Hawkins and Co.
Blog / 

Your Life & Business In the Cloud – Houzz

Your Life & Business In the Cloud – Houzz

I thought I would change it up this time and write about one of my favourite apps that I use personally not professionally. In my spare time away from spreadsheets and accounting software I LOVE interior and product design. My husband Jules, kids and staff are always laughing at me when I come it with a new gadget or décor item that I think is well designed. I frequently browse Fancy and Fab. I even received the Fancy box curated by Coco Rocha. It was like the candy grab bags they had when I was little –you never knew what you were going to get and that made it exciting!

Houzz

As I write this there are 11,226,414 Home Design Photos on Houzz. With more being added by the hour. With an endless supply of inspiration it’s my go to for ideas when it comes to design & decor.

Over the last 6 months we’ve done a renovation at home of our bedroom and bathroom and we are about to start on a major renovation of our kitchen which includes a supporting beam, new windows as well as the expansion of our office. Using Houzz has helped me keep track of all the great ideas I have for both using their idea books.

Screenshot of Houzz ideabooks

Houzz is like Pinterest but specifically for design & décor. Designers, architects, contractors, photographers and homeowners post photos of their spaces. You can spend hours looking through the beautiful photographs of homes and offices and saving your favourites to refer to later. You can also put notes to help remind yourself what it was you liked about the photo in the first place. For example, I was trying to decide the best way to incorporate a bookshelf into our kitchen. Here’s a photo I found:
Houzz screenshot 2

Once you’ve got some ideas together in an Ideabook you can share it with anyone. It’s a great way to make sure you and your contractor or designer are on the same page in terms of what you want your space to look like. Pictures vary in their level of detail and information. Some even have little green tags that allow you to click through and find out more information about a product or in some cases even purchase products you see in a photo. The tags are created when the person that uploads the photo indicates where the items are from. In the photo below the faucet was tagged as Kohler and if you click through the Kohler link you even get pricing information and the ability to add the item to your cart.

 
Kitchen photo for Houzz post
Recently Houzz has introduced something called Visual Match that suggests products based on what’s in the photo by pulling similar items from their database. It means that even if the person that posted the photo didn’t tell you where the bar stools are from Houzz takes a guess and provides you with links to options. I LOVE this feature as it saves me hours of googling “grey low barstool” and scrolling through photos and websites until I find exactly what I’m looking for!

Chair for Houzz post

 

To give you an example of how much Houzz helped me gather my inspiration here’s a screen shot from my Bathroom Ideabook that I put together before our renovation.

 
Houzz a screenshot of idea tiles

And here’s the finished bathroom……

Final bathroom photo for Houzz post

Notice the herringbone time, white cabinets and stool in the middle –you can see exactly where I pulled the ideas from my ideabook to create my own unique space.

The last little while local businesses have started advertising on Houzz –as you scroll through photos based on your location you actually get photos of products/spaces that are done by local designers & contractors with links to connect with them. A great way to know what you have access to locally because although may things are virtual these days it’s pretty hard to have a virtual contractor (aside from DIY Youtube videos)!

Even after our renovations are done I’m sure I will still spend time scrolling through the photos and stories –as far as I’m concerned a house is never done because it evolves and changes as we do. Shhh don’t tell Jules!

~ Allison