Carolyn Van Lang

Carolyn designed all the interiors and chose all the finishes and furnishings for our house, integrating traditional and modern elements in a very pleasing fashion. She was able to guide our incoherent thoughts into an outcome that continues to please and even to wow new visitors after all these years. In 2013, we rehired her to help us with redesigning the interior of our pool house and to help with updating finishes. Carolyn is easy to work with but was not afraid to direct us in order to maintain the integrity of the overall design. My husband and I would recommend her without reservation.

Carolyn designed a bedroom addition which included a master bath, master closet and porch area. As well, she selected paint color for the whole house. She’s fantastic. Carolyn is creative, has a great sense of style, extremely prompt and hard working. She knows how to go to bat for her clients in regard to city permit and planning issues. She’s the only architect and designer I’ll ever work with from now on.

Carolyn is an extremely talented architect with a great eye for space and detail. She added an entire second floor to our hundred year old Dutch Colonial home. Neighbors, friends, complete strangers tell us our home now looks like this house was always built this way, that it does not look “added to”. A huge compliment! Carolyn is also very sweet natured and kind. She was a pleasure to work with every step of the way.

Carolyn is a very talented architect with great interior design capabilities as well. She helped us reconfigure our floor plan to maximize living space for a family room with open access to the kitchen, She has a rich knowledge of architectural history so she is very good in adding small details in her design so that the new construction is seamless to the original house. As part of the project, we moved our laundry room upstairs and renovated an old master bathroom. Our kids love it so much, they are using it as well when we are not kicking them out. Her tile design is intricate yet not busy. She is very detailed in her instructions so that all tile lines are worked out in advance to insure highest aesthetics. Carolyn provides excellent support navigating the approval process as she has strong relationships with city planners. She is an award winning architect with multiples awards in Piedmont and Berkeley including our outdoor pool / pool house / garden project she designed previous to our last interior project.

Carolyn went above and beyond our expectations! She is fast, efficient, and gives valuable services to all aspect of the project. If you have a serious remodel, I would highly recommend going with Carolyn as she works well with contractors and has a great eye for interior design as well!!!!

We have worked with Carolyn on two very different projects during the past 10 years, the first being our Mediterranean home in Los Altos, originally built in the 1920's, and the second a folk Victorian built in the 1930's and located in the Rose Garden area of San Jose. Carolyn designed an upstairs master suite for the Los Altos home that fit beautifully with the overall design and size of the home and redesigned the lower floor to include a new family room and laundry. The Victorian home involved a complete remodeling of what was a 1300 square foot cottage into a 3000 square foot home by adding a second story and opening up the ground floor to make a very livable and updated home with all the original character of the Victorian style. Carolyn is trained in classic architectural styles and has the ability to adapt them to modern needs and conveniences while retaining all the classic elements. She is not only very knowledgeable and skilled, she is also a delightful person, easy to work with, efficient, attentive and responsive to our design requests and questions, and she is helpful throughout the entire construction process. We cannot recommend her highly enough and are looking forward to having another opportunity to work with her.

Carolyn has an incredible vision for every space she walks into. Once we saw the first draft of suggested changes, we were blown away. She had ideas that we could never have thought of on our own. Her plans on how to better make use of our space added far more value to our property than what we invested in the project. I would recommend Carolyn to anyone, and have frequently!

Carolyn is an extremely talented and experienced architect and interior designer. She is flexible, creative and has great taste. She meets all deadlines and works to your budget. We almost completely rebuilt our 1927 house with Carolyn over 8 months, finishing in 2011. She made our badly-laid-out, frustrating house (kitchen, dining room, family room and an upstairs bedroom and bath) into a beautiful home with great bones, beautiful transitional interior design style and much more usability for cooking, eating, entertaining, bathing. She can design to a high or low budget, but is particularly good at high end. She loves modern but is extremely adept at transitional as well, and has the skill to make the new design relate to the original architecture beautifully. She is a great problem solver, too. We had an issue when the house was opened up - the family room attic beams were visually off-center and she solved it by adding partial wainscotting. It looks perfect: you would never know. We had lots of issues that came up as we demo'd the house during the remodel and she solved each one easily and gorgeously, just like that one. She is soft-spoken and doesn't overtalk, but that doesn't mean she's passive in her work. She will make sure to let you know anything you need to know about your remodel and your choices. She is very professional and has great integrity. She very modest, but she's the real deal. We recommend Carolyn most highly.

Carolyn was instrumental with our entire house remodel. She helped execute a floor plan and was our number one source for all detail design work that was done in the house. She has a great eye, superb knowledge of architectural details, a true commitment to keeping the look of the home consistent with the age of the home and expertise in tile, fireplace, railing, paint colors and lighting. This is a very short list of her skills. She is easy to work with. Her communication skills are commendable. She made us feel as if we were her only client when we were not. She is flexible, available for consults and fast to return drawings. We loved working with her and thank her dearly for making our home beautiful. She made a really long project seem bearable. She works hard, listens well and cares about all aspects of the project from small to large. We would highly recommend her to all our friends and to those we don't know- like you!