Nobody wants to think about getting older when they're designing their dream home. I understand that completely. You're at a point in your life where things are moving fast, everything feels possible, and the last thing on your mind is what this house needs to do for you thirty years from now.

But I think about it. Because that's my job.

I've walked through homes with clients who built beautifully in their late thirties and are now in their fifties wondering why everything suddenly feels slightly off. The staircase that felt grand and dramatic now feels like something to negotiate. The master suite on the third floor made perfect sense when the children were young and needed to be on a different level, now it's just a lot of stairs at the end of a long day. The bathroom that looked stunning in the showroom was never quite as functional as it should have been, and nobody noticed until it started to matter.

These are not failures of design. They're failures of conversations. The right questions weren't asked early enough.

What I try to do and what I'd encourage anyone building now to think about is design for the whole arc. Not just the chapter you're in. A ground floor room that functions as a guest suite today but could become a primary bedroom one day if you need it. Doorways and corridors with just a little more width than the minimum, so the house never feels like it's working against you. A bathroom on every level. Outdoor spaces that are genuinely accessible, not just visually beautiful. A kitchen that works for someone who loves to cook at 40 and still works comfortably at 70.

None of this makes a home feel clinical or compromised. Done well, you would never look at these decisions and think, oh, that's there for when I'm older. This just makes the house work better for you.

The Bay Area is full of people who think decades ahead in every area of their professional lives. The same instinct that makes someone a great founder, the ability to build something today that's ready for what's coming, is exactly the instinct that makes for a great home. You're not designing for who you are right now. You're designing for every version of yourself that's going to live here.

This conversation is one of my favorites to have. Because when clients start thinking this way, the home that comes out of it is almost always richer, more considered, and more genuinely useful than the one they walked in imagining. It doesn't take much to get there. Just the willingness to look a little further ahead than today.

— Malika Junaid, AIA
Principal Architect, M. Designs Architects
Los Altos Hills, California