Trend commentary in residential design is mostly a description of what magazines photographed last year. What follows separates the shifts that appear to be structural — driven by cost, climate, demographics or regulation — from the ones that are stylistic and will pass.
Structural shifts
- Envelope performance as a design input rather than a compliance exercise. Driven by the BC Energy Step Code, the National Building Code’s tiered energy path and provincial adoption of it, this is regulation-backed and will not reverse.
- Smaller, better-resolved plans. Construction cost per square foot has risen enough that buyers are increasingly trading area for quality — fewer rooms, better rooms. Circulation space and formal rooms that were never used are the first casualties.
- Genuine multigenerational planning. Main-floor primary suites, secondary suites with independent entry and full kitchens, and flexible spaces that can become caregiver accommodation. This is demographic and it is accelerating.
- Serious home offices, plural. Two people working from home permanently is a floor-plan requirement, not a nice-to-have, and it has survived the return-to-office cycle.
- Cooling and filtration. Summer overheating and wildfire smoke have made mechanical cooling and high-grade filtration standard expectations in markets where they recently were not.
- Resilience. Backup power, hail-resistant roofing in the Calgary region, FireSmart construction in the BC interior, and flood-aware design near water. Increasingly an insurance conversation as much as a design one.
Stylistic shifts
- Warmer palettes replacing the cool grey and white of the 2010s — warm woods, limestone and travertine tones, brushed and unlacquered metals, plaster and lime-wash finishes.
- Texture over gloss. Fluted and reeded surfaces, board-formed concrete, hand-troweled plaster, honed and leathered stone.
- A retreat from the fully open plan toward defined but connected rooms, with broad cased openings and pocket doors rather than walls or nothing.
- Kitchens with genuine back-of-house — a working pantry or scullery separated from the show kitchen.
- Unlacquered brass and aged metals allowed to patina, in place of the uniform matte black of the previous cycle.
- The modern farmhouse cycle passing its peak, with modern and warm-contemporary work taking its share.
Outdoor space, designed for Canada
The most consistent change in Canadian custom homes over the last decade is outdoor space that is usable more than four months a year: covered and heated terraces, three-season rooms, outdoor fireplaces, screened areas for insect season, and wind shelter designed rather than hoped for.
This is worth designing deliberately. A terrace copied from a California project will be used in July and August and ignored the rest of the year. One designed for a prairie or coastal climate — with shelter, heat and a considered relationship to the prevailing wind — genuinely extends the house.
Put the money into the things that cannot be changed later — massing, proportion, daylight, ceiling heights, the envelope, the structure. Trend lives in finishes, fixtures and colour, all of which can be replaced in a decade for a fraction of the build cost. A well-proportioned house with dated tile is a small problem. A badly proportioned house with current tile is a permanent one.