What’s Trending in Design Details for New Homes?

New styles, colors, and materials impact every aspect of today’s homes. What’s trending in design details for new homes? We asked Travis Davidson at Homes By Taber to chime in on the design options that homebuyers prefer when adding their personal touches. 

Travis is our Chief Operating Officer and while it might seem strange to have a COO talk about design and style, Travis is uniquely qualified. Through his long career, he has worked in just about every aspect of homebuilding—in lumber yards and for builders, in sales, estimating, construction, and purchasing. That means he has deep insight into what’s going into the new construction homes we build in the Oklahoma City metro region. What better way to see what’s popular?

Here’s Travis’s take on today’s trends.

Exteriors matter. Homes By Taber offers exterior options that include shingles, board and batten, brick, and stone. “Our homebuyers are very particular on the siding and bricks. Where does one stop and the other start?” 

Once they’ve picked the siding details, there are color choices to be made for the entry and garage doors, siding, trim, shutters, and brick. Travis says buyers spend a lot of time using the interactive design tool to see how each choice looks on the elevation of the floor plan they’ve chosen. 

Wood meets tile. Inside the home, wood-look tile is hugely popular with homeowners. This flooring choice truly looks like hardwood but delivers durability like tile. If you’ve got pets, you can stop worrying about claw marks, as well as the occasional accident. Wood-look tile is easy to clean and keeps its like-new look much longer. Travis says many homeowners are even using wood-look tile in the bedrooms now, in place of carpet. They like the richness of wood and the tile’s cleanliness as a flooring alternative because carpet collects dust, dirt, and allergens. 

“We saw a lot of buyers who liked a home but not the carpet. We realized it just made sense to include wood-look tile with the home, rather than an option—which is how many of our “Proudly Overbuilt” features become included in our homes. Because it no longer seemed like an option to not include wood-look tile, since buyers almost unanimously chose this flooring.”

Homes By Taber includes wood-look tile as a standard feature, with a choice of 8 colors that are always being refreshed based on what’s most popular.

Thanks for the tankless water heater. Here’s another example of a popular request that morphed into an included feature. The tankless water heater is more energy-efficient because it doesn’t store hot water, but heats it endlessly. With this system, you don’t run out of hot water once the tank is empty. You save money on heating water and enjoy a steady supply. Tankless water heaters are more expensive, but also last twice as long, on average, as a conventional water heater. Travis investigated the cost of Rinnai tankless water heaters and, through smart purchasing, got what customers wanted.

“Many purchasing people trip over dollars to pick up pennies,” explains Travis, who earned his degree in Math, with the intention of teaching, but went to work in a lumberyard after college and discovered his future there. “At Homes by Taber, we believe that if we put more in the homes and create more value for our customers, our business will grow because of it.”

Ceilings are looking up. The architectural details don’t have to stop when you reach the ceiling. Homebuyers are looking for ways to extend the design features of their homes, and ceilings provide that opportunity. Homes By Taber’s homebuyers favor coffered ceilings. This trimmed grid adds depth and detail with beams. 

Cathedral ceilings remain a popular choice as well. Homes By Taber offers this style with and without crows feet (angled beams extending from the top of the horizontal beams to the ceiling above).

Garages are growing. We already include 2- and 3-car garages in our floor plans, but it appears that’s still not enough for some homeowners. They’re choosing to extend the garage. We offer a 2- and 4-foot extension on the double bay of the garages, and many people get revved up about this opportunity. According to Travis, “Whether it’s for bigger cars or just to have more room in the garage, this is something that is frequently added to the floor plan.”

Plus-size patios, too! The garages aren’t the only thing getting bigger. Our homes include a finished patio that includes a wood-burning fireplace, but if you want an even larger outdoor living space, we added that as an option in the interactive floor plans. 

We’ve even listed the price of every option that isn’t already included in our Proudly Overbuilt list of standard features. By doing this, you know what any upgrades will cost without having to ask for estimates. The features and the numbers are right there because we want to be transparent with our customers.

What’s your vision for a new home? Get inspiration by looking at the floor plans for our single-family homes. Click on a floor plan and then “Personalize This Home” to see all the choices. Then talk to Frankie Lewis at Homes By Taber to learn about the communities where we build.