Sedona Design Guidelines - Keeping Sedona Beautiful

Sedona Arizona is one of the most beautiful places in the US to build a new home.  Its natural beauty and scenic vistas are simply a geological wonderland of colorful stone formations that jut upwards from the high desert floor creating a fertile valley that is perfect for home sites.  It is surrounded by National forest land that protect its future from over-development.  It seems as though many people rearrange their lives to live in Sedona.  And it is short of a miracle that Sedona was formed as a City before all the land could get "snatched up"!

To that end, the City of Sedona has establisned standards and regulation to govern the use of land, making sure that new land development is sensitive to the natural environment with minimal disturbance to Sedona's natural ecosystem, while also protecting the rights of property owners.  As new neighborhood have formed over the years, the neighborhood associations have also developed guidelines to keep Sedona natural and beautiful.

Residential architecture has a special challenge in Sedona, the challenge to create beautiful dwellings that suite the needs of families, while not interrupting the natural grandure of the valleys and canyons of Sedona.  Those who work as designers and architects must find the way to express their understanding of design in a way that complements the beauty of Sedona.

Here is some advice for those who plan to build a new home in Sedona.

• Review the City Guidelines so that you understand the spirit of land development in Sedona.  Here is a link to the land development code.
• Obtain a current set of Architectural Review design guidelines and CC&Rs from your Realtor or neighborhood association directly to get the most updated versions.  Read them carefully and make them available to your designer and contractor as a pre-design requirement.
• Interview your designer, architect and builder to see if they understand the rules and regulations that have been established in the Sedona City building code and your new neighborhood association.
• Make sure that your team will advocate for your interests in balance with the guidelines.
• Be prepared to honor the spirit of those guidelines!  There will be third party reviews by City officials and neighborhood Architectural Review Committies that will hold a strident view about how to protect the beauty of common land.