Frequently Asked Questions
Do I Need an Architect?
A design-build firm designs your project and then quotes you to construct it, which means the same company setting the scope also profits from it. We have no financial stake in what your project costs to build. That lets us put your drawings out to multiple builders, compare real bids on identical scope, and advocate for you if a builder proposes a change that serves their schedule more than your design.
It stops working when the site has constraints like mature trees, drainage, an odd setback, or a floodplain designation, or when what you want doesn’t exist as a template. It also means the person designing your home is the person you’ll later negotiate with over change orders. Independent design puts a complete, code-compliant set in front of every bidder, which is the only way to compare builder bids fairly.
Bring us whatever you have: sketches, a partial set, a survey, correspondence. We’ll tell you honestly what’s salvageable and what isn’t before you commit to anything. Sometimes the existing work is a usable starting point. Sometimes restarting costs less than repairing. You’ll get a straight answer either way.
A lot’s buildable area is shaped by setbacks, easements, drainage, floodplain designation, tree requirements, deed restrictions, and utility access. Those constraints determine the footprint, the orientation, and sometimes whether the building you have in mind fits at all. We assess all of it up front so the design starts from what the site allows rather than backing into it later.
Bring us the plan and tell us what you’d change. We’ll tell you honestly whether modifying it or starting fresh gets you a better result for the money. Sometimes a stock plan is eighty percent right and the rest is straightforward. Sometimes the bones fight every change you want to make.
Permits, Approvals and Getting It Approved
We prepare the code-compliant construction documents, submit them to the permitting jurisdiction on your behalf, including electronic submission, respond to any corrections the reviewer returns, and stay with the application until it’s approved. Where a project needs a Certificate of Occupancy or a compliance certificate, we see that through to the inspection.
The point is that you shouldn’t have to learn the permitting process to get your project built. Our clients hand it to us and get on with running their business or their life.
Requirements vary meaningfully between the City of Houston, surrounding municipalities like Sugar Land, and unincorporated Montgomery and Harris County. The jurisdiction determines the process, the timeline, and the documentation. We’ll confirm exactly what applies to your address during the consultation, before you spend anything.
What matters is turnaround. A correction sitting unaddressed for two weeks is two weeks added to your project. We respond quickly and resubmit, and you don’t need to be in the middle of that exchange.
We review the restrictions applicable to your property before design begins. Finding a conflict on paper costs nothing. Finding it after submittal costs weeks.
Woodlands residential review is strict by design. That is what protects the character of the community, and it is also why applications get returned. The way to avoid that is to design to the standards from the outset rather than submitting and hoping. Our office is in The Woodlands, so these standards are in front of us constantly.
Review timelines are set by the committee calendar, not by us. We will tell you what to expect for your specific submittal.
These constraints are design inputs, not obstacles. They need to be identified at the start, because elevation requirements shape the entire building.
Working With Your Builder and Trade Partners
If you already have a builder, we’ll coordinate with them throughout: answering questions, resolving conditions the field turns up, and making sure what gets built matches what was designed. If you don’t have one yet, having a complete drawing set first is what lets you get bids you can actually compare.
Expect some conversation regardless. Builders will almost always raise questions about substituting a specification or adjusting the plan to bring construction cost down, and that is a useful conversation to have. We work with your builder to accommodate those changes so the design still holds at your construction budget. What you should not be paying for is back-and-forth caused by missing information.
All consultants are subcontracted rather than in-house, and we can carry their scope and fees inside our contract. That means one firm, one schedule, and one point of accountability instead of you managing four vendors. Engineering fees are quoted separately from the architectural fee, so you always see what each piece costs.
Direct, fast, and predictable. Builders and developers need three things from a design partner: drawings that permit without drama, a schedule that holds, and someone who answers the phone during construction.
A meaningful share of our work is repeat business with contractors and developers who bring us every project, including firms operating across multiple states and clients we’ve worked with for twenty years. We design builder home plans intended to sell rather than just to permit, handle plan variations across a community, and take on multi-project relationships.
For residential builders repeating a floor plan, every repeat of an original plan is billed at 50% of the original plan design fee. The more you build a plan, the less it costs you each time.
