There is a particular kind of conversation that happens at the start of a luxury residential project. The numbers in the room are larger, the brief is more personal, and the question of what design itself should cost becomes less about percentage points and more about what kind of practice the client is actually hiring. This piece is about what that figure typically looks like, and what it should be buying.
What the high end actually means
There is no formal definition of a luxury home in Australia or New Zealand, but a working threshold sits somewhere around $3 million of construction cost for a single residence — or roughly $8,000 to $10,000 per square metre and rising. Below that figure, you are building a very good house. Above it, the conversation shifts: bespoke joinery throughout, specified imported materials, structural moves that exist for design reasons rather than necessity, and a level of finish where every junction has been considered.
At the top of the market — $8 million and above — the project becomes something closer to a private commission. Custom hardware, hand-finished surfaces, integrated landscape, lighting designed from scratch, and a project team that may include separate interior, landscape, and lighting consultants working under the architect's coordination.
What design fees look like at this scale
The percentage figure tightens as construction budgets rise. A practice charging twelve per cent on a $1.2 million renovation would rarely sustain that rate on a $6 million house — the absolute dollar figure becomes very large, and the proportional time required does not scale linearly. A common range at the luxury end:
For builds between $3 million and $6 million, architectural fees typically sit between eight and twelve per cent of construction. Between $6 million and $10 million, the band compresses to roughly seven to ten per cent. Above $10 million, fees are often quoted as lump sums negotiated independently of build cost, frequently landing between five and eight per cent — but with the absolute figure measured in the hundreds of thousands or low millions.
On a $5 million build, that means design fees in the order of $400,000 to $600,000. On a $10 million project, $700,000 to $1 million. These figures should not be a surprise. They reflect the scale of work involved in resolving a building of this complexity, and they sit inside total project budgets where the design fee is, in proportional terms, a smaller line than most clients expect.
What the fee is buying you
At this scale, you are not just buying drawings. The fee covers a far longer and deeper engagement than a standard residential commission. The brief takes longer to develop, sometimes spanning many months of conversation before a line is drawn. Concept design explores multiple distinct approaches before one is committed to. Materials are sourced, sampled, and reviewed in person — including, often, travel to quarries, mills, and suppliers.
Documentation moves from a set of construction drawings into something closer to a manual: detail packages for joinery, hardware, lighting fittings, custom metalwork, stone selections, planting schedules. A typical residential project might produce 80 to 120 sheets of drawings. A luxury house can run to 300 or more, plus a parallel body of finishes schedules, specifications, and consultant coordination.
The site phase changes shape too. Construction often takes two to three years rather than one, and the architect's presence on site is far more constant. Weekly site meetings become standard. Custom elements are reviewed during fabrication, not after installation. The role becomes part designer, part client representative, part conductor of a small orchestra of trades.
Where the budget commonly underestimates
Three areas tend to be under-budgeted in luxury residential design, and they account for most of the unhappy conversations we have seen between clients and architects.
The first is interior design and procurement. Many clients assume the architect's fee includes a full interior package; often it does not, or it includes only the architectural interiors (joinery, floors, ceilings) and excludes furniture, art, and decoration. A separate interior fee at this scale typically runs another two to four per cent of construction. Worth confirming at the proposal stage.
The second is consultant coordination. A luxury house will usually engage a structural engineer, a hydraulic engineer, a mechanical engineer, a landscape architect, a lighting designer, an acoustic consultant, and sometimes a heritage consultant or planning expert. Architects coordinate these consultants but do not pay them. Their combined fees can add another three to five per cent on top of the architectural fee. This is rarely communicated clearly in early conversations.
The third is time. Most clients underestimate the calendar by twelve to eighteen months. A luxury residential project, from first call to handover, runs three to five years. That timeline carries its own carrying cost: interest on land, holding costs, inflation in construction pricing. Worth modelling honestly at the outset.
What to look for in a practice at this scale
The marker of a practice well-suited to this work is not the size of its portfolio. It is the depth and resolution of a small number of completed projects, looked at closely. Junctions. Material thresholds. The way light enters at different times of day. The handling of services and structure where they meet finishes. Practices that have built work at this level have a particular calmness in the way they describe their process — the language is more about constraints and decisions than about ambitions and inspirations.
It is also worth asking, directly, about team continuity. At this scale, the project will pass through many hands across many years. The architect you meet at the first conversation should be the one in the room at handover. If the practice cannot promise that, the project will feel different from what you signed up for, and the fee will not have bought what you thought it would.
A closing note
Luxury residential design is, in our view, one of the most demanding kinds of architectural work to do well. The brief is personal, the budget is large enough to remove most constraints, and the standard against which the finished building will be judged is unforgiving. The fee should reflect that. So should the conversation.
If the design conversation feels rushed in the first meeting, or the fee is quoted before the brief is understood, those are signals the project may not be in the right hands. At this scale, the slow start is the work.