What Your ICI Homes Design Consultant Can Do For You
Did you know you get your own personal guide when you build a new custom Florida home with ICI Homes?
You do — for the interior design portion of the process. One of our design consultants at the ICI Homes Design Center will walk you through each aspect of choosing the interior finishes, colors and materials. For customers who admittedly aren’t tuned in to the design world, that’s often the scariest part.
Have no fear! You won’t go it alone.
Here’s a look at what your ICI Homes design consultant can do for you.
Buyer, know thyself
Before you arrive at the design center, know how your and your family use a home. If you don’t have that information, the resulting vagueness will hamper every decision you try to make.
“If the home doesn’t work for them, it’s doesn’t matter how nice it looks,” says Janna Pettegrew, one of our design center consultants. “They’ll hate it. Form follows function.”
The second thing you can do to help yourself and your ICI Homes design consultant is being open to ideas, and to doing research. Don’t know the difference between glass and ceramic tile? Find out. If you allow yourself to learn, you’ll be ready to make that decision.
“I’m working with someone right now who emailed and said, ‘I was watching HGTV last night, and now I’m thinking about this,’” Pettegrew says of one customer.
So, determine what’s important to you interior-design-wise, and start asking yourself (and members of your household) questions. Here are some good starters, from Pettegrew:
How long will you be in your house? Do you want more of a timely look or more of a trendy look? And, critically, what’s most important to you?
Model homes as idea labs
The model homes you visit in ICI Homes communities reveal more than floor plans, siting and square footage. Their interior design — meant to catch your eye, too — not only amplifies a particular model’s style, it’s meant to churn visitors’ mental wheels.
“If we didn’t have model homes, we wouldn’t be able to sell,” Pettegrew says. “If they couldn’t walk through it and visualize it.”
This is especially true for folks who struggle to articulate interior design preferences, but know what they like when they spot it. A model home speaks for them — enough to kick off a productive design session.
“A lot of times they’ll come in here and say, ‘I liked this model,’” Pettegrew says. “It is helpful because not everyone can visualize it. Same with floor plans. Floor plans are very difficult to read.”
It’s not only the fully-decorated models that can fuel a design session.
“Spec homes are helpful too, because sometimes they’re more the size and plan that people want, rather than a model,” Pettegrew says of finished new homes that are ready for move-in. “It also helps them visualize.”
Chief guide and guru
Our design consultants are pros at what they do, but they won’t do your job for you during a design session. Again, it’s why you, the buyer(s), should research the interior design aspects of building a new home, so you’ll be ready to ask questions and tap into your consultant’s expertise.
“Once you’ve entered in to the home-building process, your eyes are just open to everything around you because you’ve never paid attention to these things before,” Pettegrew says.
That’s a good thing. But if you’re fretting over which floor tile to chose, design consultants can get you closer to a decision.
“That’s the type of person you have to reinforce, ‘hey, it’s going to really look great,’” Pettegrew says.
materials. For customers who admittedly aren’t tuned in to the design world, that’s often the scariest part.
