Designing Your Masterpiece Home

A custom home can rightly be considered a work of art, carrying your personal imprint in every detail. As you curate the design elements you’d like to incorporate into your new home build, consider the following.

The Art of the Custom Home

Combine your favorite, uncommonly unique and beautiful, elements from our list to build a one-of-a-kind, masterpiece custom home to treasure forever:

• A truly grand entry: An arched doorway with double doors adds design grandeur to your home’s facade. Soaring ceilings are most impressive in a generously sized entryway. Position a large, arched window covering the second story wall directly above the front door for dramatic lighting effects. Marble may be the “grandest” of entryway flooring, which conveys a museum-like mansion quality. Have the entryway tile set in an elegant pattern of black and white.
• The focal point fireplace: In a luxury custom home, you may have a fireplace in the main living area, outdoors on the patio, in the master bedroom or even the master bath. (Picture a fainting couch/lounge or wing back chair, topped with a cashmere throw, next to it.) Make your fireplace uniquely large, with a sculptured, hand-carved mantel or slate tile surround.
• Gigantic windows: Consider arched windows in key spots, with bay or bow windows, complete with window seats in bedrooms. Install sliders that completely fold (or slide) away, opening up your living area to the outdoors, as if it were an extension of the room.
• Gourmet kitchen: Choose a large professional-style cooking stove with at least 6 burners and a unique grill on top. Your options for a range hood allow you to create an impressive artistic statement—consider a subtly gleaming, sculpted copper hood with curved sides. You’ll need a double oven, a huge, hi-tech fridge capable of ordering groceries on its own. Consider having the refrigerator concealed within your custom wood cabinetry in your high-end chef’s kitchen. A wine fridge goes without saying. An expansive, nearly square, central island makes prep easier and impresses guests with its countertop in quartz or a similar stunning option.
• A staircase in exotic hardwood: Choose a “Gone with the Wind” style curving staircase in a gleaming, polished dark maple, or a modern open step “floating staircase” style, perhaps in birch, with metal cord “railing” for a barely there appearance. (You may also want an elevator for convenience.)
• Outdoor kitchen: You need both indoor and outdoor kitchens for a true masterpiece home, for easy entertaining indoors and out. Choose natural stone “flooring” with an eating bar placed in front of your large stone pizza oven, sink and stainless steel, industrial BBQ grill and fridge.
• Pro screening room: Make your screening room rival a sumptuous movie palace. Choose comfortable reclining easy chairs, arranged stadium style, with substantial armrests and built-in tables between. Install a large screen and surround sound system.
• Sauna: Install a steam room with teak benches adjacent to your bath.
• Wine cellar: Store your wine collection at the ideal temperature and humidity settings, and age it to perfection on purpose-built shelving.
• Well-appointed bath: Dual vanities with an exotic countertop and elegantly shaped mirrors help make your home a castle. Elegant bath fixtures and finishes add to the high-end ambiance. Choose burnished gold faucets that resemble a sculpture or reflect turn-of-the-century industrial style. Floor tiles in a herringbone pattern feel wonderful to walk on.
• Columned porch: An elegantly deep and wide shade zone should wrap around the home. The porch may be echoed as a balcony above, on the second story.

Create Your New Custom Home in WV

Choose an expert partner to help translate your vision of your ideal home into reality. As an expert design and build firm creating luxurious custom homes, we have spent the last 15-plus years serving discerning homeowners throughout Berkeley, Jefferson, and Morgan counties of WV, from our headquarters in Martinsburg. Contact Miller’s Residential Creations today.