We’ll be reviewing our readers’ favourite stories of the year soon enough, but while we wait to tally up the final score, we’re looking back at some of our own most memorable articles. Here were our editors’ favourite home stories to read (or write!) in 2025.

Our Editors’ Favourite Homes of the Year

Liz Bell and David Burns’ Creative Retreat in the South Okanagan

There are a lot of homes we feature in the magazine where the homeowners prefer to remain anonymous. Fair enough. It’s an intimate thing to invite magazine editors and readers into your home; I can understand the instinct to keep details about your name and life private, even as you open your doors. But when homeowners do take the leap and allow us to include them in our home stories, I find the stories all the richer. Which is why I’m particularly fond of this feature from our summer issue, a profile of modelling agency director Liz Bell,her partner, painter David Burns, and their Okanagan getaway. It’s a tale full of inspiring design details—the concrete flooring that’s a dupe for Mexican Salitillo tiles—but also one that celebrates the life of beauty and art that Bell and Burns have built together.—Stacey McLachlan, senior editor

Alykhan Velji Design’s Modern Manor in Calgary

It’s always a challenge to choose my favourite – I love all the homes we feature in Western Living, or they wouldn’t be there in the first place! – but l ike a lot of our readers, I love a good before and after (and was particularly charmed by a rental renovation from Twobytwo Architecture Studio we featured this year as well). And this transformation from ’70s suburban to a British Manor-inspired home in Calgary’s Varsity Estates neighbourhood has stuck with me. When designer Aly Velji came on the scene, the 3,300-square-foot project was already half demolished, but the planned layout just didn’t feel quite right. Now it’s a moody and beautiful space with statement-making checkerboard floors in the entry, gorgeous antiques paired with contemporary designs—and a home office, shown above, with the most incredible now-I-want-that wallpaper—my 2026 goals. —Anicka Quin, editor-in-chief, Western Living

The Selby Micro Hotel Suite From Designer Alana Dick of Ivory Design Co

There’s something about heritage character homes that really speak to me. Sure, a modernist fresh build with clean lines does call out as something easy to keep spotless (not so much the case for carved balusters and bevelled glass), but the lived-in quality of heritage design, to me, really makes a house a home. And though the Selby Micro Hotel Suite isn’t necessarily home to just one particular family—it’s built into a 1913 character home, the rest of which functions as a co-working space—it serves as a home-away-from-home getaway for couples and families that really evokes a sense of homey-ness. Thrifted finds and built-in furniture in vintage tones and textures harken back to a simpler time (maybe one where rotary phones were our main mode of communication), while hidden cabinetry lies behind carved towers and tongue-and-groove wall panels. It has all one could need to live (or temporarily stay) comfortably, including a washer and dryer, living room, kitchen and bedroom—all in 380 square feet. Talk about a feat of design! Even without those hidden features, the layering of colours and textures provide a feeling of  walking into your fashionable Grandmother’s house (the knick knacks! The coloured tiles! The wallpaper!), and I am all for that. —Kristi Alexandra, managing editor

Inside a Modern Mountain Sanctuary Built Into the Squamish Wilderness

For context: I live in a ground-floor studio where every window looks onto the street and directly into my neighbours’ lives, so my “morning coffee” is basically a public meeting. Then I saw this Squamish home and its absurd, jaw-dropping view and mentally moved in. Perched on a mountainside, secluded enough that the only thing catching you in a Garfield pyjama shirt is an endangered bird or an overly curious bobcat. It’s not just scenery poking through your living room, it’s a whole B.C. daydream: trade Vancouver traffic for ridge lines, fresh air and a commute that’s technically a hike. The story (by Michael Harris) is great, the design teams (BattersbyHowat and Natural Balance) don’t miss, and every room seems to out-view the last because there’s no bad side of a house when you’re living on a cliff. Putting it on my vision board. If I can’t have it, I can at least stare at it with my coffee, blissfully unobserved. —Kerri Donaldson, assistant editor

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