BUILD Q4 2026 Covering every phase of a property’s development through its cohesive process, Living Stone Design + Build is an award-winning design and build firm based in Asheville, North Carolina. It works across Western North Carolina, Upstate South Carolina, and East Tennessee, guided by 30 years of experience, an integrated team, and a commitment to enhancing how people live. As it is named Best HighPerformance Custom Home Builder 2026 – Southeast USA, Sean Sullivan, the founder of Living Stone, told us more about its custom homes and renovations. Custom Homes Built for Wellbeing Contact Details: Contact: Sean D. Sullivan Company: Living Stone Design + Build Web Address: https://livingstoneconstruction.com/ Specialising in customs homes and renovations in Asheville, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, Living Stone Design + Build is on a mission to build happier, healthier lives for its clients. The company’s core values of humble, hungry, and smart are inspired by Partick Leniconi’s 2016 book, ‘The Ideal Team Player’. Both this mission and these values are the foundation of an approach that sees Sean and his team deliver the absolute highest quality of house per square foot across these regions. It is also thanks to these standards that every customer Living Stone engages ends up with a higher return on investment than they otherwise would, something aided by the company’s documented certification process. Consistency across its designs and builds is then achieved through the 13 distinct architectural styles the company uses, with each of these being infused with its clients’ unique presences to turn a house into their home. This method was applied to great effect late last year, when Living Stone completed one of its most memorable projects to date, Stoneridge Haven in Waynesville, North Carolina. The home is a study in scale and warmth, special because it was built in close collaboration with the owners. Their requests included speciality lighting, tall ceilings to highlight their art collections, and a room for their fish, as well as emphasis on biophilic design throughout, to connect the home and its architecture to the outdoors. On the subject of their finished Living Stone custom home, the owners said: “This home exceeded our expectations. Although building on this mountain lot was challenging, and we hit bad soils, your team did an amazing job of delivering the designs we wanted to incorporate into our dream home.” Ultimately, they summarised: “The intentionality that you put into wellness is greatly appreciated and left us with no regrets.” Sean too was especially fond of the project, with his favourite parts being the mountain views, which makes it feel as though as you are luxury camping outside, and both the hidden powder room and the wine room built for Sommeliers. Sean is also proud of how his team navigated the challenges of the build, especially when a certain brand of concrete siding left expansion joints, leading to a colony of honeybees building a hive in the soffit. Safe to say they were quickly relocated and work soon continued. Aside from the above, what really makes this custom home stand out is the fact that it reflects Living Stone’s mission to build happier, healthier lives. It does this in many ways across three audiences: its clients, the team, and their community. As Sean explained: “We want to make sure that whatever we are doing, we are carrying our mission across all three audiences.” Just some examples of this in action include written specifications to deliver a home without the ‘new house smell’, and again incorporating biophilic design. Looking ahead to the future of its custom home and renovation projects from Asheville to Tennessee, Sean explained how Living Stone was an early adopter of AI, which its team are all trained in and which is used by office staff on a daily basis. Sean and co. are finding new ways to utilise these tools to improve communication, documentation, profitability, and the overall client experience, ensuring neither they nor their clients are left behind. Outside of this, the design philosophy at the heart of Living Stone is set for an expansion, with the goal here being for the team to be able to offer clients what they want before even they know what that is. Finally, Sean expressed interest in working on ways to reduce or even eliminate electromagnetic frequency across its homes. In essence, all of this comes back to what Living Stone Design + Build was created to do: create extraordinary homes that enhance wellbeing and enrich daily life for generations to come. Such a strong commitment has led to this multi-award-winning company being featured as part of BUILD’s 2026 Design and Build Awards.
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