The Residential Architect Design Process in Los Angeles, Phase by Phase | Point Of Design Studio

A custom home in Los Angeles rarely begins with a contractor and a shovel. It begins with a set of drawings, a route through a specific plan-check department, and a professional whose scope of practice is defined narrower than most first-time clients expect. Before a wall gets framed, a residential architect and a client typically pass through five overlapping phases that the American Institute of Architects still uses to structure basic design services: Schematic Design, Design Development, Construction Documents, Bidding or Negotiation, and Construction Administration, as the AIA defines them. Skipping or compressing one of those phases is usually where a Los Angeles custom home project loses months rather than gains them.

This is not an argument for hiring an architect instead of a contractor, or the reverse. It is a walk through what actually happens between a first phone call and a certificate of occupancy for a custom home or major remodel in Los Angeles: the design phases, the realistic timeline ranges, the licensing distinction between an architect and a general contractor, and the permitting reality that changes depending on which city the property sits in.

What a Residential Architect Actually Does

California law does not leave this to marketing language. The California Architects Board defines the practice of architecture as offering or performing, or being in responsible control of, professional services that require the skills of an architect in the planning of sites and the design, in whole or in part, of buildings or groups of buildings, per the Board’s own architects information guide, citing Business and Professions Code section 5500.1. Under that definition, an architect’s licensed scope covers seven categories of work: investigation, evaluation, consultation, and advice; planning and preliminary studies, designs, working drawings, and specifications; coordination of structural, mechanical, and electrical consultants; compliance with codes and regulations; technical assistance preparing bid documents; contract administration; and construction observation.

That list is worth reading closely, because it draws a line most homeowners do not realize exists until they are standing on it. An architect is licensed and regulated for planning, design, and code-compliance judgment, not for physically building anything. The Board also requires a written contract in place before an architect starts billable design work, unless the client authorizes an earlier start in writing, per its own written-contract requirement under Business and Professions Code section 5536.22. That contract is expected to spell out the services the architect will actually provide, phase by phase, which is exactly what the next section walks through.

The Five Phases of the Architectural Design Process for a Custom Home

The AIA’s basic-services structure has held up as the working framework most architecture firms, including boutique ones, still organize a project around. Here is what each phase covers and roughly how long it tends to run for a custom home or major remodel, per a Los Angeles-area architecture firm’s own published process explainer:

Schematic Design. The architect and client establish the program, the rough budget, and the site and zoning constraints, then develop early study drawings that illustrate the design concept, per the AIA’s description of the phase. This phase typically runs four to eight weeks.

Design Development. The architect takes the approved schematic concept “one step further,” adding mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and structural coordination, dimensioned floor plans, sections, elevations, and material specifications, as the AIA describes it. Design Development typically runs eight to twelve weeks.

Construction Documents. The architect produces the detailed drawings and specifications a contractor will actually bid and build from, then sends the finished set out for pricing. This phase also typically runs eight to twelve weeks, and it is the set that gets submitted for plan check, which the timeline section below covers separately.

Bidding or Negotiation. Construction documents go out to prospective contractors, who return pricing; the architect helps the owner compare bids or negotiate directly with a chosen contractor before a construction contract is signed. Duration here depends heavily on how many contractors are invited to bid and how quickly they respond, so it does not have a single standard range the way the design phases do.

Construction Administration. Once building starts, the architect helps the contractor build the project as drawn and approved, answering field questions, reviewing submittals, and making site visits until final completion and payment, per the AIA. This phase runs concurrently with construction itself, which is a separately scoped and priced timeline that depends on the contractor, not the architect.

How Long Does It Take to Design and Build a Custom Home in Los Angeles

There is no single authoritative number for this, and any source claiming otherwise is oversimplifying. What can be stated honestly is a set of typical ranges for the phases that are actually documented, with the caveat that scope, site conditions, and how many revision rounds a project needs will move every one of these numbers.

