Welcome to Return on Design, the podcast where beauty meets strategy and interiors become assets that perform. I’m your host, Rachel Niederhofer, designer, investor and builder of high impact spaces that deliver real results. Alongside my husband, I run both a design firm and a real estate investment company, where I live at the intersection of creativity and ROI every day. Each week, I’ll be unpacking what most people overlook: how strategic design decisions can grow your investment, elevate your lifestyle and unlock the full potential of your property.
Say the word architecture and most people picture a dramatic front elevation, exposed beams, or a grand staircase. That’s one version of it, but it’s not the whole picture. The architectural details that add value in most homes are quieter: proportion, scale, millwork, ceiling treatments and window placement, the structure that’s already there whether or not anyone’s designed around it yet.
Builder-grade and investment-property homes almost always have architecture, just not architecture that’s been aligned with the design on top of it. Fixing that misalignment, rather than tearing into walls, is usually where the real return lives.
Architecture isn’t only grand exteriors or statement beam structures. It also shows up in window placement, ceiling height, millwork, trays within ceilings, insets in walls and niches, all the quieter decisions that affect a room’s structure and still shape how it feels. An exposed column might be load-bearing, or it might simply have been someone’s deliberate design choice. Curves, arches and a barreled hallway ceiling are all the same idea at different scales.
Most people are living in that ordinary, everyday version of architecture, in builder-grade homes or investment properties that were never built with a wow feature. That’s not a dead end. It’s a starting point for figuring out what already exists before deciding what to add, the same diagnosis we walk through in our luxury residential projects.
A client falling in love with a specific door that doesn’t fit the house’s architecture is a common, avoidable mistake. Architecture and design should be an alignment, considered together rather than one imposed on the other. If you’re working inside a home that’s already built, the architecture is already in place, and the design should treat it as a focal point for each room rather than working apart from it.
Architecture and design should be an alignment and they should be considered on both aspects.
Return on Design, Episode 17
On new construction or a full renovation, there’s a real opportunity to shape both the architecture and the finished design at the same time, as one collaborative decision instead of two separate ones made later.
Ceilings are one of the easiest places to begin, and one of the clearest examples of architectural details that add value without touching a wall. Beam work, including box beams or faux beams that create the illusion of real structure, adds visual interest without touching the framing. A coffered ceiling, molding around light fixtures, or texture variation can all draw the eye upward in a room with real height to spare.
Not every room needs the same treatment. A twelve or fourteen foot ceiling can carry heavy beam work; an eight foot ceiling usually can’t, and the same move that elongates one room will shrink the other.
Tall ceilings paired with windows that are out of proportion are a common builder-grade mismatch. Elongating the window with longer drapes, hung high and close to the ceiling, draws the eye up the same way beam work does, increasing the perceived grandeur of the room without replacing a single window. The same logic applies to millwork around windows and headers around doors: small, repeatable moves that read as intentional architecture instead of an afterthought.
Most of what’s described above doesn’t require an architect, just a skilled trade who knows how to execute it well. That changes the moment you’re opening up walls or changing a layout. Any time a wall might be load-bearing, that’s when you need real structural guidance, not a design opinion. Older homes in particular were often built without the open-concept layouts buyers want today, so a renovation that knocks down a wall between the kitchen and the living room needs an engineer’s sign-off before it needs a design plan.
An architect functions closer to an engineer than a designer or a builder, but the role matters on both sides: making sure the structure is sound, and making sure the architectural design still lends itself to how the space will be used. Not every architectural change adds a dollar-for-dollar return either. What it changes is the mood, the function and the perceived value of the space, which is its own kind of return.
The habit worth building is simple: before chasing an end result, look at what’s actually there. What are the existing proportions? What’s the ceiling height, the window placement, the trim that’s already in the room? Rachel Niederhofer walks every consultation through this same diagnosis before recommending a single material.
Don’t just focus on the end aesthetic result. Look at what’s existing, what the existing proportions are.
Return on Design, Episode 17
Houses that feel architecturally strange usually aren’t missing something dramatic. They’re missing alignment. Find it, and an ordinary room starts reading as intentional, which is exactly what buyers and homeowners are willing to pay for.
