Everyone’s heard of Houzz and Pinterest, but these sites are a lot more than just a vast collection of online images. They also serve as fabulous resources for homeowners who need a little inspiration and help coming up with a solid plan for their next home improvement project.
The tools available on these sites allow homeowners to not only gain some much-need inspiration, but also to organize their projects, collaborate with professionals, and even do a little shopping.
Houzz
On Houzz, you’ll find an immense array of images and info needed for you to gain some inspiration and ideas for your next home improvement project. Not only that, just about every well-known professional in the world of home improvement and design has some presence on Houzz.
Ideabooks – A great way to start using Houzz is to use an ‘ideabook’, a place where you can save all of your favorite images, notes, products, and other details related to your next project. Ideabooks can also be used to communicate and collaborate with any professionals that will be helping you bring your vision into reality.
For instance, if you’re currently planning a bathroom overhaul, you can use ideabooks to collect images of bathrooms that have caught your attention and narrow down the specific style, color palette, and finishes that you like. You can then send this collection to the people you’ve hired to help you and show them what you want to have incorporated into your project. Essentially, your ideabook can serve as a workbook that you can use to work together with the experts you’ve brought on board to help.
When using ideabooks, you might want to organize them according to different design elements. These image collections can be a great resource to use if you’re ever feeling overwhelmed with all the choices and decisions that need to be made.
Sketch – The ‘sketch’ feature is another handy tool and makes it easy to communicate with your designer or others using images. It even allows you to add any products you may have found from the Houzz Shop to these photos. You can even write or draw on the images and add some stickers to make communication even easier and faster.
Whether you want to circle a certain feature that gives you some inspiration, jot down room dimensions, or sketch out the location of where you want certain pieces to go, sketch can make this easy.
While Houzz is geared specifically towards homeowners and professionals in the home improvement and design industry, Pinterest is for anyone and anything, including elements of the home.
Pinterest is a website that lets you post and categorize photos on the web. It’s an awesome visual tool that essentially allows you to collect ideas for home design and remodeling by categorizing your images into ‘pinboards’, which are essentially the equivalent of Houzz’s ‘ideabook’. These boards can be used for any room in your home, as well as for exterior components, such as your landscaping and other type of exterior design.
There’s really no limit to what you can use pinboards for. For instance, many users on Pinterest use boards to gather ideas and inspiration for their favorite pieces of art or even their appliances.
Why is this useful? Creating these boards can help you hone in on exactly what you strive to achieve in your home. And if you’re using a designer or contractor of some sort, your Pinterest boards will give them a clearer idea of what your personal style is, which can help save a lot of time, frustration, and even money. In fact, more and more homeowners and their designers are using Pinterest to collaborate and share ideas to communicate them more effectively and make the job much easier.
Pinterest is also great for finding pieces for your home that you might not necessarily find at a retail store or by doing a Google search on the net. You’d be amazed at all the unique finds that you will discover by perusing this handy site, including furniture, accessories, and fixtures.
If you want to keep your boards private from the 50 million Pinterest users and post them only for your eyes to see, you can do so, but you’re only allowed a maximum of three private pinboards on this site.
Homeowners can use Pinterest in a number of ways to achieve their goals:
Creating a clear vision – It can be challenging for the average homeowner to clearly visualize the precise look that they’re going for. Luckily, Pinterest can help with that. You can have different boards dedicated to various components of your project. Simply think about all the items that will go into creating the final look you’re going for, then include them on your board. This can include things such as color schemes, textiles, lighting, flooring, building materials, furnishings and so forth.
Organizing your items – Once you’ve added all the items as mentioned above, you can then systematize your boards into themes according to the items you’ve added. This is helpful not just for you, but for any designer that you may be collaborating or working with. By creating boards to hold certain items or ideas, you’ll have an easier time honing in on each board one at a time as each phase of your project is completed.
Buying items – Not only is Pinterest a great place to gain inspiration for home remodeling or decorating ideas, it’s also an awesome resource to purchase pieces that you simply won’t find anywhere else. After you’ve managed to narrow down your choices in the above steps, you can begin shopping for them. A lot of the pins for products have links that connect users directly to online stores that sell them, making outfitting your home according to your project specs a cinch.
The Bottom Line
Both Houzz and Pinterest certainly offer a plethora of ideas and sources of inspiration, probably more than you will find anywhere else. But in addition to all the images that homeowners can draw ideas from, these sites are also great resources to help organize projects, choose a design, pick materials and finishes, and communicate with designers and other professionals. With tools like these at your fingertips, planning and designing your next home improvement project has never been easier.
