For many homeowners, working with a design professional and arriving at that “perfect” plan for their new home can be tiring and down right overwhelming! Between late nights after work revising floor plans on scraps of paper and finalizing blueprints with the designer, things get “complicated” and often leaving people feeling worried that their no getting exactly what they wanted from their design or designer.
The truth is, many homeowners don’t know enough about what it takes to design a home to get what they want from the start. In some cases, communication issues skew the collaboration process and in others certain “wish-list” items conflict with the size, style or more usually – the budget! And occasionally homeowners feel shy about challenging trained professionals.
Here are some tips to help you get the right plan, right from the start:
1. So, Whose House Is This Anyway?
Some homeowners say that they worry that the architect or professional designer will follow his or her own vision, or intimidate them into not speaking up with requests. I’ve seen it happen way too many times where an architect will absolutely overwhelm homeowner objections with a tirade of “architect-speak” that no one can understand much less respond to. Don’t let that happen to you! Obviously you need to hire a design professional that can offer his or herexpertise and guidence when needed, but this is YOUR home and you need to feel that the designer is listening and resonding to you. The best home designs are the result of an easy and respectful collaboration between designers and homeowners.
2. Feel Free To Mix And Match Styles.
No matter what aesthetic you love, don’t think that you need to follow that style rigidly. It’s rare to find a perfect fit with any exact style. Be open to taking the gist of what you think represents the home of your dreams and allowing it to be molded and evolved to fit the way that you live, the lay of your land and your neighborhood. A good example of this are most lake or hillside homes that present one architectural style on the approach side and perhaps something much more open and casual towards the lake or view side.
3. Hire A Designer That Knows The Medium.
Even if your brother-in-law, the architect, is an expert in sleek contemporary homes, but you want a Victorian lake home it probably won’t work out. Take a look at the designer’s website portfolio to see what they have designed in the past. Or make sure that they have experience in whatever building method that you are interested in such as green homes, timber frame, log or hybrid. Each method has idiosyncrasies that an experienced designer will be able to embrace and enhance to your benefit.
4. Know What You Want.
The best way to do this is to make a list of your priorites from most desired to least desired. Don’t make the mistake of leaving less important things off the list. Sometimes those smaller items can be incorporated into the design for minimal cost. We ask all of our clients to fill out our Design Questionnaire before we start the design process. Sometimes we even get couples that fill the form out seperately to see how closely their individual visions intersect! Your list can become the benchmark to ensure that your designer is developing a plan that represents the needs and wishes you have for your new home.
5. Make Sure That You Understand What You Are Seeing!
Many, perhaps most, clients are certainly not trained to read blueprints and really do not understand what they are looking at. How may times have I heard someone exclaim “So THAT’S what it looks like!” when they see their home being framed in. No more! We still start the conceptual design with sketches, but advance rapidly into 3D Cad design. Residential design software has advanced tremendously in the last few years and it is very easy to create realistic 3d models of your home which are incredibly easy to understand and even easier to manipulate until it’s just the way that you want. From that 3D model, all of your floor plans, elevations and house sections will be created. So if you are like most of our clients, make sure that your designer can do 3D modeling.
6. Be Realistic About The Budget.
Money is always extremely important and having the homeowner and the designer agree on a realistic budget BEFORE the design starts is the most important thing that you can do to ensure a successful outcome. This allows the designer to design your home to the budget rather than design your dream home only to price it out after months of design work only to find that it grossly exceeds the amount that you want to invest in your home. In our office, we prepare a very simple comparison of your “wish list” that you compiled in our Design Questionnaire to a home that is similar and that we have completed recently. This gives us real construction numbers to use to create a ballpark estimated budget range for your new home. Sometimes that number is simply more than clients want to invest in their new home, so they tell us what amount they are comfortable with and we suggest compromises to the “wish list” that will allow us to get to that figure.
7. Use Visual Aids To Convey Your Ideas.
We ask our clients to bring as many pictures as possible of elements that you want when discussing concepts for your new home. Rip out magazine articles and take pictures of homes that you like as you drive around. Keep folders for different rooms and the exterior features that you want. And it’s important to show your designer not only what you do love, but also what you hate! It does not have to be exact at all – just a single element that you really like or the ambience of a photograph that “feels” right. The more ideas and insight that you can give your designer, the better.
8. Be True To Yourself And What You Want From Your New Home.
Remember that building a new home will not change who you are. Homes should not be transformative, but reflective. A great design for you will celebrate you, your family, your values and personality. Think about it – Your way of life now is probably going to be pretty similar to what it’s going to be in the future. A home can be a wonderful reflection of that, so embrace it.
