A Professional Guide to Designing a Home that Adapts to Each New Life Stage
When investing your hard-earned dollars into designing a new home or tackling a renovation project it’s important to plan not only for your lifestyle now but also how you envision your lifestyle in the future. Depending on how long our clients plan to stay in their homes, we make sure to tailor our design solutions to their vision for their homes over the years - whether that be by designing using aging-in-place principles for forever homes or keeping return on investment in mind when suggesting material and finishes for our clients who plan on selling one day.
Step #1: Make the Plan Your Top Priority
At Paige Studio we strongly believe in figuring out all the details before anyone swings the first hammer, so much so that we’ve had contractors say our drawings are more detailed than any they have ever received from a designer. Why is this so important? It’s simple, it saves you time, money, and mistakes as well as ensures you don’t have to compromise the vision you have for your home.
The time we spend together space planning, selecting finishes, and detailing your design will pay you dividends during the construction process.
Step #2: Draw Functionality into Your Design
Another benefit of all this planning is that we can really think through the features you’ll need now and later down the road. For example, when designing for an open floor plan we like to think through where furniture may be placed so we can locate floor outlets in strategic places so you won’t end up with the cord to your reading lamp running across your living room. We also like to make sure to design barrier-free showers in primary bathrooms for accessibility, especially for our clients building or renovating their forever homes. Both of these features can be extremely expensive or impossible depending on your foundation to retrofit after the fact.
This rendering of an upcoming primary bathroom perfectly illustrates the concept of aging-in-place. The foundation under the existing bathroom needs replaced so since we have to rebuild it anyways, we’re able to design a barrier free shower that will be capable of serving the homeowners for years to come.
Step #3: Spend Your Money on Superior Finishes
It’s also important to consider materials and finishes when designing a home that evolves with your lifestyle. We believe in investing in quality materials for your home but also understand that can come with a price tag and that value engineering is a necessary part of every project. During these exercises, we encourage our clients to invest in the highest quality materials they can afford in areas that are difficult to replace (think countertops, flooring, cabinets) and save on things like plumbing fixtures, appliances, and decorative lighting fixtures that can be more easily swapped down the road.
Our goal when designing forever homes for our clients is for the home to continue to serve them throughout their life and extend the amount of time they’re able to continue to live in their homes.
When designing a home for your current and future lifestyle, it’s imperative to have a detailed plan before construction starts. As interior designers specializing in historic home renovations and custom new builds, we guide our clients through all of these decisions (the average renovation project has over 100K individual decisions to be made!) and button up the design in a way that your contractor or builder will understand to ensure the result is exactly what you’ve been dreaming about.
If you would like a professional’s opinion about designing your dream home in the Dallas, TX area, we would love to help. Book a complimentary discovery call directly with our lead designer to chat about the options for your home!