The project at a glance
Kulwinder does custom millwork and cabinetry out in the Vancouver area. Kitchens, bathrooms, panels, high-end finish work for homes. She's never had a website, it's all been word of mouth, and now she wants one that looks as premium as the work she puts out.
It started as a one-pager and grew into a small multi-page build. A homepage, plus a projects section where each job opens into its own gallery.
Who we're designing for
Her buyers aren't walk-in homeowners. They're builders and developers, and her sweet spot is multiplex builders running six to twelve units. People who know the trade, speak the design language, and can tell real quality when they see it. So the site has to read as premium and credible to a professional eye, never too busy or salesy.
The feeling to hit is trust. She wins work because she's the one who won't cut a corner, the person who says she won't put anything in your home that she wouldn't put in her own. The design should carry that. Solid, considered, quietly high-end.
Brand direction
She has a clear point of view here, so this isn't a blank slate.
Colour
Black is her favourite, and she called it premium, so that's the anchor. Walnut brown comes from the wood itself, and white gives it room to breathe. That's the direction. The exact tones are yours to find, so run with what feels right to you inside black, walnut and white.
Type
She's picky about fonts and she knows what she likes. Bold, straight, lineal, capital letters. That interior-design-magazine look, upright and architectural. Lean into strong, confident type with real presence, tight tracking, plenty of uppercase.
Logo
She's having a VMD mark made on 99designs, so it comes from her side. Design around a clean VMD wordmark or monogram living in the black-and-walnut world, and we'll drop the real one in once it's ready.
The hard rules
A few things are non-negotiable, straight from her mouth.
- No auto-scrolling sliders or carousels. She can't stand them, and they hurt conversion anyway. Images stay still. Galleries are user-controlled.
- No pricing on the site at all. No project budgets, no starting-from figures, nowhere. She wants price kept off entirely.
- Nothing busy. She's drawn to premium and restrained. When in doubt, take something out.
Structure
What the homepage needs to cover
These are the pieces, pulled from the call. Order and composition are your call as the designer.
- Hero. Who she is and the premium positioning, with a clear primary call to action. There's no contact form, so the CTA points to her contact details.
- About her, with her photo. Her story and her quality ethos, plus the reason clients work with her, the guidance, the reliability, being easy to deal with. The "why choose her" lives inside this section, not as a separate one.
- Who she works with. A short read on her ideal clients, builders and developers, multiplex builders especially. It sets the tone and filters the right leads in.
- Services. What she does. Custom millwork and cabinetry, kitchens, bathrooms, panels.
- How it works. Her process start to finish: design, sign-off, production, install. A real trust-builder for builders, and she's already told us the whole thing.
- Featured work. A selection of projects that open into their full galleries.
- Testimonials. Quotes from past clients, text or voice memo, video if it's easy.
- Service area. Vancouver and the Fraser Valley now, Alberta and the Island next. Feeds the local search too.
- FAQ. Optional Only worth building once she gives us a few real questions she actually gets. Skip it if it turns into filler.
- Contact. Her details shown directly, no form, with a closing call to action.
If a piece feels missing here, flag it before you lock in the layout. Better to catch a needed section now than to rework it later.
Project pages
Each job is a clickable entry that opens its own gallery. Alongside the images:
- Project name
- Year
- Short description of the work
- Roughly how long it ran
The gallery is something the visitor moves through themselves. Fixed, controlled, no motion on its own. Design it so a project with eight or ten photos still feels calm and easy to scan.
Working with the photos
Worth flagging early, because it shapes the layout. She has before-and-after shots on a Canon Rebel, plus some that only live on her phone, so the quality is going to be uneven. A few may need upscaling before they're usable, and one or two might not make the cut at all.
The upscaling is handled on our end, so it's not a problem you have to solve. What matters for you is the framing: build layouts that make the photography look intentional even when the source isn't perfect. Generous space, strong crops, one consistent treatment across the set. The design should carry the weaker shots, not expose them.
Hold loose until the first set comes in. Once her photos are through and we've checked the quality, we'll know how hard the design has to work to lift them.
Still coming from her
Three things are open on her side, so don't design yourself into a corner waiting on them.
- Reference sites she's drawn to. She's sending examples of the look and feel she likes.
- The full photo set, through Google Drive or Dropbox.
- The VMD logo from 99designs.
How we're working this one
You're in from the start on this one. Wayne's setting up a group chat with you and Kulwinder, so anything this brief doesn't answer, you can ask her directly and refine as you go. No middleman, no telephone game. She's in Vancouver on Pacific time (we are 9 hours ahead), so keep that in mind for when replies come back.
