Inside the 2026 Million Dollar Pool Design Challenge

Six years into the Million Dollar Pool Design Challenge, the competition has become one of the pool industry’s more interesting experiments in design education. On the surface, it is exactly what its name suggests: designers are handed an ambitious fictional project and asked to create an extraordinary pool and outdoor living environment.

But according to co-founder Mike Farley, winning the competition was never really the entire point.

Farley and fellow designer Reid Schindler created the challenge around a problem they had both seen throughout their careers. Designers often say they could produce incredible work if only they were given the right client, property, and budget. The Million Dollar Pool Design Challenge effectively removes that excuse.

“When you start your career, the most common comment everybody makes is, ‘I don’t get the opportunity to work on that project, and if I had the opportunity, I could get the job,’” Farley said. “Basically, we created an opportunity where everybody has that opportunity to try to get the job.”

Every competitor receives the same client, property, site conditions and design problem. What happens next is entirely up to them.

That concept was partially inspired by Farley and Schindler’s experiences studying landscape architecture. Students would receive the same assignment, develop completely different solutions and then learn by comparing their work with everyone else’s.

The tools have changed considerably since then.

Farley remembers his student work being drawn by hand, colored with markers and hung in hallways for classmates to study. Schindler came along later, when computers were already becoming part of the process. Yet the principle remains the same: designers improve when they can see how other designers solve the exact same problem.

That makes the competition particularly valuable for developing designers, and it also addresses one of the biggest misnomers surrounding the event.

You Don’t Have to Be an Elite Designer to Enter

There is a perception that the Million Dollar Pool Design Challenge is primarily for established designers already producing award-winning work. Farley would actually like to see more inexperienced designers use it as a training exercise.

“Really, your goal as a new or entry‑level designer in this type of situation is to learn, not to win,” he said.

A developing designer can attempt the project, attend the finalists’ presentations and compare their own decisions against five entirely different solutions. Where did they place the pool? How did they handle circulation? What did they prioritize? What did they leave out? How did the finalists present their ideas?

Even someone without enough time to prepare a polished competition entry can benefit.

“Just take the site and just do a bubble diagram,” Farley said. “Here’s where I would’ve put different things, and here’s how I would’ve solved the problem.”

Then go watch the finalists and listen to the judges critique the work.

Farley considers that educational component one area where the competition still hasn’t reached its full potential. He would like to see more entry-level designers approach the challenge as a practical design exercise rather than assuming they have no business competing against more experienced professionals.

The other common misconception is right there in the name.

“A lot of people think, ‘Oh, we’re supposed to design a pool that’s a million dollars.’ No, we want you to spend at least a million dollars,” Farley explained.

When the competition began, a million-dollar pool represented a far more unusual project. Today, Farley noted, seven-figure pools are considerably more common at the upper end of the market. The challenge has consequently continued pushing designers beyond ordinary project parameters.

There is still an important catch: the design has to be buildable.

Competitors aren’t being asked to create fantasy artwork unconstrained by engineering, safety or construction realities. Entries are judged on aesthetics and differentiation, but also functionality and buildability. Competitors must demonstrate that the design works at scale, responds to the client’s needs and could realistically be engineered and constructed.

That balance has produced something Farley wasn’t sure they would see when the competition began: radically different answers to the same problem.

“We’ve never had any two that were close to each other,” he said. “The dramatic diversity of the design solutions has been really cool to see.”

This Year’s Design Brief

For 2026, the competition moves to Louisiana in conjunction with the International Pool | Spa | Patio Expo in New Orleans. After previous scenarios set in places including Arizona, Tennessee, Chicago, California and Florida, Farley and Schindler wanted this year’s project to feel unmistakably Southern.

The fictional clients, James and Eleanor Caldwell, have purchased Siltstone Estate, a historic property in the Southern Delta. James comes from a Gulf Coast resort family and has a strong interest in craftsmanship, architecture and historic preservation. Eleanor is an interior designer. Together, they favor antiques, gardens, French wine, bourbon and traditional Southern hospitality over anything overtly trendy.

Those details aren’t window dressing. Understanding the fictional homeowners is part of solving the assignment.

“There are people that have not made the finals before, and there are people that did not win before because they did not look to what the client wanted,” Farley said. “This is not a design competition of creating what you think is best. You have to create what you think is going to be best for this client.”

The architecture adds another layer. A traditional Southern estate naturally creates strong axes and a more formal design language, but the Caldwells aren’t asking competitors to simply drop a rectangular pool behind the house. The brief specifically calls for a traditional-but-interesting recreational pool that respects the architecture without becoming predictable.

Modern amenities can still fit within that vocabulary.

