House Hunting as an Interior Designer

Big, exciting (and somewhat stressful) news - we are relocating! My husband’s job has reassigned him to a Virginia office, so we are officially moving this summer. We have moved every few years since we’ve been married and are very excited because this is our final move. With a relocation comes house hunting - which we did back in April - it was fun, but definitely stressful, particularly in today’s market. We spent three days looking before we found our new home.

Here are the top priorities we looked for while house hunting:

(Disclaimer: We were looking at houses closer to the top of the budget - so expensive renovations were not feasible in our situation. If you are looking for a “fixer upper” then some of these things might not matter as much to you because you’re already planning on changing them.)

1) Location - this is the one thing that cannot change about a new home, so this is the first priority. Most realtors will tell you this as well, and if you think about it, it definitely makes sense. Realtors also aren’t supposed to give you information on schools/crime/etc - so you need to do your research on these items prior to beginning your search and start narrowing it down a bit if this is important to you.

2) Overall size/number of rooms - While this can be changed with an addition - it is definitely going to cost major $$$. If you need a certain number of rooms (for instance, our girls really wanted their own bedrooms in the new house), then it is much easier to just find a home that already has the areas you need. If you know that your current house is too small - don’t buy a house that is the same size (even if it’s a better layout) thinking that will solve the size problem.

3) Layout/flow - this is something else that can be changed, but is very difficult and costly (maybe even more costly than an addition). For example, because I work from home, I wanted an office space that was near an entry so I could have clients over without having the parade them through the whole house. I also really wanted an open main floor - with sight lines from the kitchen to the living room. Ideally, we wanted the primary bedroom on the main floor but we couldn’t find a house that had this and everything else, so this ended up as the area we compromised on. When we were house hunting in Texas and Connecticut, our girls were a lot younger, so I wanted a house that had the primary bedroom a lot closer to their rooms - and I wanted their bedrooms located at the back of the home away from the front door (I watch too many crime shows).

4) Hard finishes - these are things that are harder or more expensive to change such as flooring, tile in bathrooms, siding, etc. If I hate the flooring that is throughout the entire home, I either have to have the budget and timeline to swap it before we move furniture in, or accept that it’s probably going to be a while before it gets done. When we purchased our CT home, there was shag green carpet throughout the main floor (over oak hardwoods) - we knew it would be the first thing we changed and immediately after closing we drove over and spent five hours pulling it up so they could refinish the hardwoods before our furniture was delivered. While I am not in love with all the finishes in the new house (read I wouldn’t have selected them myself), I also don’t hate them and can design around them.

On the other hand, here are three things that I do not worry about when house hunting:

1) Paint color - this is an very easy and fairly inexpensive DIY project so I never let paint colors impact my impressions of the house.

2) Light Fixtures - these are also very easy to change out and you can DIY this fairly easily.

3) Furniture/Décor - this is 100% leaving the home with the current owners, so don’t worry if you hate how they decorated or if it feels like “not your style.”

Let me know in the comments if there is anything else you are specifically wondering about and I’ll let you know where it ranks on the priority list!