Top Tips For Making Design Center Choices You Won’t Regret

Want to know how to make design center choices you won’t regret? I’m here to help. When we bought our current home, hubby and I got to have the full design center experience. This was our first new construction home that we were building “from the ground up”. This was a totally new experience for us. And let me tell you, as nice as it is to be able to pick every single design option in your home, it be overwhelming. I mean, you’re trying to make decisions you’re going to live with for the next 30 years. Or however long you plan to keep your house. So, keep reading and I’ll go over the top tips for making new home design center choices you won’t regret. Plus, you can go ahead and join my FREE Decorating Made Easy Challenge. You’ll learn the tricks to easily decorate your home, even if you don’t have an eye for design. Now, let’s get started.

New Construction Home Design Center Tips

Understand your design style – making design decisions for your new home becomes a lot easier when you understand your own style. Are you a farmhouse girl or would you prefer a lot more glam in your life? Knowing this about yourself will help you make better decisions when it comes to choosing flooring, finishes and fixtures for your new home.
Understand what makes design styles – so the next step after understanding your design style is to understand what makes your preferred design style stand out. For example, if you like mid-century modern, your choice in a light fixture will probably be a streamlined and angular metal design. But if you like more glam, I’d bet you’d prefer a crystal chandelier in that same space. What gets confusing is when you don’t know what you like. And don’t know how to match styles with your current furniture or even how to mix and match when you like multiple style.
Find pictures online for design inspiration – when you’re building a semi-custom or custom home, you could potentially have endless options. Add that on top of the fact that you’re working with a blank slate. So, pictures will give you inspiration and help you decide how you want your home to look. I suggest you take these and create a mood board you so you can get a visual of how your space will look.
Take your time – I kind of felt rushed when picking our design selections. And now, there are some that I really question some of the choices I made. With that said, you won’t have an endless of amount yourself. Construction materials need to be ordered in time to stay on schedule. But try to balance the schedule with making good decisions.
Keep swatches to the design center – having swatches will also help you at the design center. If you plan on buying new furniture, take a swatch so you can make sure the color and texture match the color of your carpet and walls. One thing that tricks a lot of people about color is the undertones. Even solid items like the cabinets and the countertops have undertones! If you can, take a color sample of your cabinets, countertops and tile home with you to see how it looks against furniture and décor that you already own and plan to incorporate into your new space.
Set a budget – it’s really easy to get ahead of yourself and spend way too much money on upgrades. Especially when you go to the design center and they speak in terms of Level 1 and Level 2 pricing instead of an exact dollar amount. So, here’s what I did when building our last home…Decide how much you’re willing to spend overall and then prioritize what you want. Create a spreadsheet that has your design selections listed in order of priority along with pricing. Then keep a running total so you know when you’ve reached your limit.
Prioritize your design upgrades – unless you have an endless supply of money, you’re probably not going to be able to get everything you want. So, prioritizing what’s most important to you is key. This way, you don’t get items that you later regret while not getting the options that you really want.
Visit local model homes for design inspiration – one thing that I really liked when we built our home is that it was a model home in a few other neighborhoods. Hubby and I drove around to see how the same floorplan looked with different finishes. And let me tell you – different paint, floor colors and cabinet styles can really make a difference. It was pretty cool to see how the same floorplan looked totally different based on decorating. So, take a look if you can. But even if you don’t have your exact floorplan available to tour, go to model homes or open houses to get ideas of what design features you might want in your space.
Create a mood board – this is your chance to take all of the inspirational photos you’ve taken, and the images you’ve found online, and put them in one place. Creating a mood board will help you see how everything you picked blends together. You can create a mood board on your computer by using Power Point or get a little more fancy by using Canva. Either way, take your light fixtures, counter tops, cabinets, furniture, wall décor and other design elements and put them all together so you can get a feel of what your new home will look like.
Choose Your home decor colors – one of the things that sets the mood for a home is the paint colors. The undertones in your furniture or decor will either clash with or match the undertones you have in your new home. From the cabinets, tile, countertops and paint. So, get the paint colors you’re considering and then learn about understanding undertones. This will help you choose an overall home color scheme that’ll work with your entire house.
Understand what’s included – make sure you take the time to know what’s a standard feature and what isn’t. This will help you with your budget and help prioritize what you’re going to upgrade.
Consider your lifestyle – there are plenty of examples, but the one I’m thinking about here is carpet. Now I know some of ya’lls kids are perfectly neat and never have a spill, but mine? Let’s just say that hubby and I decided to not upgrade the carpet in their bedrooms. This is the type of lifestyle decisions I’m talking about. You know how your family lives and what you value. So, use this to help you when you prioritize your design center upgrade list. On the other side, an upgrade that we did decide on was a touches kitchen faucet. Yaaas! Germaphobes of the world unite!
Go to a design center preview – having the option to go on a design center preview tour was so valuable. I’d even pay for it. I really appreciated having time to walk around the design center without being rushed or having to make decisions. My husband and I were able to take pictures, talk things through and weigh our budget and priorities against the design options. This extra time made our actual design center meetings so much more productive.
Read appliance reviews online – you may find that the features for the standard appliances don’t meet your quality standards. Or maybe you just prefer (or have always dreamt of) owning another brand. So, take your time to do your research and make sure the appliances you pick have good reviews. There’s nothing worse than buying a new home and having to switch out appliances because they’ve malfunctioned. I don’t care if they’re under warranty or not, that’s not fun.

Top Tips For Making Design Center Choices You Won’t Regret

We just reviewed my top tips for making design center choices you won’t regret. When purchasing your new construction home, you’ll have options to customize – but take the time to get it “right”. You can start by joining my FREE Decorating Made Easy Challenge. You’ll learn the tricks to easily decorate your home, even if you don’t have an eye for design.