You already know you were meant to do this.
You'll spend sixteen weeks designing a complete home from the first sketch to a full set of plans, and somewhere along the way you stop wondering whether you're allowed to call yourself a designer and start introducing yourself as one.
This is for you if:
You're making a career change
…into what you've always wanted to do. Design has been calling you for years. You don't need another year of thinking about it. You need the path.
You're a practicing interior designer
…tired of only touching the finishes. You want to draw plans that builders respect and walk onto a jobsite knowing you belong there.
You’re coming with a background
…in architecture, drafting, engineering, or construction but you're missing the residential workflow and the business framework to go out on your own.
Wherever you're starting from, this program meets you there. If you're coming in with no experience I take you through it step by step, and if you've been designing for years you'll deepen your practice, fill in the gaps you've been working around, and walk away even more confident in the work you're already doing. Either way you're joining a community of designers working through the same things you are, most of them alongside full-time jobs and families, so if you have 6 hours a week and the drive, we'll get you there.
No degree, license, or prior professional experience is required. 88% of places don’t require an architect’s stamp for single-family residential.
No other program is doing this.
You can see the home perfectly in your head, but either you don’t know where to start or your drawings never quite match it. Somewhere in the middle of this program, you’ll have that aha moment where it all clicks.
Project by Academy student Kaylee Rasmussen · @kayleerasmussendesign
Some of my students come in having never drawn a floor plan, and some, like Kaylee, have already drawn more than a dozen.
After five years of self-taught drafting she could make any floor plan work, but the outside of her homes never looked the way she pictured them.
“I knew there were skills and ideas that I simply couldn’t learn entirely on my own.”
Once she learned to start with the massing, the shape of the house, before a single room was drawn, it clicked for her. The elevations she’s finishing now are the kind of home she didn’t think she was capable of designing, and she doesn’t just know how to design it, she understands exactly how it will be built.
Kaylee Rasmussen
What you’ll be learning
The same framework I use on every home I design, from pre-design through construction documents.
MODULE 01
Building Knowledge
Every successful project starts the same way, and it’s not with a floor plan. You start with the questions most designers skip.
MODULE 02
Design Development
This is where all that thinking becomes a real design, and where you go from someone who thinks about design to someone who is designing.
MODULE 03
Construction Documentation
Beautiful designs are great, but only if they can actually get built. After this module, builders will respect your drawings.
MODULE 04
The Business of Design
How to price a project, where to find clients, and how to run the business side without guessing.
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Every successful project starts the same way, and it's not with a floor plan. You start with the questions most designers skip. Who is this home for? How do they actually live? What are the constraints? What style, what massing, what proportions? By the end of this module you'll understand why a home should look and feel the way it does. You'll be thinking about the client's life, the site, the architectural style, and the overall form of the home as one connected thought. That's the foundation everything else builds on.
Client discovery and programming every space
Site analysis, constraints, and zoning
33 architectural styles and how to identify them
Massing, proportions, and the golden ratio
Space blocks and room sizing with real furniture dimensions
Flow, circulation, and how a home should moveion text goes here
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This is where all that thinking becomes a real design. You're taking your mood boards, your programming, your massing studies and turning them into floor plans with cohesive, beautiful elevations. We make sure the spaces work for both beauty and daily life. This is where you go from someone who thinks about design to someone who is designing. And you're doing it on a real project with me reviewing every decision.
Floor plan design from scratch in Rayon
Space planning for kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, living areas, and outdoor spaces
Door types, placements, swings, and standard sizing
Ceiling height strategies for comfort and architectural presence
Developing exterior elevations that align with your chosen style
How homes are actually built (overview for designers)
Circulation and flow between spaces
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Beautiful designs are great, but only if they can actually get built. In this module we dive into construction, how things come together, and what your documents need to communicate so nothing gets lost between your design and the finished home. Your builders will do whatever they want if there's not proper documentation showing them the real design intent. After this module, builders will respect your drawings and you'll have the confidence to speak their language on the jobsite.
