Terms of Service

You must be at least 18 years old and provide accurate information. There are two account types: entrants — custom home builders, residential architects and interior designers — and homeowners. You are responsible for the security of your credentials and for all activity on your account. Notify us immediately of unauthorised use. We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms.

• Entrants must be a licensed or lawfully operating custom home builder, residential architect or interior design firm in Canada or the United States.
• Submitted projects must be substantially complete and must have been designed or built by the entrant, who must hold or have permission for the rights in all submitted material.
• You must have the homeowner’s or client’s permission to publish the project, its photography and its location details.
• Entries containing misrepresented work, other firms’ projects, or images the entrant is not licensed to publish will be disqualified without refund.

Entries are screened for eligibility and then scored by an independent panel on design, craftsmanship, innovation and execution. Judging decisions, including nominee, finalist and winner selection, are made at the panel’s sole discretion and are final. We may add, merge or retire award categories, adjust deadlines, or decline to issue an award in a category. Awards recognise the submitted project only and are not a certification, licence, endorsement or warranty of a firm’s services.

Some entry packages carry a fee, shown before checkout and processed by our payment processor. Fees are for consideration in the program, not for winning an award, and are non-refundable once an entry has been submitted for judging, except where required by law. Fees do not influence judging outcomes.

You keep ownership of everything you upload. By submitting content you grant Custom Home Awards a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, crop, display and distribute it for the purpose of operating and promoting the program — including on the site, in award galleries, in press materials and on social channels — with credit to your firm. This licence continues for published entries and results after your account closes, so the historical record of the program stays intact. You confirm you have secured any photographer or client permissions needed to grant it.

• Do not post false, misleading, defamatory, infringing or unlawful content.
• Do not use the directory or enquiry system to send spam, solicitations or bulk marketing, or to scrape or harvest professional or homeowner contact details.
• Do not attempt to manipulate rankings, judging or reviews, or to access accounts, data or systems you are not authorised to use.
• Do not interfere with, overload or reverse engineer the platform.

Custom Home Awards is a discovery and recognition platform. We are not a party to, and take no responsibility for, any contract, quote, project, dispute or outcome between a homeowner and a professional found through the site. Verify licensing, insurance, references and contract terms independently before engaging any firm.

The Custom Home Awards name, logo, award seals, site design and software are our property or licensed to us. Award recipients may use the corresponding seal to promote the recognised project, accurately and with the correct award year, and may not alter it or imply a broader endorsement. All other use requires written permission.

If you believe content on the site infringes your copyright, email legal@customhomeawards.com with the work concerned, the URL of the material, your contact details, and a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is unauthorised. We remove infringing material promptly and may terminate repeat infringers.

The platform is provided “as is” and “as available” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the site will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that profile or project information supplied by third parties is accurate.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Custom Home Awards will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data or goodwill. Our total liability for any claim relating to the platform is limited to the greater of the amounts you paid us in the twelve months before the claim or CAD $100. Some jurisdictions do not allow these limits, in which case they apply to the maximum extent permitted.

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Custom Home Awards and its officers, judges and contractors from claims, damages and reasonable legal costs arising out of content you submit, your use of the platform, or your breach of these Terms or of any third party’s rights.

You may close your account at any time by contacting us. We may suspend or terminate access for breach of these Terms, suspected fraud, or where required by law. Sections covering content licence, intellectual property, disclaimers, liability, indemnity and governing law survive termination.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable there, without regard to conflict of law rules. The courts of Ontario have exclusive jurisdiction, except that either party may seek injunctive relief in any competent court. Nothing here removes consumer rights you have under the mandatory laws of your home jurisdiction.

We may update these Terms; we will revise the effective date and notify account holders of material changes. Continued use after a change means you accept it. Questions can be sent to legal@customhomeawards.com.