Building a home from scratch is an exciting and overwhelming process. From custom home design to the waiting game of its construction, embarking on this investment requires an attention to detail and confidence in your decisions for your new home. For many, there are a handful of pitfalls that interfere with their vision and budget. Here are how these mistakes arise and ways to avoid them.

With a custom home design, you’re likely planning to stay put for years to come to reap the benefits of this extensive process. If you design solely for your family as it is today, you’ll find that your home custom built for you will soon no longer fit your lifestyle very well.

If you have toddlers, make sure you plan for the house, mainly their rooms, to grow with them. Maybe you’re planning to start a family soon; add an extra guest room that can convert into a nursery in due time. Also, assure that you won’t have too many baby-unfriendly elements in your designs by considering non-slip flooring and minimizing choices that have sharp corners.

When you have other family members to consider, like your in-laws, it can be beneficial to design a guest room with their needs at the forefront. Placing an in-law suite on the ground floor helps avoid any accessibility issues with stairs—even if they aren’t living there when you initially move into your home. Other elements like an en suite bathroom or a curbless shower are also important decisions if you see this life stage in the future for your custom home design.

The custom home design process needs to be a bit of a waiting game to get your vision exactly right. Since you have control over essentially every detail of your new home, the myriad options can be overwhelming if you try to rush through all the decisions to be made. Flesh out your design completely, as you will likely change your mind multiple times on some pivotal choices.

If you instead power through these plans, you’re more likely to have buyer’s remorse later when the home is complete. Worse still, if you try to incite changes once construction has begun, it only complicates the progress of the build. While swapping out these details early on is a quick switch, once the builders break ground on your home, changes to the design will result in substantial costs and project delays.

To give you peace of mind while the builders get to work, take your time with the planning process. See and feel materials, color swatches, and other elements in person whenever possible, so what you see is what you get. And most importantly, trust the opinion of the builder if they steer you away from an option for logistical reasons; odds are, their industry experience is right.

With all the decisions and potential changes involved in the custom home design process, you must have every choice in writing with detail to confirm that you get precisely what you want. While points like paint color seem inconsequential if they’re not the exact shade of gray you wanted, if it’s painted all over your house, it will likely bother you incessantly until you splurge to repaint it.

These concerns only amplify with options like cabinetry. If you want glass-paneled cabinet doors—even if you discuss it in detail with your builder—if it’s not in writing, you probably won’t get that custom element. Replacing those doors, on top of the money you already invested in the existing cabinetry, will cost you time and money you didn’t need to spend if you paid extra attention to detail from the start. Expert builders will guarantee you never have to worry about what’s in writing, but always confirm this step with them throughout the design process.

To assure that you custom build the home of your dreams, recruit a top-notch team for the project. In Honolulu, HI, homeowners-to-be turn to Masterpiece Construction for high-end custom builds that spare no details. We will guide you through the process—from design to construction through to the final product—to help you think ahead and plan sufficiently for your new home. With our assistance, you can ensure that every minute design element is to your liking. For more information, give us a call today at (808) 688-8839.