An upbeat soundtrack sets the vibe at the KB Home Studio in an obscure Centennial business park. Potential buyers with this company that built more than 37,000 homes nationwide in 2005 step off an elevator into a world dedicated to design-on-a-dime. Music by Macy Gray and The Red Hot Chili Peppers plays overhead to help ease the buyers into purchasing and building a brand-new home – even when that home is in a development where residential construction is far outpacing neighborhood identity or mature foliage.
The walls of the KB Home Studio are covered with inspirational sayings such as “Dream It. Design It. Own It.” Step farther into the suite, and buyers come face to face with carefully planned vignettes engineered to mine their tastes so the KB staff can help people navigate roughly 5,000 cabinet, countertop, lighting, flooring and fixture combinations.
Linda Totsch chooses most of those design options for the more than two dozen KB Home sites around Denver and Colorado Springs. The vice president of studio and model merchandising also oversees a central-states region within the company. Her design ideas trickle down to KB Home Studios in each of those states.
To hear Totsch tell it, décor options are what sells homes.
“Even in the home I’m in now, which I bought from a builder I worked for 13 years ago, I didn’t get all these choices,” she says while walking past the “personality boards” that outline various style ideas.
If a buyer’s style is modern, for instance, he might prefer a shag rug and sleek, loftlike furniture. If her taste runs more toward country, finished woods and floral patterns might characterize her design choices. “Trust me, when I build my next house, and it’ll probably be a townhouse, I know all the good stuff,” Totsch says.
She finds out about the good stuff at monthly product merchandising meetings with people from KB Home design centers nationwide. Tosch and her peers swap intelligence about what’s selling, and meet with vendors to hear their take on emerging styles.
“Color trends come out of fashion. They might come from cars. Whatever it is, it slowly works its way into the home,” Tosch says. “The trends are different for every region, and they’re moving in different directions. (Colorado is) right in the middle so we see them move back and forth.”
Plus, what’s hot in Colorado might not be hot in Florida or California. And what is hot in Colorado right now? According to Tosch, glass tiles in offbeat shapes, sizes and colors for kitchens and bathrooms is big and getting bigger. Bottom-loading freezers and front-loading washing machines also are tops, while cabinet finishes are running toward a restoration look with architectural salvage-inspired details.
The design ideas are more subtle at Richmond American’s Home Gallery, located in a free-standing retail building across the street from the Park Meadows mall. Signage on the building simply says “Home Gallery” without identifying that this is the center for home buying in more than 30 new housing developments in the Denver area alone.
Richmond is developing so fast in so many communities that location is the first thing its agents talk about with potential buyers, says Home Gallery director Alan McDaniel.
Looky-loos on the tour are steered quickly to an interactive media station where clicking on a map allows viewers access to video documentaries about each of the predominantly suburban areas where Richmond has homes.
“We try to take care of the potential new homeowner in a way that they’ve never been taken care of before,” says McDaniel.
The next stop on the Richmond American Home Gallery tour is a wall of floor plans that Richmond calls “collections.” Each collection corresponds to a price point somewhere between the mid-100s and the mid-500s.
Price is the next thing Richmond wants to talk about, long before contemplating design options. Because like so many builders on this scale, the company has mortgage brokers on hand to engineer a buyer’s financing.
Jump through that hoop and only then are the real riches of the Home Gallery revealed. Here, instead of style groupings, buyers are grouped by color preferences.
The Home Gallery is set up in vignettes labeled Aspen Gold, Pebble Beach, Sienna Sand, Tuscan Tan and Bermuda Linen. There are hundreds of options within those groupings, but all of them coordinate with Richmond’s neutral palette.
“If a house is painted builder’s white, the resale time is 18 days longer than if the house is painted a neutral color that goes with the home,” McDaniel says.
Resale considerations are key with brand-new homes because experts say they are often starter homes from which middle-income families plan to upgrade.
But when the buying budget is higher, so is the design process. High-end condominium developers want to distinguish their buildings from the new-home pack. Design is largely how they do it. The Meridian at The Landmark, for instance, is a luxury condo and retail development inspired by the world’s finest hotels. It’s going up on 15 acres in Greenwood Village. Room service and valet parking are just a few of the amenities this developer is hawking to affluent new home buyers.
“I spent a lot of time running around the country looking at (condominium) projects in Seattle, Scottsdale, Las Vegas, Atlanta,” says Landmark developer Zach Davidson ,whose company is Everest Development Corp. Davidson was behind San Francisco’s award-winning high-end condo at One Embarcadero South, which opened four years ago.
The Landmark model was furnished by HW Home with direction from Denver color expert Eric Mandil of Mandil Inc. High-end appliances and penthouse-sized floor plans will be standard here. Other amenities will include outdoor pools with lavish landscaping, fire pits and water features, a private theater and library, a wine cellar, doggie day-care services, private outdoor decks and patios. Prices start in the $500,000s.
“When projects don’t end up achieving a significant, premier level in the market place,” he says, “an awful lot of times it’s the design. They pick a style that they really can’t do in an exquisite way. For instance, Italian Renaissance. But they’re not willing to spend on some of the precast stone or the art collection that we have here.”
Davidson hand-picked most of the 100-piece Landmark art collection, which he describes as “an effort to appreciate art history and architecturally significant objects from periods and places throughout the world.” It will be part of The Landmark’s common areas.
And while molding and 11-foot ceilings will be standard in these units, Davidson has set up his design team to be able to customize the units in any way a buyer might like.
“Existing condo owners are interested in higher finishes and efficient floor plans,” he says. “An affluent buyer is going to know the difference.”
That resort mentality is reined in at Siena, a smaller, Italian village-inspired “new urban” development with 41 lofts priced from the 500s going up behind the Lowry Town Center. This is a development conceived by baby boomers, for baby boomers. All of the architectural elements fall in line with the villa inspiration, including arched doorways and interior columns. Design options therein were selected after the developer conducted focus groups with its prime demographic – empty-nesters.
“This is basically the market that’s not affected by the downturn,” says Barbara Fullerton with The Fullerton Group. “They’ve got expensive homes that they’ve lived in all their lives and now they’re going to make some money from. Their children are grown and they’re ready for something new.”
From those people Fullerton gleaned that high-end professional appliances, hardwood floors and fabulous architectural elements such as fireplaces and terraces are a must in terms of the standard options buyers are looking for in new condos. “But,” she says, “the sky is the limit when it comes to upgrades.”
Decorating tips and tricks
For that extra personalization when adding your own touch to a home, Room gleaned these interior design ideas from a decor website.
1. Measure your space. This provides the valuable information needed to help you select items for each room. Then confirm your measurements for furniture before delivery. Remember to measure your windows too.
2. Take stock. Inventory what items are necessary for each room to function.
3. Begin researching your personal style . Anything can be used for inspiration, including your favorite color, fabric, piece of artwork or even texture. Select items pertaining to your inventory list and choice of colors. Do you have a theme such as nautical, tropical or traditional? If so, keep that in mind when buying new furnishings.
4. Don’t be afraid of color. Color brings life into a room and can create vibrant, dramatic scenes. Manufacturers have made it easier for you to select paints by grouping colors in paint samples. Think about contrasting light and dark colors to create more impact. Artwork and accessories also bring color into a room.
5. Accessories make the space. They make your house a home. When adding accessories, consider grouping items into threes or other odd numbers. Vary the height of your accessories for more drama. Group pictures together in a storyboard presentation. And don’t forget the details: Window treatments will complete your new look.
Source: AZDecorating.com
