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.

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.

If you pull a house plan off the shelf, it may be close to what you need, but chances are good you’ll be wishing for more closets, a larger porch or more space in the living room. An architect can tweak a plan or create a custom design to add the features that make life easier for families, whether that’s more storage space or a bigger kitchen.

Sabrina Cochran, a project manager here at Herlong & Associates, says she has encountered families who needed a convenient space to store the extra dining room table leaves, for example. Another family needed lots of space for their two Christmas trees and lights – plus, an extra breaker box and outdoor outlets to meet the needs of their holiday décor.

Designing homes on the coast, means creating suitable space for golf clubs, golf carts, kayaks, boats and bicycles. Or a couple who loves to cook may want a large kitchen, while young married professionals might prefer more space for entertaining.

Cochran also helps families think about long-term needs, such as designing a playroom that can be easily converted to a den as the children age or having dual master suites – one upstairs and one downstairs. The downstairs suite can serve as a guestroom and then the homeowners can use it as they age and don’t want to climb the stairs.

“We have worked with so many clients that have all different needs, so we can suggest things to homeowners they might not have even thought about,” Cochran says.