Lookbox Living Design Awards: Recognising standout homes

A beautiful home is easy to notice. The harder question is whether the design holds up beyond the first image.

Does the layout make sense for the people who live there? Has the space been planned with intelligence and care? And does the home feel resolved, liveable and thoughtfully put together?

These are the questions behind the Lookbox Living Design Awards, an ongoing juried programme created to recognise exceptional residential projects featured on Lookbox Living.

What makes a home stand out

A defining feature of the newly revamped Lookbox Living is its integrated awards programme, which gives homeowners another way to discover and understand the homes featured on the site.

Each shortlisted project by the Lookbox Living editorial team is reviewed through the Lookbox Living Design Awards by a rotating panel of industry professionals using a structured scoring framework. This adds a juried layer to the way projects are presented, so they are not seen as visual inspiration alone.

The aim is not to reward a single style, trend or type of home. Instead, the awards look at how well a project responds to its brief, its site conditions and the way its homeowners live.

How projects are judged

Projects are assessed across three key areas.

The first looks at spatial intelligence: how well the layout uses the home’s available space, supports daily routines, organises circulation and integrates storage or functional needs.

The second considers the strength and consistency of the design direction, including palette, proportion, balance and how coherently the home comes together across different areas.

The third looks at overall impact and thoughtfulness — from problem-solving and detailing to liveability, emotional quality and the sense of completeness in the finished home.

Each project is scored by the judging panel, with final review applied where needed to distinguish closely matched entries.

Project of the Week and Project of the Month

Project of the Week recognises outstanding homes recently featured on Lookbox Living. These weekly selections highlight projects that show strong design resolution, whether through clever planning, a distinctive concept, sensitive material choices or an especially thoughtful response to the homeowner’s needs.

At the end of each month, the highest-scoring weekly winner is named Project of the Month. This recognises the project with the strongest overall panel evaluation among that month’s selections.

For homeowners, the awards offer a more useful way to look at a home. A striking image may draw you in, but an award-recognised project gives you more to notice: how the space works, how the design is carried through, and how well the home supports the people living in it.

In that sense, the Lookbox Living Design Awards is not only about celebrating good homes. It is also about helping homeowners make more informed interior design choices — giving them better points of reference as they browse homes, compare ideas and begin conversations with designers.

Interior designers: submit your projects for a chance to be featured and considered for the Lookbox Living Design Awards.