Serving on the Home Show and Parade of Homes committees for the past several years has
taught me something most homeowners never get the chance to see from the inside: what
actually separates a home that stops people in the doorway from one that is simply nice.
There are no judges walking these homes with a scorecard. The only opinion that matters is the
one formed by the people touring through — and after years of watching which homes people talk
about on their way out, I have noticed the same things come up again and again. It is almost
never the most expensive finish in the room. I have walked through homes with extraordinary
budgets that felt disjointed, and homes with far more modest ones that stopped me at the door.
The difference has very little to do with what was spent, and everything to do with how the
decisions were made.
Consistency Is the First Thing the Eye Notices
A home reads as considered when every material decision clearly answers to the one before it.
The cabinetry hardware in the kitchen has a relationship to the fixtures in the powder room two
doors down. The trim profile that shows up in the entry does not quietly disappear once you
round the corner into the mudroom. None of these are something a visitor necessarily notices
consciously while walking through — but the absence of it is exactly what makes a beautiful room
feel, somehow, slightly off.
This is the part of design that has nothing to do with taste and everything to do with discipline. It
requires someone to hold the entire home in their head at once. From the first walkthrough to the
final installation day, and to keep saying no to choices that are individually lovely but collectively
incoherent. It is unglamorous work. It is also, in my experience, the single biggest predictor of
whether a home reads as “designed” rather than “decorated” — and it is exactly the kind of thing
that has people lingering in a room a little longer than they planned to.
The Best Function Is the Function You Never See
The second thing that consistently draws people back for a second look, whether or not they
could name why, is function that has been planned for rather than solved for after the fact.
Hidden storage that appears exactly where a family actually needs it, not where it was easiest to
fit. A floor plan that solves a problem the homeowners had been quietly living with for years — a
mudroom that finally has enough hooks, a pantry deep enough to actually use, a laundry room
positioned so it does not require carrying baskets past three bedrooms to reach it. Lighting that
was planned during the design phase, layered and purposeful, rather than added as a single
overhead fixture once the drywall was already up.
None of these things photograph as dramatically as a statement chandelier or a waterfall
countertop. They are, almost without exception, what people remember six months after they
move back in, long after the initial excitement of a tour has settled into ordinary daily life. A home
that still solves problems for you a year later is a home that was designed correctly from the
start.
What This Means If You Are Walking Through a Parade of Homes tour
If you are planning to tour the Parade of Homes, I would encourage you to look
past the first impression of any given room. Ask yourself whether the choices feel like they belong
to the same home, or whether each room feels like it was decided independently. Look for the
storage you cannot see. Notice whether the lighting changes the mood of a space or simply
illuminates it.
These are the same questions worth asking about your own home, whether or not it is ever toured
by anyone but you and the people who live there. A Parade of Homes-quality standard is not really about
competition. It is about whether a home was built with enough intention that it holds up to that
kind of attention at all — and that standard is available to any renovation, at any scale, when the
process starts the right way.
If you are considering a renovation with that level of consideration in mind, a Discovery Call is
where we would start.
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