The Award That Comes Straight From Our Neighbors
Royal Pools by Adams has been named the 2026 SF Gate Best of the Bay Area Winner in the Home Contractor category. This recognition lands differently than most. Readers and residents picked the winners. No panel of judges, no application fee, no paid placement bought the title.
The people who cast votes are the same people who live in the neighborhoods where our crews pour gunite and set tile every week.
A public vote is really a verdict on reputation. It reflects the pools that still look sharp ten summers in, the homeowner who told a neighbor to call us, and the project manager who picked up the phone on a Saturday. We are proud of the award. We are prouder of what stands behind it.
Building Backyard Dreams Since 1969
Graham Shepherd started Royal Pools in 1969. For more than five decades since, our name has gone on custom swimming pools from Carmel to Santa Rosa. The craft passed to Adams in 2010, and the standard never moved. Same obsession with the details a homeowner notices only after the deck cures and the water turns blue.
That history shows up in the boring, important things. We hold an active California pool contractor CSLB license, carry full bonding, and earned Diamond Certified status through independent customer-satisfaction research. You can read more about the people and the milestones on our company story page. Longevity in this trade is not luck. It is what happens when the work holds up.
What the Home Contractor Honor Rewards
The Home Contractor category covers a wide field of builders across the region. Winning it says something specific about how we run a job from the first sketch to the final walkthrough. Three things carry that weight.
Design That Starts With How a Family Lives
A pool is not a rectangle of water. It is where a kid learns to swim, where friends land on a hot July evening, where a morning lap sets the tone for the day. Every project begins when a homeowner sits down with one of our designers and we ask how the backyard actually gets used. The plan grows from the answer, not from a template.
Engineering That Handles the Hard Sites
Bay Area lots fight back. Hillsides, tight access, expansive soil, old retaining walls, strict municipal permits. Our crews build through all of it. The same engineering discipline that lets us solve a steep Silicon Valley slope shows up in our residential pool construction, where a structural challenge becomes a vanishing edge instead of a delay.
From Silicon Valley Showpieces to One-of-a-Kind Spaces
Some of our clients want a clean, architectural pool that mirrors a modern home. Others want a resort dropped into the backyard, complete with a raised spa, a fire bowl, and water features that turn a good pool into one people remember. We have built both, and plenty that defy a category. Browse a few of them in our project gallery and the range speaks for itself.
Material choices matter as much as shape. Tile, coping, decking, lighting, automation. We keep samples on hand so a homeowner can stand in our San Jose and Pleasanton showrooms, feel the finishes, and decide with their hands instead of a brochure. That tactile step removes most of the second-guessing before a single shovel hits the dirt.
A Thank-You to Everyone Who Voted
This award belongs to the people who put us here. To every client who trusted us with a major investment in their home, thank you. To the partners and suppliers who hit our deadlines, thank you. To the field supervisors, designers, and office staff who carry the Royal Pools name onto job sites and answer hard questions with patience, thank you. And to everyone who took thirty seconds to cast a vote, you turned a quiet reputation into a public one.
Referrals built this company long before any award did. A neighbor pointing over the fence and saying call them has always meant more to us than a billboard. The 2026 title simply puts that word-of-mouth on the record.
The Work Ahead Looks a Lot Like the Work Behind Us
The trophy goes on a shelf. The schedule does not change. Tomorrow there are designs to draft, permits to chase, and a backyard somewhere in the Bay Area waiting to become the place a family spends its best summers. That is the part we have loved since 1969, and it is the part we plan to keep doing for the families who will swim in these pools for generations.
