There are a million decisions to make when building a house! From soffit to cabinet hardware, we’re bombarded with an overwhelming number of options.
While I love to browse and shop for a good deal, it’s easy to get carried away and fall down a rabbit hole looking into every single product decision.
The concept that I keep coming across that’s helped me make a lot of these decisions (besides consulting our budget!) is “trendy vs. timeless.”
Here are a couple of examples of what I mean when I’m talking about trendy items:
- Colour: Getting items in certain colours affects the price. Windows, soffit, cabinets, appliances – you name it, there are price hikes (and discounts) depending on what you’re looking at. Certain colours are also considered in or out of style – and trends are constantly changing for what the “right look” for a room/house should be
- Architectural features: i.e., arched doorways and windows
- Light fixtures and other decor-related items
Personally, because of the style of home we’re building (classic farmhouse with a few modern elements), we lean toward timeless in most of our decisions. We’re aiming to choose standard, good-quality products that look great and that we’ll hopefully still love in 10, 15, and 20 years.
HOWEVER, if you love a product that’s considered “trendy” or it works for you and your lifestyle, go for it! The bottom line is to choose with intentional thought to your values, budget, and vision for your home.
One thing we tried to avoid was trendy design work. We love innovative design and finding efficient and creative ways to design our home but we wanted to be careful of falling into the trap of things that are currently trendy but might not work for us personally (or that we’d get tired of within a few years). Our goal was for a timeless design that was functional first.
Here are a few things we did before we began building to help fight the decision fatigue and stick to what we actually wanted:
- Create a Pinterest board – we still refer to our Pinterest board that we created and refined over time. On it, we have our inspiration for house elevation, the look of each room, etc. We were very intentional with this inspiration so we could refer back to it when faced with a new decision.
- Look at other homes: drive around, go to open houses, or look at online floor plans!
- Have (many) intentional planning conversations: for almost a year during our blueprint phase, we would sit down and have very practical conversations about what we wanted out of each room, the style we envisioned, and other design elements.
Little Minimalist on the Prairies 