It’s not always about adding to the architecture or the design. It’s about aligning the two, and that’s, you know, something to keep in mind. So if you have a house that lends very art deco, let’s say, and that’s just not your design style, how to navigate that, I mean, it depends. Art deco to me is more about design aesthetic than it is about architecture. Welcome to Return on Design. The podcast where beauty meets strategy and interiors become assets that perform. I’m your host, Rachel Niederhofer, designer, investor, and builder of high impact spaces that deliver real results. Alongside my husband, I run both a design firm and a real estate investment company, where I live at the intersection of creativity and ROI every day. Each week, I’ll be unpacking what most people overlook, how strategic design decisions can grow your investment, elevate your lifestyle, and unlock the full potential of your property. You’ll get real tools, proven strategies, and unfiltered conversations with industry experts who are doing it right. So if you’re ready to invest with purpose and leverage design as a powerful tool, this podcast is for you. Let’s talk about architecture that elevates. So most of us, when we think about architecture, we think, you know, maybe front elevation of a home or like grandeur, beam structures or, you know, whatever it might be, like things that seem extraordinary. And that’s true in a lot of cases, but architecture can also be defined through subtle applications or designs within the space. And that’s kind of what I want to hone on today is what is the more ordinary or everyday type architecture that most of us experience? And when it’s lacking, how can we actually elevate the existing architecture to maybe add
That nice level to it?
Yeah. I mean, there’s so many people who are living in like sort of like builder grade style homes or even investment properties that might be sort of simple and they don’t have that kind of wow architectural feature. So I want to share some different ideas and ways to evaluate a space and then strategically impact it through architecture. Let me specifically define like elevated architecture, what that really means and how how to think about it. Elevated architecture is about proportion and scale to the room. So architecture is, you know, there’s there’s depth in layers to architecture. It’s not purely just like the structure of a building. It’s placement of windows and ceiling hides and millwork features or even features within the internal structure, like maybe trays within ceilings or insets and walls, different niches, anything that, you know, affects the actual structure, but it can also lend very much to the design or the intentional design of the building. Something to think about, you know, columns, exposed columns is sometimes done out of structural necessity and sometimes done because somebody thought that that was a beautiful architectural feature, not always a load bearing or necessary thing. Also, like curves, arches, things like that. You can have, you know, an arched doorway or a barreled ceiling through a hall, all different levels of architecture and all different ways that you can actually modify the internal architecture to create a more intentional or elevated look, depending on what you’re trying to achieve.
If you had one arched doorway in the house, is that an architectural detail or is that just kind of like somebody tried to cram it in there and maybe we should look at even changing it?
Right. Yeah, I agree. That happens. Maybe they fall in love with the door and they want this specific door. It doesn’t really fit the architecture of the house. Architecture and design should be an alignment and they should be considered on both aspects. Like if you’re coming into a space that’s already, you know, been constructed, the architect’s architecture is already in place. You should design with the architecture in mind as a focal point for each space, depending on the function of that space. You shouldn’t be designing apart from what the house already lends architecturally. And if you’re doing something new, new construction or renovation, where you have the opportunity to modify the architecture or design and design the architectural side and the finished design at the same time, it should be a collaborative effort.
They need to blend then.
Yeah, it’s cohesive. We should be doing this together. There’s a level of harmony that should be occurring between the design and the architecture, regardless of the phase of one or the other. Not all aspects of the architecture need to be the focal point of your design. When done collaboratively, it should all influence each other and be very cohesive and, you know, it’s enhancing. One is enhancing the other beauty. The design would be enhancing the architecture that already exists and the architecture would be enhancing the beauty of the design.
And it all flows together and just it feels uniform.
It’s not always about adding to the architecture or the design. It’s about aligning the two. And that’s, you know, something to keep in mind. So if you have a house that lends very art deco, let’s say, and that’s just not your design style, how to navigate that. I mean, it depends. Art deco to me is more about design aesthetic than it is about architecture.
So how can we take a home? Say, you know, we’ve talked about some of the builder grade, you know, it’s a little bit more of the track. How do how can you take and add some of these architectural details and make sure that it still flows within the house or strategically put it in so that it elevates the space and brings that you can add the, you know, upgrade the perceived value without having to completely redefine and redo the entire space.
Great question. I mean, I would say ceilings are a great place to start. You know, you can do beam work. You can get box beam, faux beams to create the illusion of like big structural beams that are very architecturally appealing. We’ve already talked about millwork and molding a lot, but ceilings are
We can’t forget those are architectural details. Yeah. I mean, the millworks, the casements around windows, door headers. Those are those are subtle architectural details. They’re not always, you know, architectural details aren’t always structural details.