Add the design-phase ranges together and a custom home in Los Angeles typically spends roughly four to eight months in Schematic Design, Design Development, and Construction Documents before a plan-check submittal even happens. From there, a Regular Plan Check review is typically four to eight weeks for a large residential project’s initial review, with most projects going through one to three correction cycles, each adding two to six more weeks. The Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety itself notes that plan reviews are “returned within weeks depending on workload,” and that a project can pay 50 percent more of the plan check fee to move to an expedited review track. None of this includes the construction phase itself, which is scheduled and priced by the general contractor and varies too widely by scope to estimate honestly in a single figure.

Architect vs. General Contractor in Los Angeles: Two Different Licenses

“Do I need an architect or a contractor?” is usually the wrong question, because it treats the two as competing options for the same job. They are not. California law licenses them separately, for different work.

A contractor, under Business and Professions Code section 7026, is defined as anyone who undertakes to construct, alter, repair, improve, move, or demolish a building or structure, whether working directly or through others. That is a license to build. An architect, under the definition covered above, is licensed for planning, design, code-compliance judgment, and construction observation, not for physically performing construction work. Those are two separate scopes of responsible control, held under two separate licensing boards, and a real project usually needs both, at different points in the timeline.

In practice, that plays out roughly like this: an architect is typically engaged first, to develop the design and produce the construction document set that gets submitted for permit and sent out for contractor bidding. A general contractor is typically engaged once that document set exists, either through a formal bid process or a direct negotiation, and takes responsibility for actually building what the drawings show. Some firms run architecture and construction under one coordinated team, which changes who a client calls with a question but does not change the underlying licensing distinction between the two roles.

Permitting in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills: Why Jurisdiction Comes First

One detail trips up more first-time custom home clients than any code requirement: which city’s building department actually has jurisdiction over the property. Beverly Hills is not part of the City of Los Angeles. It maintains its own municipal code, its own building department, its own planning commission, and its own Architectural and Design Review Commission, separate from the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, per a regional construction firm’s own published breakdown of LA-area permitting jurisdictions. The same source notes that several other independent cities in the area, including Santa Monica, Malibu, and West Hollywood, each maintain their own separate building departments, codes, fees, and review processes as well.

For a property that does fall within the City of Los Angeles, the LADBS Regular Plan Check process is the pathway used for larger, more complex residential projects, and plans are typically assigned to a reviewer within a few days of submittal, then reviewed on the timeline noted in the section above. Beverly Hills, by contrast, layers its own design review process on top of standard plan check, with certain projects following a staff-level review track and others requiring full review before a design commission, depending on the scope and the property’s location, according to the same jurisdictional breakdown. The practical takeaway is simple and easy to skip: confirm which jurisdiction a property actually sits in, and which review process applies, before assuming any single city’s rules or timelines carry over to a different one.

Choosing an Architect in Los Angeles: What to Ask Before You Sign

Given how much of a custom home’s timeline lives inside Schematic Design, Design Development, and Construction Documents, before permitting or construction ever start, the working relationship during those phases matters more than most first-time clients assume. A few questions are worth asking any architect before hiring them for a Los Angeles custom home or major remodel: What does each phase actually deliver, in writing, and on what rough timeline. Who coordinates structural, mechanical, and electrical consultants, and how much of that falls back on the client to manage. Has the firm worked on a project in the specific jurisdiction the property sits in, and do they know that department’s plan check process specifically. And who stays involved once construction starts, since Construction Administration is a distinct, ongoing phase, not a formality.

Point Of Design Studio is a boutique studio in Beverly Hills that works across architectural design, interior design, and construction project management under Creative Director Nina Avetisova, who has worked in design for more than 18 years across Europe and the United States. Coordinating architecture, interior design, and construction project management under one roof is one structural answer to the consultant-coordination question above, not the only way to run a project well, and it is worth weighing against how any firm you are considering actually organizes that same coordination. If you are early in planning a custom home or major remodel and want to talk through what the phases above would look like for a specific property, our residential design work and contact page are a reasonable place to start.