I would love to make my own design but my patience is lacking. I have searched and saved many templates that I tweak to make them somewhat different. The site I have now is from a free template and I'm happy with it but in the future I would like to customize my own site.

I would go for unique website design. Common thing is that everyone wants uniqueness.

A unique design is always best. It gives you your own identity. A template is good in a pinch, but you don't really want people seeing your site and saying "Didn't I just see a site that looked just like that?"

You can't go wrong with templates. I personally think that a webhosting site is VERY effective with simply WHMCS in the root of the site and a company blog just to keep the clients up to date.

However, it makes your site a lot more credible when you have a nice main site.

You could start with a template and edit to suit, this is what exactly we have done, However we are having a unique design done soon.

Check out template monster, they have some good designs for $50 or so.

I try make my own, however I often buy templates and edit them a lot so it looks new and original i.e: something no one has seen before when looking for a host.