Here’s a High-Tech Design Hack for Making Homebuyers Happy
I was running through the supermarket after work, picking up a few odds and ends before heading home, when I saw this magazine headline:
MAKE YOUR HOME FEEL EXTRA HAPPY
Working at Roomored, we try to make people really happy when planning their new homes with their homebuilder. So if this magazine had some insight, I wanted it.
A quick flip through its pages while I waited in the checkout line gave me the gist: don’t be afraid of color. If you want to paint rainbows of color throughout your home, do it! If you want that lime green accent wall in the master bedroom, right on! If you want yellow-painted cabinets in your kitchen to go with that robin’s egg blue range you’ve been lusting after, don’t hold back. Go. For. It.
As a design nerd, I was all in on the magazine’s color = happiness idea, but I had a few questions:
How many cans of sample paint did they go through to arrive at those eye-popping color selections?
How many hours – or days – were spent agonizing over whether Tangerine Glow in the bathroom would clash with Morning Calm in the guest room?
Why did they think that color combo worked? (Yeah, it was that bad.)
I love color, but I’m also a realist who understands the pain homebuilders and their clients go through to reach decisions about paint colors and finishes. In most cases, it’s really, really hard for people to be bold with color selections in their new homes when white and gray are so safe. Put-you-to-sleep safe. From the homebuilder’s perspective, they just want clients to be happy.
Can you blame them, buyer or builder? Once that paint’s on the wall, cabinets are installed, flooring and tile laid, you’re committed to live with them. Sure, you can always do it over, but that’s costly and a major headache. And yet homebuyer remorse over their colors and finishes happens. Even when they go totally neutral with their selections.
Meanwhile, another headline caught my eye:
REALLY COOL COLOR HACKS
You know what the biggest color hack is in the homebuilding industry? The hack that lets new homebuyers see virtually any color or pattern, in any combination, on any surface in a home they’re considering? It’s Roomored’s home design platform. A growing number of homebuilders in the U.S. and Canada offer this design service in their design centers and online.
Let me assure you, the platform is really easy and fun to use. First, you choose your floor plan from the builder’s portfolio. Next, you go room-by-room and virtually design every room in the house in high-res, full-color, real life, 3D detail. I’ve seen people start with the basics – wood cabinets, white subway tile, gray paint – and then find their inner artist and push the color envelope.
Why is it so engaging? Because the experience and the designs people create are so real. It’s like being in a model home you created. But you’re not. You’re either in the homebuilder’s design center or at home, on the couch with a glass of wine in hand, designing your dream house on your laptop.
It’s a one-of-kind new homebuyer-homebuilder design hack because it’s so much easier and less stressful to buy a new home when you know exactly what it will look like once it’s built. Make sense?
With Roomored, there’s no more buying little cans of paint and dabbing every wall in your house after it’s built, or worse, simply choosing colors and finishes based on chips. You can go big and bold or soothingly neutral digitally until you find exactly what colors and finishes make your new home feel extra happy. I’m sure we’ve even saved a few marriages since couples no longer have to imagine what the other sees in their head.
And that’s why so many homebuilders are turning to Roomored to elevate the home buying experience. We know how to make homebuyers into extra happy homeowners.