Assess the design sensibility honestly

Architects fall roughly into two camps, and you need to know which you're hiring. Some have a strong, recognizable signature and bring a version of it to every project — you hire them for that vision, and you get it. Others are more chameleon-like, adapting their approach to each client's brief. Neither is superior, but the mismatch is expensive: hiring a strong-signature modernist and then fighting for a traditional home wastes everyone's time and money.

Study their portfolio for whether their completed work resonates with what you actually want, and ask directly how they balance their own vision with a client's — the answer tells you a great deal.

Verify relevant experience

General talent isn't enough; you want experience relevant to your project. A custom home at your scale, on a comparable site, is the ideal reference — because a hillside, waterfront, historic-district, or otherwise challenging site demands specific expertise that an architect brilliant on straightforward lots may lack. Ask about projects like yours: similar scale, similar complexity, similar site conditions, similar programs.

And confirm scope: full-service architecture runs from schematic design through construction administration (the architect overseeing that the build matches the drawings), and you want to know exactly what phases they'll handle, because construction administration in particular is where design intent survives or dies.

Evaluate the working relationship and the practicalities

You'll work with this architect for years, through stressful and expensive decisions, so rapport matters as a working requirement, not a nicety — do they listen, explain clearly, and respect your input, or talk past you?

Check the practical fundamentals too: their fee structure (commonly a percentage of construction cost for custom residential, sometimes fixed or hourly by phase), who in the firm will actually handle your project (the principal or their team, both legitimate but worth knowing), their current capacity and timeline, and references you actually call. Ask a past client the question that cuts through everything: what went wrong and how did the architect handle it — because every project has friction, and the answer reveals the professional.