We love Pinterest. It’s such a great tool for finding inspiration for anything from hairstyles to home interiors. However, with so many pins and re-pins, trying to find the original source of your inspiration can get lost pretty quickly. That’s where Houzz comes in.

“But we already have Instagram and Pinterest, why do we need Houzz?”

Houzz is so much more than another digital pin-board for your home inspirations. It is a super useful site for connecting you with contractors, designers and retailers. A one-stop shop for everything you need for your next home renovation.

We can see how you might ask that question but once you get to grips with the features and benefits, which we’re here to help you do, Houzz will become your new favourite interiors obsession.

 

Fern 6 Seater and Ida Dining Set, £629

 

Introduction to Houzz

So, you want to renovate your house, your kitchen for example. By now you most likely have Pinterest boards full of your favourite images, from marble worktops, brass handles, and matt grey units. This is all good and very pleasing to the eye, but finding where the kitchen is from, or who designed it isn’t that simple.

It’s at this stage Houzz becomes your new favourite website for home renovations. Here are just some of the features Houzz can help you with when creating your dream home:

• Direct contact with Contractors, Designers and Retailers.
• Honest reviews from past clients.
• Pictures of past projects, including completion timescales and budgets.
• Ability to filter your searches by location, price and profession.
• Build Ideabooks (similar to Pinterest boards) full of your own inspirational images
• Browse products from retailers and place them into your own digital room, so you can get a feel for how your vision will look.

With so many features, we would be here forever if I explain them all to you, so we’re going to focus of the Ideabooks and the ‘Sketch’ feature, so you can get a solid idea of what you want for your home project. Then it is up to you to find contractors and designers, depending on your own budget and plans.

Ideabooks

Creating an Ideabook is very similar to creating a Pinterest board. You can have it public or private, but adding your own images or “pinning” other’s is much more straightforward.

 

 

The above image shows you the very start of an Ideabook. As you can see, you can add your own photo or browse photos and products to create your dream interior.

 

Once you click “add photo or file” you are given 3 options.

• Upload your own photo
• Add from website
• Get the Houzz bookmarklet.

The House Bookmarklet is a shortcut which is embedded into your browser, just like Pinterest, making it that much easier to save directly from a website. 

If you choose to upload your own image, you are taken this screen…

 

   

… where you can upload multiple files at once, making it quicker finish your board, especially if you’re uploading an Ideabook as a professional (or to show off your beautiful new renovation, once its finished).

Simply drag in your images and press Upload (depending on size and quantity, this may take a minute).

 

Once your images are uploaded, you can add a caption or remove any images you’ve changed your mind on. Then, simply press save!

The whole point of creating your own Ideabooks is to collate all of your ideas in one place. You may well say that’s what Pinterest is for, but on Pinterest, your favourite images are jumbled in whatever order you come across them. Ideabooks allow you to pick out the best of the best, and arrange it all together on one board. No more scrolling for hours finding a specific pin- they’re all in one easy, simple place!

You can also add a Sketch to your Ideabook, which we will cover imminently, and you can collaborate with others on your books too. So if you and a partner and working on a project together, you can both contribute ideas to the same place.

 

 

 

Sketch

 

 

The Sketch feature on Houzz is great. Whether you’re undergoing a home renovation or not, you can have fun creating your dream interiors, without spending a penny! You have 4 options when it comes to Sketch. These are:

• Moodboards
• Design a Room
• Floorplans.

Moodboards

Let’s look at creating a mood board on Houzz. Mood boards are mainly for the products you like and trying out different combinations to find the perfect pairings. You can also add any inspirational interiors you find to help complete the overall look, be it uploading your own or saving from other Houzz users.

Top Tip: A great feature of this is that Houzz gives you a tab for Recently Viewed products, so you can always find your favourites. You can also filter by products or brands.

 

 

Sticking with our Monochrome theme, here’s one we made earlier:

 

 

You wouldn’t get this feature on Pinterest, would you? In our on the go lifestyles, we don’t all have access to photoshop, or even a printer to create a physical mood board, which is why the Houzz feature is so helpful! You can crop, resize, flip, duplicate- whatever you want to achieve your ideal dream board.

We have added inspirational kitchen images, our ideal products and some lovely lifestyle shots of said favourite products too, just to see how they have been used in real life. This way you can begin to get a solid feel for the type of room you want to create.

 

Design a Room

This is the most fun part of Houzz. You can set up a room using all the products and materials you like. It’s like being a real Interior Designer. You can choose the shape, style and colour of your room, and add your favourite pieces to your heart’s content!

 

 

Most retailers will have uploaded cutouts of each of their products, which work much better as they have a background. You can duplicate, flip and resize images to get an idea of how a room will look with your favourite products.

Once you have your ideas finalised, you can get searching for the professionals to find the right person for your job!

 

The Houzz Downlow

I hope by now you’ve got a good idea of how Houzz works when you’re starting your interior project. Some people will use Houzz solely for inspiration, where others will utilise the professional services on offer. So to get you started, here’s the like to our Houzz profile so you can get an idea of Houzz and start exploring.

We’ve only covered a small slice of what Houzz can do for you, but if you have any other questions, ask us in the comments below and we’ll be happy to help!

Are you a seasoned Houzzer? Let us know what you think and tag us in your home makeovers using #mydanetti!