Designing a Custom Home: Isles Custom Home

Customize (verb): cus·​tom·​ize

To customize, at its simplest level, is to create something personal out of the impersonal. To alter, to build, to fit. To create a home out of a house. 

At its most complex, to customize is to create a home out of raw materials. 

What is a Custom Home?

A custom home is the result of an intensive design and build process centered around how a homeowner wants to live, without the design constraints of an existing home’s footprint. Everything about a custom home– including how the home is situated on its site– is shaped through a collaborative process between the client and the architect. Gina Vozka, AIA Architect + Interior Designer, shares her thoughts on what it means for a home to be truly customized to its homeowner. “Clients may not always know exactly what they want,” she says, explaining the process of asking questions to determine how a home can best serve the homeowner. “I look at it like a puzzle: you get all of the pieces from the client, then you work to fit those pieces together as well as possible and find things that make it special for them.” Gina notes the stark difference between this process and a standard builder home, “with a custom home, you’re making the floor plan work around how you want to live instead of trying to fit yourself into an existing floor plan.” 

Designing A Home Around How You Live

Custom homes offer a unique opportunity for clients to weave hobbies and interests into the home’s design in a way that makes a home feel truly tailored to the people who live there. For Gina, incorporating a client’s passions creates an exciting challenge of how to design a home that is as beautiful and personal as it is useful. “If a client wants an artist’s studio in their home, it should be north-facing so they get the right quality of light,” explains Gina. “If they have a pond in the backyard that they want to look at while having coffee in the morning, then that becomes a focal point.” More urban sites lead to their own unique considerations, says Gina. “You’re often dealing more with what’s happening in the backyard or front yard, and how interactive a client wants to be with those spaces,” considering elements like porches or landscape architecture. 

Color, Craft, and Arboreal Design

Thoughtfully designed and carefully crafted, the Isles Custom Home reflects the function and beauty of a truly customized build. Personalized design details are woven throughout the home to create depth and nuance. Whether bold, like colorful stained glass elements, or subtle, like the nature-inspired wooden features, these details work together to shape the character of this Lake of the Isles home. 

The stained glass windows in the Isles Custom Home serve two major functions: offering privacy and layering color. “We added a large stained glass arched window to mask views of the neighboring house,” Gina explains. “The window’s bold colors complement the homeowner’s furniture and rugs, which makes the stained glass feel both personal and intentional.” 

Not every element of a home’s design can– or should– be bold and bright, the subtler design choices balance and support a cohesive home. Near the colorful, geometric stained glass features, a softer, natural theme seamlessly flows from the library to the rest of the home. A stunning arched wooden bookshelf mirrors the curve of the stained glass window nearby, serving as the design link between the vibrant, colorful elements and the more natural, earthy features. Gina also explains the practicality behind this design detail, “the bookshelf helped to define the area between the staircase and the rest of the library, and it created a visual counterpoint to the stained glass on the opposite end.” The custom tree motif that Gina incorporated into the bookshelf is also present throughout the rest of the home, “tied into the balusters and railing around the opening to the first floor, which creates continuity between levels.” 

Arboreal design elements continue into the home’s basement, where curved vertical wooden panels and integrated lighting create the feeling of a treehouse-inspired bar. “The curved wooden ‘trees’ also soften what would otherwise be a very rectilinear space,” while serving as a hiding place for mechanical systems without losing the feel of intentional, integrated design, explains Gina. 

Bold and understated, brightly colored and subtly earthy, the Isles Custom Home reflects a thoughtful balance of design choices shaped around the homeowner’s vision. From stained glass that filters light and adds privacy to arboreal woodwork that carries a natural motif throughout the space, each detail contributes to a forever home that feels both personal and intentional. The result is a custom home designed not just to be admired, but to support how its owners live every day.