Foundations on expansive soil have been a long-known challenge in the construction industry. The established methods for designing shallow foundations on expansive soil are either ground improvement techniques like the removal and replacement of existing soil, preloading, or superstructure compensation like designing a heavier foundation, allowing free movement at structural connections, raising the foundation to eliminate contact with native soil. While all the stated techniques work, they can be expensive and come with their own set of limitations. A new design approach with ground improvement using polymeric geocell and granular infill under the foundation has been discussed in this paper. Reinforcing soil is an established technique to improve soil modulus against the action of vertically downward forces. Particularly with high strength geocell research and applications have shown that there are multi-fold improvements in the bearing capacity of native soil, bridging softer areas and reducing the risk of strain softening. A method has been established to numerically model the effect of soil reinforcement while carrying out shallow soil foundation designs subject to upthrust. The study does show foundation soil stiffened with high-strength geocell. Thus, having thinner slabs and less reinforcement can be an economic and more sustainable solution than conventional systems. There is an observed minimum of 59% reduction of effective upward displacement. The importance of optimizing the design to maximize the effect of reinforcement is evident in this study.