“You can have modern features that don’t necessarily have to have modern architecture,” Farley said.

That distinction could prove crucial because the Caldwells’ wish list is enormous.

The program includes a covered back porch, outdoor kitchen and bar, gazebo and parterre garden, greenhouse, vegetable garden and orchard, guest cottage and pool house, driveway fountain, fishing pond and dock, courtyard wellness suite, event lawn, dual-purpose pickleball and basketball court, outdoor movie screen, fire pit, catering area and multiple secluded gathering spaces. The property must routinely accommodate around 25 guests while being capable of supporting events exceeding 100.

Then there is the water.

Competitors must incorporate either a BlueOrbit hydrotherapy system or a Riverflow lazy river, adding another design problem beyond the primary recreational pool and large family spa.

Farley sees current-driven aquatic environments as another opportunity to expose designers to possibilities they may not have considered before.

“What we’re trying to do is make people aware of things that they may not have been aware of and create another level of creativity,” he said.

With so many requested elements, the hardest part of the 2026 challenge may ultimately be deciding what not to do.

“Fitting it all in,” Farley said when asked about this year’s biggest challenge. “You’re going to be balancing, ‘Do I get it all in? If I get it all in, is there too much in this? What do I take away?’”

In other words, exactly the problem designers encounter with actual clients.

“Sometimes the right thing to say is no,” he added.

Presenting the Work Matters

A spectacular rendering alone isn’t enough to win.

Competitors must submit a scaled 2D plan, up to eight supporting graphics and a written design narrative explaining their process. Flythrough videos and physical models can supplement the submission, but judges place significant emphasis on how clearly designers communicate the thinking behind their solution.

“We want to understand your thought process in coming up with the solution, and you have to be able to document that,” Farley said. “It’s not just about the 3D image.”

That requirement becomes increasingly relevant as visualization technology advances. Yet changing technology is nothing new to the challenge.

Farley remembers when Pool Studio dominated early submissions before a student arrived using Lumion, software that relatively few pool designers had encountered at the time.

“Hardly anybody in the pool industry had ever seen Lumion,” he recalled.

The following year another winner used it. Soon competitors were learning Lumion themselves, incorporating it into their presentations and raising the overall visual standard of the competition. More recently, Pool Studio has again been behind several winning presentations.

The lesson isn’t that one program is superior. It is how quickly designers learn by watching one another.

“It has caused people to extend their horizons on what’s possible,” Farley said. “What tools am I going to use in this? Everybody’s being exposed to different things, and they learn more and more.”

Farley admits he does the same thing.

He recalled advice from one of his college professors: “The greatest designer is the greatest thief.”

The point wasn’t to copy someone else’s work, but to study good ideas, understand why they work and add those lessons to your own design vocabulary.

“There are definitely things that I’ve seen that are like, ‘Wow, I never thought about that,’” Farley said. “There’s almost every design that’s entered; there’s something to be learned from.”

Sometimes the lesson can be surprisingly simple. Farley once noticed that finalists regularly included people in their renderings while his own presentations historically did not. Seeing people using a space helped communicate scale, purpose and lifestyle. It was a small presentation technique he could immediately incorporate into his own work.

That exchange of ideas may be the Challenge’s most enduring contribution.

Farley has watched competitors return year after year without ever reaching the finals, yet their work continually improves. Others have used the exposure to create career opportunities. Past winner Brad Holley was recruited by FoxTerra after his win before later joining Claffey Pools, while other finalists and winners have gone on to work with companies that previously had their own designers represented in the competition.

“There are people in the industry that look at this for design talent, no doubt,” said Farley. “Every single year they do better and better. They come back, and their designs get better, their presentation skills get better.”

“You win by what you learn,” explained Farley. “If you learn things in this competition that help you with a client later on, which I guarantee will happen, then you win. You win by increasing your knowledge base.”

Five finalists will ultimately take their designs to New Orleans, where they’ll present their solutions live during the International Pool | Spa | Patio Expo. The judges determine who makes that final five, but the audience in the room ultimately decides who wins the $10,000 first-place prize.

For Farley, seeing those five interpretations side by side remains one of the most interesting parts of the Challenge. After six years, no two designers have ever approached the same property, client, and set of requirements quite the same way.

That may also be the best reason to follow the competition, whether you’re entering or simply sitting in the audience. The Challenge doesn’t provide a blueprint for how a million-dollar outdoor living environment should be designed. It provides five very different answers to the same question—and an opportunity for everyone in the room to walk away seeing design a little differently.

Ready to take a deeper dive?

Listen to our entire conversation with Mike Farley and learn more about this year’s Million Dollar Pool Design Challenge on the Pool Magazine Podcast.

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