BrightBuilt Home

We were very pleased with our experience with BrightBuilt Homes. We purchased a Sidekick as our retirement home, and we were very concerned with minimizing future energy needs, and conforming to a tight budget. BrightBuilt listen to our needs, and designed the perfect home for us. We have lived in our home for more than 3 years, and we are happy.
May 30th, 2023

We had an excellent experience working with the BrightBuilt Home team in 2021-2022. J Sandifer really started the ball rolling and gave us clear ideas of what we could and couldn't do both design and budget wise. Something also that he did that we extremely helpful was he set up three model house tours which wound up hugely influencing our eventual house design. Can't thank him enough for that. We were also so happy that he steered us to a Side Kick and it exceeded our expectations with design. Although it is definitely an intense year when you build a home, the BrightBuilt team helped guide us the whole way from start to finish. Audrey Rolio was our design coordinator and she was the perfect fit for us both in vision, talent, and temperament. We were thrilled with her work. She was detailed-oriented, conscientious, highly knowledgeable, skilled, and trustworthy. She was always available to discuss any changes, questions or concerns, and she did quite a bit of problem-solving for us as well. One of the many reasons that we love BrightBuilt is that it made the process of building a house much easier than a stick build. Also, another strong point was that, once the budget is set and the factory starts the build, you know what the price is. We highly recommend BBH for anyone seeking to build a sustainable home on a budget.
May 15th, 2023

BrightBuilt helped us design our house in 2017. It was a remarkably enjoyable process. Everybody we met was absolutely lovely and I think they truly believe in what they are doing. We choose BrightBuilt because we wanted to build in the lowest-carbon way possible, in terms of both production-related emissions and usage-related emissions, but we didn't have a huge budget. We ended up going with a lot of base options for budget reasons and that took a lot of the stress out of the process, honestly, because we didn't have to pick our "dream" kitchen floor or lots of fancy options. We've lived in our house for 5 years now and it's a beautiful, sturdy, safe place to call home. Everybody who visits remarks upon the huge windows facing south, the deep windowsills, and the open feel. It's quiet and we heat the entire thing with air-source heat pumps (mostly powered by our solar panels). We love it.
May 14th, 2023

As a builder very much focused on issues of sustainability, I am convinced that the future of sustainable housing belongs to modular construction. It is fast, efficient and cuts way down on waste. I have built two BrightBuilt houses in the last four years. Like all modulars, they went up fast--our most recent: from delivery to move-in in five months. BrightBuild stands apart, because that speed is matched by a consistent quality of design and assembly that allows for consistent air-tightness levels of around 1 ACH--the most important yet most difficult ingredient in a NZE-capable home. I love their base model designs and working with their smart and creative in-house architects and designers to modify those designs to meet the individual client's needs and tastes. My clients have been thrilled with the results.
Apr 9th, 2023

UPDATE: Below, I'm leaving my initial review, as I do not believe it is fair to change it. That said, after writing the review, the company finally paid proper attention to some of the issues. I received a call from the owner who wanted to fully understand what went wrong, and what they could do to fix it. They were very kind and understanding, and issued us a check to pay for the issues that arose, which paid to fix them in full. This was greatly appreciated. We do love the home, and get constant complements on how stunning it is. __ I really want to be able to recommend BrightBuilt homes, but I simply cannot in good consciousness. We started working with them over two years ago on a project. There were a few motivations, including supporting the prefab industry, which we believe will be important in the future, especially for energy efficient homes, and for the supposed ease and speed involved. Unfortunately, we were disappointed at many, many turns. First, we quickly realized that Brightbuilt doesn't make the process any easier than going with a traditional architect and building a home from scratch. In fact, while they offer a "selections guide", it turns out that many selections have to be done after the home is delivered. This is particularly challenging when trying to stay on budget. We expected them to be able to explain/ballpark cost differences for choices we made, but that turned out not to be the case, resulting in us being six figures over the budget sheet they provided us (though they say it's an estimate, the degree of certainty they make you feel is deceptive). When the home finally arrived (many months late, which was not only inconvenient but expensive and destroyed the point of a prefab in the first place), there were many many issues. Multiple selections were wrong, and they weren't willing to stand behind the fact that what they sent was different from what we ordered. This resulted in many thousands of dollars lost, not to mention time overages and inconveniences. Bigger, much of the plumbing was simply in the wrong place, and multiple electrical outlets were either missing or simply didn't work. This part might have been on the factory that actually build the house (turns out they design it, but then contract out the building process, which isn't clear from the start). It turns into a game of hot potato where nobody wants to fess up and own major mistakes. I will say the house is beautiful. That said, for the money we spent we could have had a nicer house built, and one more custom, on site, and done even faster, than order through brightbuilt. Overall, it's a great idea but they have far too many kinks to work out before I could ever recommend them. A true shame, as I think their values lie in the right place for the pre-fab energy efficient future. We're just not there yet.
Apr 9th, 2023