How Much Does a Custom Heritage Home Cost? What You Need to Know Before you Start
- Megan Smith
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
If you're building a one-of-a-kind home, your choices, not the square footage, will determine the final cost. We'll cover some of the options that will drive the budget and help you understand what it costs to build a custom home.
Why Square Foot Pricing Doesn't Work
What Actually Affects the Cost of a Custom Home
The Benefits of Planning Before Pricing
What To Expect When You Work With Us
How Much a Custom Heritage Home Costs
If you’re thinking about building a custom heritage-style home, this is usually the first question that comes up: “How much is this going to cost?”
It’s an understandable question. You’re not just planning a home — you’re investing in something personal, lasting, and deeply meaningful. A place where you might spend the rest of your life.
The challenge with this question? There’s no simple answer and giving you a number without context wouldn’t be helpful. What we can do is help you understand what actually drives the cost of your home, and how your decisions along the way can push things higher or lower.
Why Square Foot Pricing Doesn’t Work for Custom Homes
You’ve probably heard builders throw around a price per square foot. In the production home world, that works because they’re building the same plan over and over. However, when you’re designing a custom home from the ground up, taking into consideration your priorities, your lifestyle, and your vision, the price per square foot becomes meaningless.
Let’s say two people build a 3,000-square-foot home. One includes basic finishes, builder-grade cabinetry, and minimal millwork. The other wants reclaimed wood beams, a chef’s kitchen, a primary suite with heated floors, and built-in bookcases around every corner. They obviously have the same square footage, but the costs will be very different.
If you’re building a custom heritage home, what you’re really paying for is craftsmanship, complexity, and personal choices — not just space.
What Actually Affects the Cost of Your Home
Let’s break this down into a few categories. These are based on real conversations we have with clients and the types of decisions they make in the early design phase. We’ve also included them in our downloadable Dream 100 Planning Guide, which goes into more detail.
Architectural Details
Features like arched doorways, beamed ceilings, oversized windows, wainscoting, or under-stair storage bring charm and soul to a home. They also come with material and labor costs that should be planned for early.
Kitchen and Storage Features
A kitchen with custom cabinetry, stone countertops, double ovens, or a built-in pantry is an incredibly important part of the functionality of your home and it’s a major part of your budget. The level of customization here has a big impact on cost.
Bathrooms and the Primary Suite
Freestanding tubs, walk-in showers, heated floors, and custom vanities elevate your everyday experience and also require more coordination, plumbing, and finishing work.
Site Conditions and Outdoor Living
Covered porches, irrigation systems, fire pits, and patios can be worth every penny, but if your lot has grading challenges or drainage concerns, site prep alone may shift your budget.
Systems and Infrastructure
Features like built-in sound and lighting control, motorized shades, central vacuums, and future-proofing your home for aging-in-place can create long-term comfort but can add significantly to the base price. In addition, considering systems like geothermal heating can have a large up-front cost, although lower energy costs over the life of the home.
If you'd like a full list of features and ideas that influence the total investment, you can download our Dream 100 guide that walks through all the options to consider when planning your home. It's the same tool we use with clients during the design process to prioritize what matters most to them, before any money is spent on construction.
The Benefit of Planning Before Pricing
If you're researching how much a custom home will cost, a lot of builders will give you a quick number just to get your attention. But in custom home building, “quick” usually means “incomplete.”
Instead, we start with planning , which involves a deep design process that helps you explore your needs, preferences, and priorities. From there, we develop a detailed set of drawings, specifications, and selections.
Then we send your project out to bid with our trusted suppliers and trades. They come back with real numbers, not estimates, so you can make informed decisions with confidence. You’ll receive a complete pricing package you can use for financing and long-term planning.
What To Expect When You Work With Us
Discovery: We learn about your vision, your lifestyle and your site.
Design: We collaborate on architectural plans and guide you through features, finishes and layout decisions.
Pricing: Once plans are finalized, we gather bids from our network to deliver a full project budget you can count on.
Build: If you choose to move forward, constructions begins with a plan everyone understands and supports.
Plan Before You Build
If you're thinking a bout building your forever home, the best thing you can do right now is get informed. The choices you main in terms of layout, materials, finishes and features will shape your investment more than any rough square foot prices ever could.
If you're considering building, we hope you'll consider Big Woods Construction.
Want to see some stats about typical single-family homes built in the last few years? Check out this Infographic by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
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