Herlong Architects

When it comes time to design your new home, working with a full-service custom architectural firm isn’t always in the budget. Yet Herlong & Associates owner Steve Herlong believes that budget should not stand in the way of having a well designed home. With this in mind, he and his team of designers have launched a new “sister” company, Flatfish Island Designs. 

With Flatfish Island Designs, customers can purchase completed house plans from a wide range of styles and sizes. The company currently offers 18 designs with more on the way.

“These home plans cater to a segment of the marketplace that appreciates livability and design aesthetics, but may not have the opportunity to truly customize a home,” Herlong says.

With the current move to smaller, more efficient homes that are both less expensive to build and easier to maintain, these designs will fill a void by giving homeowners the architectural detail and functionality that is often missing in the typical builder’s inventory.

This concept has been a long time in the making for Herlong. Over the years, people would contact his architectural firm wanting to purchase plans for a Herlong house they saw featured in a magazine, but those are personal, highly customized home designs and not for sale. Herlong considers those one-of-a-kind investments for their owners.

With Flatfish Island Designs, the Herlong team has taken its experience designing these unique homes and channeled it to create a collection of intuitively designed homes available “right off-the-shelf.” The plans cater to Herlong’s area of expertise: waterfront and coastal homes. Many of the plans are oriented to take full advantage of water views with their large windows and porches.

“Living and working on these barrier islands, there is no shortage of inspiration,” Herlong. The team plans to add more home designs to Flatfish Island Designs on a regular basis. In fact Flatfish Island is indeed a real island just up the waterway from Herlong & Associates’ Isle of Palms office and a spot where the company holds regular office retreats.

Customers can review the plans on the Flatfish Island Designs Web site and then contact the company to place an order. Customers can also make a few tweaks to the design for an added fee or they can take the plans as they are and head to their builder or contractor.

The majority of our designs dot the Charleston coastline and Lowcountry landscapes, but our firm has embarked on a new project taking us across the water and into the Caribbean.

Christophe Harbour, the latest venture from Kiawah Development Partners is a 3,000- acre upscale development on the southeast peninsula of the island of St. Kitts. 

A number of architectural firms were invited to a kickoff meeting to learn more about the Christophe Harbour project. Layne Nelson, design director at Herlong & Associates says, “We got so excited about the project that we immediately started doing sketches.” Nelson has been working closely with company owner Steve Herlong to create designs for potential rental properties in the developments first phase, Sandy Bank Bay.

Though our architects are used to designing homes for coastal living, these island homes are a very different style, Nelson explains. Because the average temperature remains in the 80’s year-round, the homes are typically very open and usually don’t have heating and air conditioning units.

Herlong designers are taking their experience creating outdoor living spaces here in the Lowcountry, and using it to design island homes, where the living areas are a seamless blend of indoor/outdoor space. The homes, Nelson says, are typically a collection of independent dwellings with open living areas and private bedroom suites woven together by water features and the lush tropical landscape.

Even though Herlong has long done projects throughout the Southeast and along the Gulf Coast, this is its first project in the Caribbean and a great new venture. “This is just a brand new door that’s opened that we’re exited to walk through,” Nelson says.

Check out the On the Boards section of our site for more Christophe Harbour designs.

When you’re designing your dream home, it can be tough to let go. But trusting the architectural firm and a team of qualified designers can help you achieve exactly what you want while eliminating some of the headaches – a real bonus for out-of-town clients.

One of the greatest benefits of hiring an architectural firm like Herlong & Associates is being able to take advantage of the expertise and experience of the staff. Herlong is a full-service firm, so it can handle everything from the design of the physical home to the decorating details. This means you can really trust the designers to figure out your style and offer up appropriate options.

That’s what one of the firm’s project managers, Sabrina Cochran, has found in working with out-of-town clients building a vacation home on the Isle of Palms. The homeowners are both doctors with four young children, so they don’t have a lot of time to mull over each decision.

So, the team puts together three or four selections or color palettes and the clients can more easily pick one. Plus, with the vast number of choices available when it comes to designing and decorating a home, it can be easier to pick from four choices instead of 400.

These particular clients played a key role in selecting items like the tile and the lighting, but left many choices up to the architects and designers at Herlong – including the exterior color of the house, as long as it wasn’t orange, pink or yellow, Cochran says.

The clients were eager to have the home finished quickly and didn’t want their busy schedules to slow down construction of their home, she adds.

In many cases, it’s about trusting the designers and handing over the reins – even if it’s just long enough for the designers to narrow down the choices and offer some guidance. After all, that’s what architectural firms are for.

One of the best ways a business can improve is to take a step back and look at how it’s grown over the years – look at what’s worked, what hasn’t worked and what’s on the horizon.

Herlong & Associates Project Manager Rodd Heinlen says while the firm doesn’t always have all the answers, it is willing to learn and improve.

One of the ways Herlong is changing is by making homes more energy-efficient, a practice that wasn’t done a few years back, Heinlen says. Now, more thought and planning go into sealing the entire envelope of the house, including using spray foam insulation and better planning for the duct work.

“We’re thinking more upfront about the home and the many systems that go into it,” he says.

The firm also works to understand which trends make sense – or don’t make sense – for a client. For example, four to five years ago, homes were outfitted with all sorts of bells and whistles for home theater systems, surround sound speakers, music, lighting and Internet access. People could “turn their homes on” from a distant location or control the music in the living room from a switch in the kitchen.

But most people have found those gadgets and gizmos too complicated, particularly for those of a certain retirement age who aren’t used to a lot of technology and just want a simple lifestyle and home to go with it, Heinlen says.

This is where Herlong can step in and recognize what makes the most sense for the client, based on feedback from other clients or changes in the marketplace.

“We’re talking some clients out of doing some of the high-tech,” Heinlen says. “The people who have had it know exactly what they want. And if they haven’t had it, they probably don’t need it.”