Living Stone Wins Six 2026 American Residential Design Awards, Including Two Grand ARDA Honors
I’m proud to share that Living Stone Design + Build took home six awards in the 2026 American Residential Design Awards, including two Grand ARDA wins, the program’s highest distinction. ARDA is the American Institute of Building Design’s premier award program, and it’s judged by a panel of residential design and construction experts on the quality of the entry itself, not against a pool of competitors in a size or price bracket. You can see the full list of this year’s winners on the 2026 ARDA Winners page.
Our Two Grand ARDA Wins
Fair Oaks Estate earned a Grand ARDA in the Renovation (Built) category. A renovation award means something different than a new construction award in my mind, because you’re not just designing on a blank canvas, you’re working within the bones, quirks, and history of a structure that already exists, and making it function and feel like something entirely new without losing what made it worth saving in the first place. Grand recognition in this category tells me our team got that balance right.
Southcliff Horizon earned a Grand ARDA in the Accessible Living category. This one means a lot to me personally, because designing a home that’s genuinely accessible, not just code-compliant, but a home that actually works beautifully for the people living in it, takes a different kind of thoughtfulness from day one of design. It’s easy to bolt on accessibility features after the fact. It’s much harder to build a home where those features are woven into the design so seamlessly that they never feel like an accommodation at all.
Our Four ARDA Wins
Stoneridge Haven and Zen Mountain Haven both won ARDAs in the Custom Homes (Built) category. These are the projects that represent our core work day to day, full custom homes designed and built around how a specific family actually wants to live, and it means a great deal to have two of them recognized in the same year.
Casa Bonita, our California Mountain Ranch project, won an ARDA in the Model Homes (Built) category, recognizing the design and execution of a home meant to showcase what’s possible rather than built for one specific family’s exact brief.
Hidden Falls won an ARDA in the Healthy Home category, which reflects something we care about on every project regardless of whether it’s being judged for it: indoor air quality, material selection, and building science choices that affect how a home actually feels to live in day after day, not just how it photographs.
What Winning Six of These Actually Means to Us
Six recognitions in a single year, two of them at the Grand ARDA level, isn’t something that happens by accident or on one strong project alone. It reflects a team that approaches renovation, accessibility, custom design, model homes, and health and wellness in a home all with the same level of care, rather than treating any one of those as a specialty and the rest as an afterthought. That range is something we’re genuinely proud of.
If you’d like to see more of the work behind these awards, or talk about what a project like one of these could look like for you, reach out to Living Stone Design + Build. We’d love to show you around.
