Why you should let your wife design your new home. (Sort of!)
It’s rare that I design a home for a single person, usually married couples, but not always. Usually men/women couples, but not always. So while I write this article somewhat tongue in cheek, I have some years of experience to backup my ideas.
For this discussion I’m going to focus on my primary demographic of home building couples which I have designed for over the past decade. This is the husband wife couple. Unfortunately, when it comes to the actual design somewhere between 75-90 percent of the time the wife plays a passive role in the process. Again, this is not always the case and is not meant to be a jab at men being over controlling or dominating the conversation. Typically most couples are very delighted with designing their home and enjoy the process. However I do see a trend.
Usually a meeting goes like this. The husband does most of the talking and decision making. He usually knows names of contractors, building officials, the brother-in law who’s involved somehow and a myriad of other things that his wife seems to have no interest in, no clue, or no input. Some men have a very good grasp of what they want to see in the house and how much they want to spend. Mostly focusing on the big picture of the construction, logistics, timeline, budget, etc. Sometimes with minor input about everything related to their garage and utility room. Men are usually aloof and non interested in areas such as the bathrooms or kitchen.
These are the areas where my women customers really shine! And this conversation is usually divided 50/50 with women. Some women aren’t as allowed much input as they should have, but are given full rein over these spaces because it’s “their deal”. The others are very vocal and voice their opinion freely stating “the kitchen is all I care about, the rest of the house is on you”. Where these statements can seem very derogatory on the surface, this seems to be the unwritten contract that many of these couples have entered into with building their dream home.
Again these characters are typical for the couples I see, but not a complete representation of my customers as a whole. I have met dozens of couples where this entire exchange has been reversed and the wife takes the lead on designing the home. To be perfectly candid, these have been some of the better thought out designs and the ones that I have enjoyed designing the most!
This leads me to my main point, why you should let your wife design your new home! If not design the home as a whole, give her far more flexibility in the decision making process. Again, I say this in jest because I believe that this should be a team process.
Kitchen, baths laundry, bedrooms. These are some the mostly used spaces in the home which provide most utility. Why wouldn’t you want the person who uses them the most design them?
Did you know that 70-80% of a home’s consumer products are purchased or influenced by women? Who buys the furniture, the decor, the decorations, the rugs, the appliances, the food? Shouldn’t they have more say? If your job was a professional chef, wouldn’t you want to design your kitchen to accommodate what you do exactly as you do it? I think the answer is glaringly obvious.
Unfortunately, when it comes to home design men have a huge blind spot, which always seems to be on a woman’s mind...the future. As men we seem to think we’re designing the perfect home and that it will stay static forever, but the reality is that a home changes with you. You change, your family gets bigger or smaller, tastes change, trends change. Ultimately, you want a home that can adapt with you and women seem more in tune with this idea. For example, a home with 2 showers and no bathtubs isn’t the most effective if there will ever be babies or toddlers in the home. Seems obvious, but you’d be surprised how often this ones gets by folks.
I do not agree that one person in a relationship should have more say than the other, or one person gets more decision making power. Where I believe that the majority of home builds go well and our customers are extremely happy, we can always do better! I’m very much a perfectionist, but I don’t claim to know it all. My roll as a home designer is really as a guide to aid people through the building process and making good decisions that will affect the outcome of their future home. I can suggest that someone make preparations for a TV in their living room, I can’t force them to do it. Ultimately, final decisions are up to the people paying the bills and living in the space.
I would love to see couples coming together designing their homes with a team mentality and thinking though all the decisions weather they have much interest or not. This is a fun and exciting process and the more a person gets involved with it the more they will feel like they created something unique. This is what I see as the difference between building a house and creating a home.
Thanks for reading!
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Casey