Speed and Turnaround
It depends on scope, and on how quickly decisions get made. Client response time is the biggest variable. Typical design ranges:
- Residential addition or remodel: 1 to 2 months
- Custom home around 1,800 square feet of living area: 2 months minimum
- Larger custom homes: 3 to 6 months
- Commercial build-out up to 2,000 square feet: 1 to 2 months
- Restaurant build-out: 6 to 9 months, driven by the size of the lease space and the complexity of the kitchen
- Industrial office and warehouse: about 3 months. Fabrication occupancies can run to 6 months
Permitting review sits on top of that and varies by jurisdiction. You’ll get a milestone schedule specific to your project at the consultation rather than a generic number.
Within one business day.
You’ll be working directly with our principal, which removes the layer where messages usually go to die. During construction, when a question is holding up a trade, speed matters more than polish. We answer fast and follow up in writing.
Faster than most, when the situation calls for it. We’ve met with clients within days of first contact and delivered drawings for review inside two weeks where the scope allowed, then submitted to the permitting office on their behalf.
That isn’t every project’s timeline, and we won’t promise a date we can’t hold. But if you’re against a lease commencement, an option period, an inspection, or a permit window, tell us the date on the first call and we’ll tell you honestly whether it’s achievable.
Yes, and these are the deadlines worth flagging on day one because they’re immovable. Option periods on a property purchase and lease commencement dates on commercial space both force decisions on a fixed clock. If you’re on one of those clocks, lead with it and we’ll build the schedule backward from it.
Cost and Fees
It depends on the project, and we publish our starting numbers so you aren’t guessing:
- Custom homes: $2.50 per square foot of total project area, including garage, decks, balconies, and everything under roof. Architectural fee only.
- Residential additions and remodels: from $5,000, fixed fee, set by the complexity of the project.
- Commercial projects: from $6,000, fixed fee, architectural services only.
- Lease space build-out of roughly 1,500 to 2,000 square feet: from $16,000, including all engineering consultants.
Engineering fees are quoted separately from the architectural fee and can be carried inside our contract if you want a single point of contact. For comparison, design fees in this market are often structured as a percentage of construction cost, commonly in the five to twenty percent range depending on project type and how much of the process the firm handles. A fixed fee tells you the number before you start instead of after.
Our clients consistently describe our pricing as fair for what gets delivered. Every project gets a free, no-obligation quote once we understand your goals, budget, and site.
That’s the intent, and it’s why we scope carefully before quoting rather than after.
The quote covers a defined scope. If you later decide to expand the project by adding square footage, adding a building, or changing the program substantially, that’s additional work and we’ll tell you what it costs before doing it. What won’t happen is a surprise on the final invoice for work you didn’t know was being done.
We take small projects. Our minimum fee is $5,000 regardless of size.
A single permit set, a remodel, an addition, a full custom home, or a commercial facility all get the same process. If your project is small enough that the minimum doesn’t make sense for you, we’ll tell you on the first call rather than after you’ve invested time.
It looks cheaper on the front end. The cost usually shows up later, in three places: rework when the plans don’t pass review, change orders when decisions get made on site instead of on paper, and a finished building that doesn’t do what you needed it to do.
A complete drawing set also lets multiple builders bid identical scope. Without one, you’re comparing quotes for different projects and calling it a comparison.
Yes. The first conversation costs nothing and carries no obligation.
Our principal personally meets with every client for that first consultation. He prefers to meet in person at your project site, because the site answers half the questions on its own, and a video call or phone call works when that is easier for you.
We’ll discuss your project, your site, your budget, and your timeline, and give you an honest read on feasibility, including telling you if we’re not the right fit.
Your design fee includes up to 3 rounds of design revisions. Beyond that, revisions are billed at $225 per hour.
Revision during design is normal and expected. That is what the design phase is for, and our 3D modeling exists specifically so you can make changes while they cost nothing but time. Changes after construction begins are a different matter, and they’re expensive.
How We Work
Yes. Projects are modeled in 3D before construction documents are produced, so you can walk through the design visually: massing, proportions, light, and how rooms connect, while everything is still changeable.
Most people can’t read a floor plan, and the ones who think they can are often surprised in the field. Seeing it first is how you avoid discovering a problem when it costs money to fix.
You work directly with our principal from concept through completion. At larger firms it’s common for the person who wins the project to hand it to an associate afterward. That doesn’t happen here. The person you meet is the person designing your project.
That principal brings 30+ years in building design, more than 20 of them running this practice. You are not paying for a name on the proposal and getting someone else on the drawings.
Fair question, and worth asking any boutique firm.
