Home Design Mistakes You Don’t Notice Until You Live in Your Home

Home Design Chat with Nancy

Host Nancy discusses common home design mistakes that often go unnoticed until a homeowner has lived in a space for some time. She emphasize

Key takeaways

• Design spaces based on how you actually live rather than how they look in photographs or on Pinterest.
• Plan kitchen storage by conducting an inventory of items like pots, pans, and small appliances instead of just counting cabinets.

Main topics

• Designing for lifestyle
• Kitchen workflow and storage

Notable quotes

Your home is not a photograph.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a practical guide for homeowners to avoid costly

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:03) Hi everyone and welcome back to Home Design Chat with Nancy and I am Nancy. It's September 21st and getting closer to the holidays. I have to mention that the weather in Phoenix is absolutely beautiful and inviting and that's why Scottsdale will be very busy for the next eight months. Visitors do enjoy our weather and so do I. But before we begin... please subscribe on the platform you're using to listen to my podcasts. I'd really appreciate it. Well, our subject today is something that I think every homeowner can relate to. It's those little design mistakes that you don't necessarily notice when you're looking at your house plans or when you're shopping for a house or even when your remodel is brand new. But then you start living in the space and suddenly you think, Why did we do that? What were we thinking? Have you ever had that happen to you? Maybe there's a light switch that's in exactly the wrong place or a kitchen drawer that you can't open because another drawer is already open. Maybe there's not enough storage. Maybe the bathroom looks beautiful, but you have absolutely nowhere to put your towels. Or maybe you have a gorgeous room. But every time you walk through it, you have to walk around the piece of furniture. These aren't necessarily big, dramatic design mistakes. They're just little ones. And the funny thing is, those little things can become the things that bother you the most because you live with them every single day. Speaker 1 (1:46) So today we're going to talk about the design mistakes you don't notice until you live in the home. And I want you to think about your own house as we're going through these. You may hear something and say, oh my gosh, I have that problem. Well, let's start with not thinking about how you really live. This is probably one of the biggest mistakes I see. People design a room based on what they think a room should look like instead of how they actually use it. And those are two very important things. Before you decide where the cabinets go, where the furniture goes, or even... what kind of room you're creating, I think you need to ask yourself some very basic questions. How do you really live in this space? Let's take the living room, for instance. You might look at a beautiful photograph and see two chairs, a sofa, a coffee table, and a beautiful piece of artwork. It looks fantastic, but what if your family actually watches television in that room every night? Where's the television go? And where are the remotes stored? And where are the blankets? Those blankets are very useful as we enter the fall season. And by the way, in my opinion, the blankets look great draped on the back of a sofa or the arm of a chair. Practical and functional. Speaker 1 (3:13) And where do you put your coffee? This is the subject that really bothers me. I just looked at several pictures of living rooms on Pinterest, and I love the four big comfy chairs with a round coffee table in the middle. So two are facing and the other two are facing. And then there's the two large curved sofas facing each other with the coffee table in the middle. And these layouts, you actually have to get up from where you're sitting to reach the center table for your coffee. Speaker 1 (3:47) And that doesn't make sense to me. It's very inconvenient. It's a beautiful layout, but it's not very practical. Before I design a space, I want to know how people actually live, not how they wish they lived, not how the room looks in a magazine. Well, let's start with kitchens. I don't just want to know what style kitchen you like. I want to know if you really cook. And if you really cook, how do you cook? Are you someone who takes everything out and puts it on the counter before you start? Or do you take something out of the freezer and pop it in the microwave? Do you need a lot of counter space for preparation? Do you bake and do you entertain? And do you cook with somebody else? Because if two people are always cooking together in the kitchen, the kitchen needs to accommodate two people, not just one person standing at the range. And here's another question. Where do you put things when you come home from the grocery store? Do you have to walk all the way across the kitchen to put the groceries away? Would it make more sense to have the refrigerator in the pantry position so unloading groceries is easier? These are not glamorous design questions. These are the questions that make a kitchen work. Speaker 1 (5:12) The second thing to talk about is storage. People always tell me they want more storage. And then sometimes they remodel and they still don't have enough storage. And why? Because they planned storage by counting cabinets rather than thinking about what they actually need to store. For example, in a kitchen, you just don't need cabinet space. I asked my clients to do an inventory list. Let's see if they have a lot of pots and pans, baking sheets, cutting boards, small appliances. Where are they going to put the food and spices convenient to where they're cooking? Do they have a lot of plastic containers and serving pieces? Speaker 1 (5:58) And do they have cleaning supplies? And