Design Your Dream Home Online - NewHomeSource (2024)

Making your dream home a reality is a process.

• First, you have to think about who will live in your home, if you want your new home to be a family home, or work for a multigenerational family.
• Second, you need to find the neighborhood that gives you your desired quality of life.
• Third, you have to come up with a list about the features you need to make the most of life in your new home.
• Fourth and finally, you have to find a way to fit all of the things you want from your new home into the final design of your house while staying on budget.

Fortunately, designing your home online can make fitting your wants and needs into one floor plan less complicated and more fun.

As technology has improved, more homebuilders are offering home shoppers the opportunity to design their homes online. Designing a new home online is especially helpful for homeowners moving across state lines, or hoping to buy a new home site unseen.

Even if you aren’t making a long distance move, designing your home online can drastically improve your journey to homeownership. Designing your home online can help you see all your options without overwhelming you and your family with on-the-fly choices. For instance, you can see how the 50 various shades of off-white and greige look on your walls before you start building. Or, you can get a clear idea of what aesthetic upgrade options actually look like in the wider scope of your home, and determine if you really want to spend the money for them.

Why Designing Your Home Online Is Great for Visual Learners

Some folks can see a blueprint, a couple of mock-ups, and some paint swatches and flooring samples and visualize exactly how they’ll combine all their favorite choices for a cohesive, functional home. Those who are more visually-inclined, however, might feel frustrated at not being able to see how everything will look all together.

We know what you’re thinking – what about model homes? What’s better than not only seeing how everything looks together, but being able to walk through and touch it and actually see it. But homebuilders offer extensive customization options, and they can’t reflect every single option in their model homes, leaving you back at square one if you deviate from the model at all.

Enter online home design. Virtual home design tools allow visual learners to see all the options available in their home plan, before finalizing their choices. You can explore all your options, and see how features you love actually look in your home.

Online Home Design is for Everyone

Can virtual home design tools help people that aren’t visual learners?

Yes. Yes, they can. Virtual home design tools can save all home shoppers a lot of stress and time at all stages of home design, including:

While You’re Dreaming of Your Home

While you’re in the dreaming phase, it’s just that – dreaming and scheming. You’re crawling Pinterest and TikTok for design and upgrade ideas. You’re lingering by the paint swatches every time you go to your local home improvement store. And you’re probably feeling overwhelmed by all the possibilities.

Using a virtual home design app or tool holds two useful qualities during this period. First, it can save visual home shoppers the trouble of managing their dream home preferences across multiple other apps.

It can also prevent you from straying too far past the lines of reality. Sites like Pinterest can show inspiration from almost everywhere, including projects that are well beyond your budget or your builder’s wheelhouse. A builder-specific home design app, on the other hand, can keep you grounded in possibilities for your home that actually exist. Your builder’s virtual home design tools show a realistic realm of options, and makes it easy for you to fall in love with new home fixtures, features, and finishes that they can actually deliver.

While Touring a Model Home

To be blunt, model home tours can be overwhelming. Homebuilders design their model homes to showcase all the possibilities available to homebuyers, and finish them so that they look beautiful and appealing to the most shoppers possible. That means they’re finished with all the (priciest!) bells and whistles. Not all homebuyers can afford to recreate a model home, and many want to use their customization options in different ways that better suit their budget – and their families.

Additionally many homebuyers may have a feel for the options they want, but might not have a clear image of how to make that dream home a reality, especially while standing in an opulent model home.

If a family is contemplating a major upgrade like closing off a two-story great room to create a flex room, a virtual home design tool can easily show what that would look like, giving them peace of mind when finalizing their decision.

At the Design Center

Virtual home design tools can really help homebuyers save time and stress at their homebuilder’s design center.

A major frustration at design centers occurs when homebuyers have to picture how a tiny paint swatch, granite chip, and/or cabinet sample will look across the entirety of their new house. The small slab of upgraded black dappled granite looks dramatic in the design center, but will it look that amazing when you install it in your actual kitchen?

A designer can use virtual design tools to help show hesitant homeowners what the options they like look like within their home layout, and how their choices harmonize with other finishes they love. Actually seeing what bold choices look like inside a home can empower homeowners to make exciting moves within their house, without causing anxiety.

Buying a Home Sight Unseen

Americans are becoming increasingly mobile, and buying homes all over the country. More potential homebuyers make cross-state moves, and buy houses sight unseen. Retirees are increasingly opting for destination retirements, while working homebuyers make long haul moves to either move to where they work, or move to places they love while they work remotely. And international buyers looking to buy a house in the States don’t always have the luxury of visiting before they move to take leisurely home tours.

For home shoppers making a major move and buying a home sight unseen, online design tools can help them connect with a home plan, and feel comfortable about making such a monumental life decision.

Online design tools give home shoppers a better feel for available home plans from the layout to the finishing touches. Homebuyers can form a closer connection to the new house they will be moving into with online design tools than they would if only looking at tiny images on a real estate website. For homebuyers who have to buy a home site unseen online design tools can help make a move less stressful and anxiety inducing.

Envision Empowers Home Shoppers to Design Online

Creating technology for an online design center is incredibly difficult, and not every homebuilder can create bespoke solutions for modern home shoppers.

Fortunately, there is a flexible online design tool called Envision that homebuilders can implement to help their homebuyers get the most out of the design/build process.

Envision is an incredibly flexible virtual design platform. Your homebuilder may have an Envision kiosk installed in their model homes, so their sales person can guide you through your home tour, then help you view other options while still at the model. You may get to supercharge your trip to your builder’s design center with an Envision kiosk. Your design specialist may be able to showcase how the upgrades, fixtures, and finishes you are interested in look throughout your new home. Envision also has an online portal that you can use from the comfort of your own home, so you can explore all the options available within their new home plan.

As you interview potential homebuilders that can help you make your dream home a reality, keep in mind how helpful online design tools can be for homebuyers. If your homebuilder doesn’t have their own online design tool, ask if they have Envision technology.

Just because a builder doesn’t have an Envision kiosk in one model home they may have it in another model in your metro area. If your sales center doesn’t have an Envision kiosk, have your sales person find out if another sales center has an Envision kiosk, or if you can use one at your trip to your design center.

Online and virtual design tools empower homebuyers to make choices they love about the homes they are building. Virtual design tools can help distinguish builders who want to reach shoppers who increasingly leverage the internet in their journey to homeownership. Designing a home virtually can speed up the home design process, and gives design teams a powerful tool to guide homebuyers through this process. Homebuyers can use virtual designing tools to feel good about the options, upgrades, fixtures, and finishes they choose for their new home.

NewHomeSource won’t judge you if you use a virtual design tool to spot the differences between all the different shades of off white.