How Long Does it Take to Build a Custom Home

Published March 13, 2024

Building your dream home takes vision, creativity, and trust in a reliable custom home builder to bring your new home to life. Because of the level of customization and attention to detail, building a custom home often takes longer than moving into a home that has already been built. How long can you expect the custom home-building process to take? The timeline can vary significantly depending on various factors, but you can generally expect the process below. 

Planning and Design

The first step in building your custom home is the planning and design stage. This typically lasts anywhere from 1 to 3 months. This phase involves meeting with your architect, draftsman, builder, and interior designer to properly plan the building project based on your unique desires for your home.   The complexity of your design and the efficiency of your design team can greatly influence the amount of time this stage of the home-building process takes. While some homeowners come into these conversations with a clear idea of what they want and a general outline of a plan they want to implement, many others may have rough ideas of what they want but nothing on paper. The length of time that it takes to transfer your ideas onto paper doesn’t matter nearly as much as the accuracy of what’s transferred.

Construction 

Once a design has been decided on and a plan has been put into motion, the actual implementation and execution of the building process will start. The actual build time can vary widely based on the size and complexity of the home, weather conditions, availability of the materials chosen, homeowner’s selections, order changes, and the efficiency of the construction team. 

The speed at which your home is constructed is important, but you never want to rush quality. Because every home is different, talk to your contractor to best understand the home build timeline. You can expect the building of your custom home to take anywhere from 6 to 12 months on average. 

Furnishing and Decorating

The final stage of crafting your ideal home includes furnishing and decorating. Depending upon the decision-making process and availability of selections, this process can move along quickly, especially if you begin ordering items while your home is under construction. We typically see this stage of the process take anywhere from 1 to 6 weeks. 

In total, the typical custom home can take 7-17 months to design, build, furnish, and decorate. Factors like custom design features, changes during construction, and unforeseen challenges like weather or material availability can extend the timeline. 

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