Building a Home: Finding Your Design Style
When building a home, the first step is to decide on a location and find that piece of land where you would like to build. After that, it is figuring out your home design style and narrowing down builders you’d like to work with. Determining your style is hard! This is one of those stages that can cause contention in your relationship if you’re building with a partner or spouse. It can become even harder if you have kids who want to have a say as well. As someone who is building a home, here are some tips to bring clarity to this step in the home building process.
Analyze Your Current Home
This is a great way to start this process. Take a look around your home and make a list of your favorite features and what you would like different in the new home! This can be something each member of the family can contribute. From there it’s narrowing down what is the most to least important or what is more feasible to build, especially if there are some crazy ideas from kids.
Research Ideas
Once you have your list of wants and needs for different areas of your home, start searching for style ideas! It’s best to start in a general category and then narrow it down from there. Some design categories for inspiration are traditional, farmhouse, modern, industrial, cottage, French country, or mid-century modern. After finding your broad category, start collecting inspiration for your new home! You could do this through Pinterest, creating a mood board, or a folder on your computer. Sources we recommend for finding inspiration include, Zillow, Pinterest, Houzz, or House Beautiful.
Parade of Homes
There’s nothing quite like going to see houses in person! There are two ways we recommend seeing new homes in-person: Parade of Homes or builder spec homes. Parade of Homes is one of the most fun ways to see new construction homes! You can see a wide variety of homes and styles throughout the whole time it runs. Parade of Homes happens twice a year and there are multiple areas you can participate in. The two big ones here in West Michigan are hosted by HBA (Homebuilders Association) Grand Rapids and Lakeshore HBA. Both of these organizations have top-quality builders and contractors for everything you want in your home. It’s a great way to meet different builders and see which ones you really like. It’s how I met the builder of my new home and other clients have had success finding builders this way too. Our team loves participating in Parade of Homes, and we try to plan events around it.
See Some Builder Spec Homes
If you already have a builder in mind, they may have a home currently under construction or a spec model that we can take you through to see some of their many. Many subdivision builders will have spec models of the their more popular homes that prospective clients can walkthrough to get a better idea of what they look like and what they can change or customize. Both Parade of Homes and spec homes are a great way to get hands-on looks at new construction trends and the builder’s work.
Determining your design style is important in deciding what builder you want to work with and what you want your future home to look and feel like. For many, building a home is part of the “forever” home plan so you want to create something you can enjoy for years to come. If you need help finding a reputable builder, we have a huge list of builders in every price range we have worked with in the past and recommend.
I would love to help you on your new construction project! Our team are new construction experts and can help you with every stage of the new construction process. Contact me today and let’s start planning your new home build!
