How to Gather Inspiration For Your New Home Build

One of the best parts of building your own home over buying an existing home is the opportunity to customise just about everything to make your perfect home.

Before you commit to any particular builder, you should do plenty of research because once you sign paperwork with a builder, things can start moving very fast and it can become expensive to make changes or variations to house plans after the initial sign off.

Gather Inspiration From Existing Homes

Even if you are planning on building, there can be merit in attending open houses nearby whenever you come across one. The advantage here is that you can get an idea of any customisations people have made to their own homes over the years. This is especially good for seeing kitchens, entertaining areas and outdoor landscaping ideas.

Seeing these existing homes is great for gathering inspiration as you can quickly get a practical look at a lived-in home.

Go to as Many Display Homes as Possible

Whichever design you go with might be something you agree on quite early, but even after you think you’ve chosen your ideal design, keep visiting more display homes for further inspiration.

You can sometimes get better ideas for things to customise in your chosen design. Storage solutions are a great thing to take into consideration here. You may end up finding some clever innovations and have them integrated into your own home.

Think About Power Points

No one wants to live in a house full of extension cables all over the floor everywhere. You also don’t want to be frequently overloading any circuits in your house. Most home designs come with as few powerpoints in them as possible.

Every room should have multiple power points. Typically bedrooms only have one power point in each and maybe two in a master bedroom. Having so few power points in a room can make it difficult to place beds and bookcases around the existing windows, wardrobes and doors.

When exploring other existing houses or display homes you might notice extra power points in places you hadn’t thought about, such as in hallways. These are used for vacuum cleaners and lamps. Take your type of vacuum cleaner and any decorative lamps you might have into consideration when choosing where your powerpoints go. Outdoor power points are another thing that many people overlook. Add a few of these to your outdoor entertaining area or anywhere you’re likely to use any outdoor appliances such as bug zappers or power tools.

Remember it is much cheaper to get these added in when building the house than it is to add them later, especially outdoor powerpoints if there is brickwork in the way. The same should also be considered for outdoor lighting. Try and ensure your whole yard can be lit up. Often, builders will only include lights near external doorways, leaving corners of the yard in the dark. Try and aim light into all corners of the yard to make life easier for you when you have parties or other events at your home.

Consider Pointless Features

Over the last few decades, many features in houses have come and gone out of fashion, such as formal lounges and formal dining areas. These spaces have fallen out of favour for additional bedrooms or home theatres, which add more value to the property. Whilst modern designs might not include these, if your prefered design does, consider adjusting the design to be something more functional such as another bedroom.

To sum it all up, think carefully about every aspect of your new home. A Pinterest Board is a good way to keep track of ideas you want to remember for your new home. Store a list of must-have features in your phone or another document. Keep all your ideas close as once you sign your contracts, there will be limited time to make changes.