I would go back to what’s the function of the space. If you have really tall ceilings and they’re just sort of boring, that’s a great opportunity to create a little visual up high. So again, you could do beams or you could even create like a coffered style ceiling, just depending on your your scenario lighting. You can also do, you know, or any molding around the tops of the lighting on the ceilings or or add different textures and variations to draw your eye up to elongate the room that would complement the tall the taller ceilings, the larger scale. I mean, it’s a great thing to do with windows, too. You know, if you have really, really tall ceilings and your windows are maybe not fully proportionate, you can elongate the window with longer drapes and bring the drapes up really high or higher up to the ceiling to really draw the illusion of the eye up and that can also help increase the perceived grandeur of that architecture or make it feel more elevated and without having necessarily replaced the windows, you know, also mill work around windows and headers around windows and same concept as around doors, but architecture is really rooted in like, you know, a level of visual interest anytime you want to elevate an area, you can add dimension and depth and interest through mill work, through textile applications, through, you know, different, like we already mentioned, beam work or different applications or different materials that would give it that greater dimension and allow it to have more of a focal point and have a little bit more elevated look. So don’t worry if, you know, your existing house or property doesn’t already have all of these elevated architectural features. It doesn’t mean you have to reconstruct everything. You can creatively approach it to enhance that architectural dimension that you’re seeking and give your house more character or depth. Whatever it is that you’re trying to achieve doesn’t mean you have to like tear into the wall to do it.
Yeah. And also remember, too, not every space needs a specific or the same detailing, you know, if you’ve got, like you said, the really tall ceiling and you want to do beam work to draw the eye up. That doesn’t mean in, say, a 14 foot, 12, 14 foot room doesn’t necessarily mean you want to do the same thing in the room that’s got the eight foot ceiling because I could actually have the opposite.
Make it feel smaller
And make it smaller. So it’s really land in proportion to the space. When do you need to really consider investing in doing some of the structural changes and maybe having an architect come in to help you because I would think more in some of the older homes and the way that some of them are built. But, you know, not sure. Yeah.
I mean, anytime you want to open up walls or change the layout, yeah, really where you’re you’re removing walls that could be structurally load bearing, that is when you need to make sure you’re realistically getting proper design advice for that. You know, like some older homes don’t really have the open concept that a lot of people like. So even investors will come in and you know, we’re going to flip this house and we’re going to open it up to make it the kitchen more grand. You probably need to make sure, you know, you have the structural.
Not to say that it can’t be done, but you can’t open that up. But it needs to be done and done properly. Otherwise, you’re going to wind up with a bigger mess on your hand later on.
Yeah. Any time you’re changing anything that’s structural because, you know, you have to think of the architect as like the engineer. They’re not your designer necessarily and they’re not your builder necessarily, but they play a very important role in both aspects to ensure that structurally the facility is sound and a lot of, you know, architectural design lends to that sort of design aspect to incorporate it within to the existing structure. But they play an important role, should be collaborating with everyone.
You know, with some of the architectural details and things like that, like you’ve got to understand, too, that not every change we make or detail that we add necessarily adds a equated dollar for dollar value, but it can change the the mood and the feel and the functionality of the space, yeah, which can lead to a perceived value.
And sometimes, you know, you don’t actually need an architect. You just need a framer that knows what they’re doing, because it may not always be that you need some massive architectural, you know, structural beam, but it’s not for the faint of heart. Like, you know, these framers, these tradesmen know how to make sure things get framed up properly, too, to be able to open. Space is up. So let’s wrap this bad boy up. Remember, architecture is really important and it’s important to consider when you’re designing and when you’re optimizing your investment to get that full Return on Design. You need to consider it. One way to really do that is to start, you know, changing the way you’re you’re viewing a space. Don’t just focus on the end aesthetic result. Look at what’s existing, what the existing proportions are. And I think if you can train your mind to do that, you’ll start to be able to recognize potential that could already be there, that needs to just be uncovered or potential of what could be done to really give you that elevated architectural design that can, you know, dramatically change a space.
So remember that when you’re looking at the details and you’re looking at these architectural points, say, look at what’s already existing, look at what’s there and what the style and it oftentimes leads you in the ways that you can go with what you may want to add or if you really even need to add anything architectural and it can help you make the decision simpler and even sometimes more effectively to to create the look in the in the field of what you’re going for.
Yeah, or it would enhance the sellability. You know, sometimes houses don’t sell because they’re architecturally a little strange when you can start identifying the potential of what some people might perceive as strange, but you can fix it or correct it, bring that order and make it more purposeful. You know, there’s a lot of opportunity there to come in and flip these houses around and put them back on the market and get some return on strategically approaching it that way. So if you like what you heard today and you’re starting to think, you know, a little more strategically about how to notice architectural details and how to elevate architectural details, make sure you’re following, subscribe. We have a lot more content to share with you. You can also tag us at Return on Design on socials and tell us about your architectural challenges or wins. And of course, drop in the comments like if there’s a topic you want to hear us talk about that we haven’t covered or something you think we should dive deeper in. We want to know. Thanks for listening. Make sure you’re following along and stay tuned till next time.
We’ll see you next time.
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