SPECIALTIES

Horse Stable Designs

With mild summers and hundreds of miles of shorelines and pastures, it’s no surprise that Michigan is becoming one of the top summer destinations for horses and their owners. Here’s a little bit about 42º North’s approach to building luxury horse barns and creating the perfect horse stable designs for both our two- and four-legged clients.

What Makes a Luxury Horse Barn?

A true luxury horse barn factors in both the needs of your horse and you. It maximizes space without necessarily expanding the footprint of the building. Even more, it ensures that your horses are able to live comfortably and feel relaxed in their environment.

Here are just a few other aspects to consider when dreaming up your luxury horse stable:

Ventilation: You probably don’t like a stuffy house or a drafty house, so why would your horses? This applies to everything from the central HVAC system to the layout of your stalls and the inclusion of active cupolas.

Lighting: Horses love natural light just as much as humans. Using natural and warm lighting and having proper window placements creates a pleasant, inviting environment for both the animals and the people interacting with them.

Materials: This goes beyond just the wood you use in the framework, walls, and stalls of your horse barn. Also consider wash stalls, tack rooms, and materials that can withstand horses’ chewing.

Scale: It almost goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway—horses have different scale requirements than humans. Most fixtures and features in a luxury horse barn should accommodate the horses’ needs first, including their comfort and protection.

Why Choose 42° North as Your Horse Barn Designer?

We are here to make your equine dreams a reality. While we have decades of experience in designing residential and luxury homes for both people and horses, we care more about building in your best interest. That might be why we’ve been able to keep in contact with our clients because we consider them our friends first and foremost.

Our Custom Horse Barns

At 42º North, we specialize in custom equestrian barns and stables. Whether you have dozens of horses you breed for jumping or dressage, a thoroughbred racer, or a Clydesdale that recently retired from an illustrious career advertising beer, we can design to suit your needs.

Customization is our specialty. Whether you’re looking for a top-quality spot to summer your horses in Michigan and need to accommodate your whole team, we can help.

Our Horse Stable Design Process

When you work with us, we know we’re all in it for the long haul. Where most designers will start drawing in person during the first meeting, we think this is a pure dog-and-pony show. Instead, we want to get all the information we need to understand your desires through every step of the design process.

Listening

While we can’t (and probably shouldn’t) speak for every equestrian designer out there today, we firmly believe that a designer’s best asset isn’t their hands—it’s their ears.

When you work with us to design your custom horse barn or stable, we’ll spend a lot of time learning about how you use your current space. We’ll also ask a lot of questions and observe how you and your horses use the space as well.

Perhaps you have a caretaker for your horses who lives on-site and wants to be there for them 24/7. Since horses startle easily and dislike loud or sudden noises, you may have soundproofing in mind for your walls to keep the animals comfortable. Maybe you even have one medicine hat pinto who absolutely refuses to sleep lying down.

Whatever the case may be, we want to hear about you and your horses’ specific situations. That way, we can design the perfect stables that meet your needs as much as they meet

Touring

If a stable designer starts designing a horse stable for you without visiting your property first to see what they’re working with, run.

We’ll take a tour of your land and your horses’ current home. This is the most important part of the process! It gives us an idea of what we’re working with and how you and your animals use your current space. Even more, it shows us things we would never be able to discover just through conversations or questionnaires.

Together, we’ll go through each part of your current stable or barn to learn more about the ergonomics, spatial relations, and scale. This will reveal a lot to us about how to make your new custom horse stables the best they can be.

Designing

Once we have a comprehensive understanding of you, your horses, and your lifestyle, we’re ready to begin putting pen to paper (in the metaphorical sense—we use CAD software at 42º North). Our top priority is to focus on the feelings you want to experience any time you visit your horses throughout the day.

During our design process, we feel it’s important to define every single detail of what you’re trying to accomplish. We also want to make sure you see as much of what the final outcome will look like as possible. That’s why we build 3D models of your custom horse stable or barn and flesh it out with all the details, including the landscaping, siding textures, and more.

Building

Don’t expect us to drop off the face of the earth once we’ve finished your horse stable designs. During the building process, we try to be as hands-on as possible. We work with your builder to accommodate your budget and schedule while turning your vision into a reality.

For us, this means frequent site visits and communication with your builder to see how the construction is progressing. We’ll also provide recommendations for interior designers, landscapers, and more.