Tips For Picking Out Home Finishes
I’m not gonna lie, I had a hard time when we were picking out our finishes. “Finishes” are basically all of the design choices you make in your house - paint colors, light fixtures, countertops, hardware, faucets, etc. Depending on how customizable your home is while you’re building you may have to make decisions on just a handful of items, or hundreds of things.
It can be overwhelming when you have so many decisions to make and so many options to choose from. Here’s my advice for how to make choosing your home finishes a little simpler.
1) Look at your Pinterest boards.
This is where all of that time you spent on your Pinterest boards finally comes in handy! I went back through mine and noticed I was pinning lots of navy kitchens and was also gravitating towards gold/brass hardware. I also thought I wanted light wood floors until I looked back through my pins and realized I was only pinning mid to dark tone wood floors. Looking through my Pinterest helped guide my design choices by showing me what I’ve been liking for the last several years!
2) Take it room by room.
Stop and think about your intention for each room. Is it going to be a heavy traffic area? Is this a space for kids? Is this an area you’re rarely going to see or use? Decide which rooms you want to prioritize with your budget. Save your money on a low-use room and spend a little more in the areas you’ll spend more time in.
3) Create a vision board.
One of the best ways to visualize a room is by putting together all of the different design elements that are going into that room. You can do this by making a flat lay with physical samples or digitally through a room planning software or even by just copying and pasting images into a document. Pinterest is great, but this is the time to take the actual items you think you want to put in your home and put them side by side to see how they’ll work together.
4) Stick to your budget.
I have expensive taste. I can’t help it. My eye always seems to gravitate towards the most expensive things. It’s the struggle of my life, having Champagne taste on a beer budget. I had my heart broken by a few different times before I learned this golden rule of home design: only look at items in your budget. If you’re going into a showroom to look at finishes, ask the sales rep to only show you what’s in your budget. The worst thing you can do is find something you HAVE to have for your home and then realize that single item will blow your entire budget.
5) Remember that it’s YOUR house.
Your house is something that should reflect your own style. Don’t pick finishes just because they’re trendy or because everyone else has that thing in their home - pick finishes that you like. YOU are also the one who knows how you’re going to be using the space. (Keep in mind that this mostly applies if you’re going to be in your house for several years - if you’re planning to sell in the near future, individualistic choices may not be the best option.)
I really wanted to do mixed metals in our bathroom but people have strong opinions on this. I decided to do it anyways and love how it turned out!