When you’re preparing to design your home, being able to communicate your preferences in a clear way can help your home builder understand exactly what you’re looking for – and deliver results you love. Here are some tips to help you figure out your design style and communicate it to your building team so the process goes smoothly.
Here’s Why You Need to Know Your Design Style
If you don’t know how to accurately describe your design style to your home builder, you might run into a few problems:
- You may think styles are universal terms, but each person may define every style a little differently. For example, to you, modern farmhouse could be a style that’s country with a few industrial touches, but to your builder, they could see the style as classic with a few Scandinavian touches. So, if you told your home builder you want a modern farmhouse design home, he may make decisions based on his interpretation of that style, which means you may not be 100% happy with the final results.
- If you can’t clearly communicate your design style, it will make everyone’s job (especially yours) more difficult during the process. Mistakes are more likely to happen, which means things will take longer than expected to get done.
- When describing your style without doing the work first, it can also mean your budget takes a beat down. You’ll spend more hours on material decisions, more hours sourcing, and more expensive change orders.
To avoid these problems, you – the one who is going to be living in the space – must do a bit of homework before your new build begins. To help you nail down your design style and be able to clearly communicate it to your home builder, here are some tips.
Get Visual
Remember – design is visual. So, the best way to communicate your style is through images!
Use Pinterest, Instagram, magazines – whatever you want to collect as many images as you can. The key here is to just collect images that make you stop and think “Do I like this?”. Don’t get too caught up in thinking about whether or not it will work for your home. And try to utilize different sources when doing this. You may want to stick to Pinterest to get your inspiration, but you’ll get photos of the same look, and it’s better to have a mix so you can really get to the core of your own personal style. Try to get at least 20 images compiled together before you move to the next step.
Be Picky
Once you have your images gathered, it’s time to start being picky. You want to narrow your pile down to 10, maybe even 5 photos. The best way to do this is to take two images from your collection and decide which you like better. The winner stays and the other gets tossed from the pile. Don’t take too much time to think about it – it should be more of a gut decision than something you really sit and think about. Keep going until you have your final collection of images.
Not only will this give your home builder a more manageable number of images to examine, but it will also help you narrow down your style without being too in your head.
Make “Love” and “Not for Me” Lists
Now that you have your final collection of images, it’s time to examine them a little more closely and make some lists. Look through the images and consider the elements in the space. Then make a “love” list and a “not for me” list. What do you like about the images you chose and why? What don’t you like and why? Do the images have anything in common?
For your “love” list, consider elements like:
- Color palette or combination of colors that appeal to you
- Furniture you love
- The mood or general vibe of a room
- Architectural elements
- Specific features you want to include
For your “not for me” list, consider elements like:
- Specific colors or shades of colors you dislike
- Color combinations you don’t love together
- Motifs or finishes that don’t suit your style
- Pet peeves
We can’t state this enough – be specific! Note down everything you do and don’t like about the images you choose. If you were to give the images to your home builder without explanation, they might focus on something completely different than you intended. Leave no room for interpretation, so don’t be afraid to be a little wordy.
Ridgeline Homes is Ready to Help You Build the Home of Your Dreams
The home design process can be stressful, but with these tips, you’ll know how to describe your design style to a T and your home builder will help bring it to life. Ready to start building your new home? Our team is here to help you.
At Ridgeline Homes, we don’t just build houses; we build beautiful custom homes to suit the dreams of the families we work for. We help you make your vision come to life and will assist you in choosing the perfect lot in Montrose, Colorado, all the way down to the small details, like knobs on your cabinets. We also schedule several walk-throughs throughout the building process and send you notifications when milestones are achieved. Let us show you how simple and enjoyable custom homeownership can be. We’re ready to start this exciting process with you.
