Contemporary Custom Home in McLean, VA

A truly custom high-performance home should reflect the people who live there. This contemporary home in McLean shows how flexibility, thoughtful design, and high-performance construction can create a space that feels personal while prioritizing comfort and energy efficiency. From dedicated home offices to a golf simulator, wine room, and home gym with a sauna, every adjustment helped shape the home around the family's lifestyle.

In this spotlight, you can expect to see:

Contemporary Custom Home Design With a Personal Approach
High-Performance Construction Meets Energy Efficiency in the DMV
Custom Spaces Designed Around the Family's Lifestyle
Flexibility Creates Better Custom Homes
High-Performance Custom Homes Across the DMV

Contemporary Custom Home Design With a Personal Approach

When the homeowners came to August Homes, they had a clear vision for how they wanted their home to support their family and lifestyle. The kitchen would be the center of the home, with an open layout for everyday living and entertaining, while two dedicated home offices would support working from home. They also wanted spaces that reflected their interests, including a golf simulator, wine room, home gym, and sauna.

With the design already well underway, the August Homes team worked closely with the homeowners to thoughtfully adapt the plans—including modifying the basement slab to create the additional ceiling height needed for the golf simulator. The result is a contemporary custom home shaped around the people who live in it.

Designing for the Homeowners, Not Just the Plans

Instead of simply building what was already on paper, we looked for thoughtful ways to incorporate those ideas into the existing design. That flexibility allowed us to create a more personalized home design while preserving the contemporary architectural vision, comfort, and performance goals of the home.

For August Homes, that is an important part of being a custom home builder. Whether we are building in McLean, Vienna, Great Falls, Arlington, or elsewhere in Northern Virginia and the DC Metro area, the goal is to create a home around the people who will actually live in it.

An Open-Concept Kitchen at the Center of the Home

The homeowners wanted the kitchen to serve as the center of everyday life. An open-concept kitchen creates a natural connection between cooking, gathering, and entertaining, allowing the space to work just as well for an ordinary family evening as it does when hosting friends and family.

Throughout the home, abundant natural light complements the clean, contemporary architecture and creates bright, welcoming living spaces.

Dedicated Spaces for Working From Home

With both homeowners working from home, having two dedicated offices was an important part of the plan. Each custom home office provides a defined workspace while allowing the rest of the home to remain focused on family life.

It is a simple example of what personalized design can accomplish. A custom home should respond to the routines, priorities, and lifestyle of the family living there.

High-Performance Construction Meets Energy Efficiency in the DMV

We build beyond the basics, combining thoughtful design with high-performance construction to create homes that are more comfortable, energy-efficient, healthy, and built to last.

A Tight Building Envelope for Greater Comfort

Behind the finishes and architectural details is one of the home's most important performance features: a tight building envelope.

Careful attention to the building envelope helps limit unwanted air leakage, improve energy efficiency, and maintain a more comfortable indoor environment throughout the year. It is an example of how building science and thoughtful construction can make a meaningful difference in the way a home feels and performs.

This emphasis on the parts of a home that are not always visible is central to August Homes' approach to high-performance custom homes in Northern Virginia.

Building Beyond What You Can See

High-performance construction is about more than adding energy-efficient products to a conventional house. It requires careful consideration of how the entire home works together.

At August Homes, we pay close attention to what happens behind the walls, with a broader focus on energy efficiency, healthy indoor air, resilient construction, integrated technology, thoughtful design, and high-performance HVAC.

That approach allows us to bring the principles of green home building, energy-independent home design, and sustainable home design into luxury custom homes without sacrificing architecture, comfort, or personalization.

A High-Performance Approach to Green Home Building

For homeowners interested in green custom homes and lower-energy living, the details of how a home is designed and constructed matter.

A high-performing building envelope, thoughtful energy-efficient construction, and building science principles can work together to create a home that uses energy more thoughtfully while providing greater comfort throughout the year.

As a Phius Certified Passive House Builder, August Homes brings passive house building science knowledge to our broader approach to energy-efficient custom homes in Northern Virginia, Maryland, and DC.

Custom Spaces Designed Around the Family's Lifestyle

This is where the flexibility of custom home construction becomes especially valuable. Rather than allowing the existing plans to dictate how the family could use the home, we found a way to make the design work for them.

Making Room for a Golf Simulator

One of the biggest design challenges, and one of the home's most distinctive features, was the golf simulator room.

A golf simulator requires more ceiling height than a typical basement room. Since the home was already well into the design process, incorporating the space required a more customized solution.

We modified the basement slab and recessed the floor specifically in the golf simulator area, creating the additional height the room required. It took extra planning and coordination, but it allowed us to incorporate something important to the homeowners into the existing design.

A Basement Built for Entertaining

The lower level became much more than a conventional basement. A large basement entertainment space gives the family room to gather, relax, and entertain, while the golf simulator and wine room bring a distinctly personal character to the space.

Each feature serves a purpose and reflects something about how the homeowners wanted to enjoy their home. That is what separates a truly custom home from one that simply checks boxes on a list of luxury features.

A Private Home Gym and Sauna

The home gym and sauna add another layer of personalization. Creating a dedicated wellness space within the home allows fitness and relaxation to become part of everyday life.

Combined with the wine room, golf simulator, home offices, open kitchen, and entertaining areas, these spaces demonstrate how a luxury custom home can be designed around the individual interests and routines of the people who live there.

Flexibility Creates Better Custom Homes

This project reinforces something we believe strongly at August Homes: good custom home building requires flexibility.

Plans provide the roadmap, but successfully building a custom home means listening to homeowners and recognizing opportunities to improve the design. Even though this project was already well into the design process, we were able to make meaningful changes that better reflected the family's priorities.

The goal was never simply to follow a set of plans. It was to make sure the finished home worked for the people who were going to live there.

Contemporary Design Meets High Performance

The finished home brings together contemporary custom home design, personalized spaces, abundant natural light, energy efficiency, and high-performance construction.

It is a combination that reflects August Homes' larger approach to building. We believe beautiful architecture and high performance should complement one another, creating homes that are refined, comfortable, energy-conscious, and designed to endure.

High-Performance Custom Homes Across the DMV

August Homes builds luxury high-performance homes throughout Northern Virginia and the greater DMV area.

From McLean, Vienna, Great Falls, Arlington, and Fairfax County to communities throughout the DMV, our focus is on creating homes that combine thoughtful design, quality craftsmanship, personalization, and high-performance building principles.

Working With August Homes

Whether a homeowner’s priorities include an open-concept kitchen filled with natural light, dedicated home offices, specialty entertaining spaces, greater energy efficiency, or the principles of passive house and green home building, our goal remains the same: to build a better home around the way they want to live.

At August Homes, thoughtful design, high-performance construction, and quality craftsmanship come together through a personalized building experience. Explore our portfolio, learn about our services and process, review our cost guide resource to better understand the investment, and discover the areas we serve throughout the DC metro area and DMV.

Wherever you are in the planning process, these resources can help you understand what’s possible and take the next step toward a home designed around you.