We’re deliberately sized so the principal stays on every project. That’s the trade we’ve made, and it’s why the work doesn’t get delegated down. We manage capacity by being honest about our calendar rather than by taking everything and stretching. If your timeline doesn’t fit our current workload, we’ll tell you on the first call instead of accepting the project and delivering late.
No. We don’t have a house style we’re trying to reproduce.
Some firms do, and you can spot it: every project looks like the last one. Our process starts by understanding what you need, what you want, and what you love, then designing to that.
No. The process is genuinely unfamiliar, and the fear of not knowing what you don’t know is real. Our job includes explaining each step before it happens, so you always know what’s coming and what decision is in front of you. You don’t need to learn construction. You need someone who will tell you the truth about your options.
Four phases, in order:
- Consultation. We learn the site, the budget, and what you actually need.
- Preliminary design. Concepts developed in 3D so you can see and react to them.
- Design refinement. Iteration against your feedback until it is right.
- Construction documents and permitting. The complete, code-compliant set, submitted and seen through approval.
To start, bring whatever you have: the property address or survey, a rough budget, and any images of things you like or don’t like. If you’re earlier than that and just want to know whether your idea is feasible, that’s a perfectly good reason to call.
Yes, as a separate service from design. Construction administration covers reviewing that the work matches the drawings, answering builder questions as they come up, and resolving conditions the field turns up.
It is billed at $225 per hour, and job site visits are $700 per visit, per day, per person. You choose how much of it you want.
Drawings get interpreted. Someone who knows the design intent being available to answer questions is what keeps interpretation from becoming improvisation.
Residential Projects
It depends on four things: the condition of the existing structure, what your lot allows, how much of the current layout actually works for you, and the cost per square foot of each path in your specific case.
Sometimes an addition solves the problem for a fraction of a rebuild. Sometimes the existing structure fights every change and renovating costs more than starting over. We’ll walk through it honestly, including when the answer is to do less than you were planning.
We tell you before you spend money finding out.
Right-sizing means matching the program to the budget early so you don’t fall in love with a plan you can’t build. That means being honest about which spaces you’ll genuinely use, where square footage can come out without losing what matters, and where spending more actually pays off.
Yes. A contemporary building can sit comfortably among older ones through proportion, scale, roofline, and material choices. It doesn’t require imitating the neighbors or ignoring them. Fit also protects resale value.
Yes, and it’s a growing share of our Houston-area residential work. Both come down to the same design questions: independent access, sound separation, single-level living options, and circulation dimensions that don’t need retrofitting later.
Commercial and Industrial Projects
Before you sign, not after.
The lease determines what the space can become and who pays for it. Ceiling heights, column spacing, existing mechanical and electrical capacity, restroom and ADA compliance, and the terms of the tenant improvement allowance all constrain your build-out and all get locked in at signature. We’ve seen tenants discover after signing that the space can’t accommodate their occupancy without work the allowance never covered.
Yes. This is common, usually urgent, and one of the things we do most.
A Certificate of Occupancy, a compliance certificate, a code condition flagged during inspection, or a change-of-use requirement all need drawings on a short clock, often with a business waiting to open. We can meet within days, produce what the jurisdiction requires, submit electronically on your behalf, handle any corrections that come back, and see it through inspection.
We’ve done exactly this for business owners across Harris County, Sugar Land, and the City of Houston.
Yes. Office and warehouse, manufacturing, and distribution facilities in both pre-engineered metal and concrete tilt-wall, from preliminary plans and 3D renderings through full construction documents.
The questions that matter most in industrial work are the unglamorous ones: how the office and warehouse portions relate, how trucks move on site, how the building expands later, and how much conditioned space you actually need versus what you think you need.
Working With Arte
Yes. Our team works in both English and Spanish across the entire process: consultation, design review, drawings, and coordination with builders, trades, and city officials. It isn’t a translation service bolted on. It’s how the firm operates.
The greater Houston area from our office in The Woodlands, including Katy, Cypress, Magnolia, Pasadena, Pearland, Richmond, and Sugar Land. We work regularly with the City of Houston, Sugar Land, and Harris County permitting offices.
Our experience extends across Texas and the Southeast, and our Architect of Record is registered in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. We work with contractors operating in multiple states. If your project is outside the immediate area, ask.
Yes. Interior design is contracted separately from architecture, on both residential and commercial projects, with its own scope and fee.
Because the interior designer is on our team, finishes, fixtures, and material selections get coordinated with the architecture rather than chosen against it after the fact. You decide how much of it you want.
