.
What to Expect
Our residential process moves through five phases: programming, schematic design, design development, construction documents, and construction administration. Most custom homes take 12 to 18 months from first meeting to breaking ground, with construction running an additional 10 to 16 months depending on scope and complexity.
