Lakefront Homes Across Wisconsin, Michigan & Indiana
From Lake Geneva to Harbor Country and the Indiana dunes, a principal-led studio for summer estates and second homes where the setting is the brief.
A lakefront home is a particular kind of architecture: built to be lived in lightly, across long summers, with the water always somewhere in the room. Around Lake Geneva, generations of shingle-and-stone summer estates sit beside contemporary builds that ask for the same generosity of light and lawn. In Harbor Country, New Buffalo, Union Pier, cottages and modern retreats turn quietly toward the dunes and the lake beyond them. Along the Indiana shoreline, the homes of Long Beach, Michiana and Beverly Shores are shaped by the dune line itself, framing the horizon at every turn. These are houses where the landscape writes the design brief, and where a second home often carries as much meaning as the first. Martire Custom Homes works here as a single, principal-led voice, reading the land, the light and the way a family actually summers, and carrying that understanding from pre-architect planning through to finishes and styling.
Architecture That Belongs to the Water
A home on the water asks more of its architecture than a primary residence does. It must hold the view without surrendering to it, draw the lake indoors through glass and considered sightlines, and weather long off-seasons with grace. The housing stock across this region is varied, historic summer estates around Lake Geneva, dune-framed retreats in Beverly Shores and Long Beach, lighter modern builds through New Buffalo and Union Pier, yet the questions are shared. How does the home greet the water on arrival? Where does the morning light fall, and where the evening? How do interior and exterior become one continuous room across a season?
Martire begins by reading the site and the existing home before a single line is committed to paper, balancing a home's energies with its setting, and synchronising the way a family lives with the way the architecture wants to breathe. Courtenay Martire is best engaged in the pre-architect, pre-construction phase, where she can select or work alongside the architect, guide or shape the plans, and hold the full artistic direction of the project as one coherent idea rather than a sequence of handovers.
A Second Home Made Personal
A lakefront house is rarely only a house. It is the place a family gathers, the setting of summers that are remembered for decades, the home that will hold the next generation as easily as this one. That emotional weight deserves design that is genuinely personal, not merely handsome. Drawing on a background that moves fluidly between art, fashion, photography, music and architecture, Courtenay crafts each homeowner's soul print into spaces that feel inevitable, thoughtful, well-built and unmistakably theirs.
The work runs deep and stays under one hand: custom joinery and millwork, considered cabinetry, lighting plans tuned to lake light, drapery and textiles, materials, finishes, art direction and styling, all carried by long-standing artisan partnerships. Whether the project is a whole-home transformation of an heirloom estate or a ground-up custom home on the shore, the homeowner remains the star of the home.
One Voice, Across State Lines
Lakefront projects are most often undertaken at a distance, a primary home in Chicago or the suburbs, a treasured second home a few hours along the shore. Martire is built for exactly this kind of trust. Working as a principal-led studio with select availability across Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and beyond, the firm carries design-led work from roughly $300K and well upward, luxury renovations, additions, custom homes, whole-home remodels and full interiors, with a calm continuity that does not depend on the homeowner being on site week to week.
The relationship is the point. Roughly nine in ten clients return, and that repeat trust is the truest measure of how these homes are made. From the first conversation about the land and the life it will hold, through architecture, construction, finishes and final styling, there is one voice reading the home and answering to you.
A studio suited to homes of this calibre.
- Principal-led from the first conversation, Courtenay Martire holds the artistic direction of the whole project rather than passing it between trades.
- Best engaged pre-architect and pre-construction, where she can select or work alongside the architect and shape the plans to the site, the light and the way you summer.
- Fluent in the language of lakefront living, sightlines, indoor-outdoor flow, lake light and homes built to weather long off-seasons gracefully.
- Built for projects undertaken at a distance, with the continuity and trust a second home a few hours away genuinely requires.
- A single creative hand from custom millwork and cabinetry through drapery, materials, finishes and styling, supported by long-standing artisan partnerships and roughly 90% repeat-client business.
Good to know.
Do you take on lakefront projects outside the Chicago suburbs?
Yes. Alongside Chicago and its suburbs, Martire works with select availability on lakefront homes across Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana, including Lake Geneva, Harbor Country and the Indiana shoreline, and nationwide for the right project. Many of these are second homes belonging to families we already know well.
When is the best moment to bring you into a lakefront project?
As early as possible, ideally in the pre-architect, pre-construction phase. That allows Courtenay to read the site and the way you intend to live there, select or work alongside the architect, and shape the plans before they are fixed, carrying a single artistic direction through to the final styling.
What size of lakefront project do you take on?
The studio is suited to design-led work from roughly $300K and well upward, luxury renovations, additions, custom homes, whole-home transformations and full interiors. We would be glad to discuss the scope of your home and whether ours are the right hands for it.
If a home on the water is taking shape in your mind, we would be glad to begin reading the land and the life it will hold.