CAPS Certified Home Advisory for the Long Game
The people I work with care deeply about how their home looks and feels. For me, that is the starting point.
Dwelling Well Studio helps design-conscious homeowners make renovation and property decisions with the next thirty years in mind. Not as an afterthought. From the beginning.
The Argument
The longevity conversation has a missing piece.
Finance, health, relationships, purpose — serious people are thinking carefully about what it means to live well across a much longer life. The home, where most of us will spend the majority of those years, is largely absent from that conversation.
What exists instead is a conversation about adaptations: grab bars, stairlifts, clinical interventions made after something has already gone wrong. Design as an afterthought. Aesthetics as a casualty.
The person I work with is earlier than that moment. She is making decisions now — about a renovation, a property purchase, a home she intends to stay in — and wants to make them well. She understands that the decisions being made while the walls are open are the cheapest ones she will ever make.
Design intelligence and a home designed for a long life are not mutually exclusive. For Dwelling Well Studio, beauty is the starting point.
Who This Is For
You are thinking about the next thirty years. That is exactly the point.
Renovating
You are already working with architects and contractors. The moment the walls are open is the cheapest moment to make the decisions that will matter in twenty years. Most renovation briefs never ask these questions. This one will.
Buying or Downsizing
A property's floor plan, layout, and structural possibilities determine what it can become. Before you commit, it is worth knowing what you are buying for the long term — and what the renovation brief should include from day one.
Navigating a Diagnosis
A new progressive diagnosis changes the conversation about home. Not into a clinical one — into a design one. What does this home need to become across the next ten or twenty years, and how do we get there beautifully?
Services
Three ways to work together.
Virtual Home Assessment
A 90-minute video consultation in which we walk through your home together and explore how it serves — or could serve — the life you intend to keep living. Followed by a written brief you can take directly to your architect, designer, or contractor.
Video call + written brief delivered within five working days
Renovation Brief Review
You have plans underway. I review them through a thirty-year lens and give you a written report on what questions are not being asked, which decisions should be made now while the work is happening, and what the brief should include.
Written report delivered within five working days of receiving plans
Property Purchase Review
Before you commit to a property, I assess its thirty-year potential: what it can become structurally, what it cannot, what the renovation brief should include, and what questions to ask before you sign.
Written report delivered within five working days of receiving floor plans and photographs
How It Works
A process that fits around what you are already doing.
Conversation
We talk about your home, your plans, and how you imagine living in five, ten, twenty years. No clinical assessments. Thoughtful questions about how you actually want to live.
Assessment
I review your space — existing or planned — identifying where design decisions made now will compound well across thirty years, and where the brief has gaps worth closing.
Recommendations
A written brief: clear, prioritised, and practical. Designed to sit alongside your renovation plans or stand alone as a reference document for when the work begins.
Coordination
Where useful, I work alongside your architects, designers, and contractors to make sure the brief translates into the finished home as intended.
Your Team
I work alongside the professionals you have already chosen.
My role is to bring a thirty-year lens to your project before the design process begins, and to stay in the room as it develops. I am not replacing your architect or designer. I am adding a perspective that is rarely in the brief.
Architects
Interior Designers
Contractors
Occupational Therapists
Financial Advisers
Estate Agents
About
Hello. I am Shellie.
Twenty years ago my father had a stroke. The family home of thirty years — a place he knew by heart — became an obstacle course almost overnight. Every room revealed a decision that had never been asked.
More recently, my late husband's progressive neurological condition meant I spent years navigating exactly the decisions I now help clients make. What does this home need to become? Which modifications preserve the life we want to keep living rather than just managing the one we have? And how do we achieve this in a way that is in keeping with the aesthetic we have already established in our living environment? Those questions, asked in real time with real stakes, are the foundation of this practice.
I work with people who care deeply about how their homes look and feel. That care and designing well for a long life belong in the same conversation. For me, beauty is the starting point.
Before founding Dwelling Well Studio, I spent over two decades in business transformation and regulatory compliance — work that taught me how to see around corners, ask questions people have not yet thought to ask, and translate complex needs into practical plans. I bring that same rigour to homes.
Credentials
- CAPS Certified — Certified Aging-in-Place Specialist (NAHB)
Get in Touch
Ready to think ahead?
An initial conversation is free. Whether you are mid-renovation, about to start, or simply thinking about what the next thirty years ask of your home — get in touch and we will find a time to talk.
shellie@dwellingwell.studioWorking with clients across the USA, UK and France.