Designing Your Dream Home
A home designer is so much more than a color coordinator and furniture finder. They're the professionals who can bring your dream home to life. Home designers juggle many responsibilities, from the big (structural planning and architectural features) to the small (ensuring the right number of air vents and electrical outlets), but the most important one is making sure you're happy with your home. Here are a few of the ways designers can help you create the home of your dreams.
Translating your vision: You likely have at least a fundamental idea of how you want your house to look and function - if you didn't, you wouldn't be starting the home design process. But putting those details into a common language that building professionals can read easily is an acquired skill that's best left to the experts. Home designers help clients refine and expand their vision into a consistent plan for the whole project, then create detailed plans that ensure the execution matches the idea.
Planning around your must-haves: Whether it's a special collection or a piece of heirloom furniture, a home designer can incorporate the treasures in your life into a fresh new design. If there's something you absolutely don't want to give up, let the designer know early on so that they can create a setting where your most-loved pieces look like part of the new design rather than an out-of-place throwback to the previous one.
Expand your options: A designer may see something in a wallpaper print or a paint color that you don't notice right away.Tell your designer if you absolutely hate something, but if you're just feeling a bit iffy about a proposed design element, take a minute to sit with it and ask the designer to tell you more. Once you hear the story behind it and picture it next to other design elements, you may find you've fallen in love with it too.
Design with an eye to the future: No matter how much you love your dream home, at some point, you'll want to renovate to freshen it up, even if that only means fresh paint or replacing a couple of pieces of furniture. A home designer will work to create a timeless design at the outset, but will also be able to advise you on what you might do next, even if it's for something as simple as swapping out a couple of accessories to reflect the changing seasons.
Help you stay within your budget: Unless money is no object, there are bound to be some trade-offs required between products or design elements you like and the financial reality of budgeting for a new home. Be honest about your budget at the outset - that way, the home designer can help define the scope of the project so that it fits your budget and delivers value for money. Simply substituting a different material or choosing slightly different furniture can save considerably - a good home designer can help you determine where you can spend less without impacting the overall vision for the home too much.