The honest answer is that a serious house is measured in years, not months. People do not always want to hear that, so a lot of architects soften it at the first meeting and pay for it later in disappointment. We would rather tell you the real shape of it now.
Every project is different, and the numbers below are ranges, not promises. But this is roughly how the time goes.
Design and feasibility: three to six months
This is the part that decides whether the house is any good, so it is worth not rushing. We start with the brief and the site, draw options, test them against the budget, and arrive at a scheme you believe in. On a complex site, or a brief that is still finding itself, this can run longer. It is the cheapest time to change your mind, so we encourage you to do it here rather than on site, where it costs ten times as much.
Planning: three to four months, often more
Once the scheme is agreed we prepare and submit the planning application. A straightforward application runs around eight weeks at the council, but conservation areas, listed buildings and anything contentious take longer, and a refusal followed by a revised submission can add half a year. We draw with the planning history in the room from the start precisely to keep this part as short as it can be.
Technical design and tender: three to four months
With permission granted, we draw the house properly: every junction, every finish, the information a builder needs to price the work accurately and build it well. Then we tender, which means sending the drawings to two or three good contractors and comparing what comes back. Skipping this stage is how projects go over budget, so we do not skip it.
Construction: twelve to eighteen months, sometimes more
A whole new house, or a deep whole-house refurbishment, is usually a year to eighteen months on site, longer for something large or complicated. We are there every week, running the contract and protecting the quality of the work. This is the stage where the design either survives contact with reality or quietly gets worse, and weekly attention is what keeps it the former.
“A good house is slow on purpose. The months you spend deciding are the cheapest insurance you will ever buy against thirty years of living with the wrong answer.”
So, end to end
Add it up and a proper house is commonly two to three years from the first meeting to moving in. That can sound daunting. In practice it is a year or so of design and planning, much of which happens in the background while you carry on with your life, then a year or more of building. We will give you a realistic programme at the start, and update it honestly as we go.
If you are at the beginning of this and want to understand the shape of your own project, that is what a first conversation is for. You can also read about our process in more detail.