Basic builder sets vs full construction document sets
Dimensioned floor plans, elevations, and roof plans
Building sections and wall sections
Window and door schedules
Electrical and lighting layouts
Construction details and material transitions
Design development vs construction documentation phases
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I spent years with no idea how to get clients. I tried a million and a half things. Some worked. Most didn't. In this module I share everything: what worked for me, what didn't, how I grew through social media, how I got clients before social media, how to price your work, and the exact proposals and contracts I use in my practice. You're not starting from scratch.
Complete project workflow from inquiry to final deliverables
Where to find clients and how to attract them consistently
How I built 100K+ on Instagram and what content actually converts
Proposal and pricing structures (my templates included)
Fixed fee vs hourly pricing and when to use each
Client intake and expectation management
Setting up your booking funnel and online presence
Students Who’ve Been Where You Are:
Theresa Johnson
Interior Designer · Downers Grove, Illinois
Twenty-plus years and about six job titles: drapery seamstress, home stager, e-designer, furniture sales, interior designer. Runs her own studio and partners with a local contractor on every one of his remodels. Came in with taste, an eye, and, in her words, a serious case of imposter syndrome.
"I took out trace paper and he said, you're speaking my language. After that he suddenly started respecting me."
Jeffrey Vargas
Firefighter, City of Long Beach FD · Orange County, California
Twenty years in the fire service. His father was a contractor and his mother did interior decorating, so homes were always there. Last year he started his own architectural design business doing homes, ADUs and remodels, and joined to get a real system behind it.
"I really dreaded doing details on my plans. Then I watched the video on details and, oh my gosh, I love details now."
Lizvette Ayala
Former biotech engineer · San Jose, California
Seven years in biotech and a growing suspicion that the part of her week she actually looked forward to was thinking about houses. She was pricing a three-year master's when she found the Academy instead. This fall she left biotech to design full time and grow the residential construction company she and her husband started.
"I feel like a designer now. I'm thinking about how we're going to walk through the floor plan, what it's going to look like, what it's going to feel like."
What my students are designing now
These are just three of my students, each designing real homes now and sharing the whole process online, from the first floor plan to the elevations, and every time one of them posts something like this I get so proud.
“Open concept isn’t always the best layout. Defining a room and its use just feels good in a home.”
Shandy Arend
Claire House Design, Kansas City
Watch her reel · @clairehousedesign
“The best homes are designed as a whole…inside, outside, and everything in between. That’s residential design.”
Alison Kunze
Home and landscape design
Watch her reel · @designwithjunebug
“I’m currently designing a vacation home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and I’m so excited to see this one come together.”
Ilayda Oz
Bayside Design Studio, South Florida
Watch her reel · @baysidedesign.studio
You won’t be doing this alone
Nobody wants to figure this out by themselves, and I know that because I did it that way for years. When you join the Academy you also join a community of designers from all over the country and the world who are working through the same things you are, sharing their plans, asking the questions they’d feel silly asking anywhere else, and cheering each other on when a client finally says yes.
Some are career changers, some are interior designers adding residential design to what they already do, and all of them are people you can connect with and grow alongside long after your 16 weeks are done.
82 designers in the community, and growing.
What You Walk Away With
The confidence to own the conversation with any client or builder, because when you can explain why the roofline responds to the massing or walk a client through the thinking behind every room, nobody asks where you went to school, they just trust you.
A complete home in your portfolio, designed and detailed all the way through construction documents, so when a prospective client asks what you can do you can show them a finished project instead of describing one.
A process you can repeat on every project, the same framework I use on every home I design from pre-design through construction documents, which has saved me thousands of hours and a lot of second-guessing.
A business you know how to run, from pricing a project to finding clients who value your work, so you’re not guessing every time someone asks what you charge.
A career built around the life you want, where you set your schedule and choose your projects. I’m living proof it works, a single mom in my 30s running a firm in Miami with projects around the world, and my students are building the same thing.
Ready to get started?
When you’re ready, book a call and we’ll talk through everything. I review every application personally because I only take students I know I can help.
