Setting Your Homes Apart

Differentiation has always been important for professionals working in the housing industry, but in a market as saturated and as price-sensitive as the one we have today, it’s critical to make your houses stand out from the competition. Here are five ways to add ‘oomph’ to your plans or projects without adding major expense.

Dress up the front door

This is the first part of the house that homeowners and their guests see and touch, so it’s a great place to make a statement, says Philadelphia-area architect Cheryl O’Brien. “If it’s substantial, they’ll feel the difference,” she says. And it doesn’t have to be overly expensive — just a nice door and trim, and lights on either side of the door. “If you have vinyl siding and need to save money, a good front door sets a good tone from the beginning,” she says.

Photo credit: Jerry Nardone
Simple yet eye-catching details around the front door create a point of distinction for a home.

Add color

While you’re enhancing the exterior, she says, add some drama with colorful shutters, brackets or flower boxes. Color is the easiest, cheapest way to make your home stand out.

“Even if you’re in a conservative market, you can still use splashes of color,” she says. “It draws attention and makes your community more memorable.”

Boston-based interior designer Brenda Be uses vibrantly colored accent tiles to “relieve the effect of ‘builder beige,’ while still maintaining a neutral environment that will appeal to the broadest buyer range and allow buyers to imagine customizing their own environment.”

Build in convenience

With buyers gravitating toward smaller houses, O’Brien is putting more emphasis on convenience factors. In the kitchen, that might include a broom closet and a desk area where it’s easy to set up a laptop. In the secondary bath it could be ample storage and a double sink — touches that are usually limited to the master bath. Be also likes upscale convenience touches such as pot-filler faucets, filtered-water dispensers, master bath showers with body sprays, wide shower heads and hand showers.

Photo credit: Kevin Fleming Photography
Convenience factors, such as a desk space in the kitchen, are a low-cost way to build differentiation into a home.

Don’t forget the ceiling

Ceiling treatments can make smaller rooms feel more substantial. For example, if you’re building eight-foot ceilings on a one-story structure, you can create more headroom by framing the roof with scissors trusses, which have a vaulted bottom chord. A shallow vault that rises to 10 feet in the middle of the room is plenty. “It’s a minimal amount of extra drywall but creates a lot more volume,” O’Brien says.

If a vault isn’t an option — which is the case when there’s a second story above — O’Brien says a little color on the ceiling will go a long way. “Builders tend to go on autopilot and paint the ceiling white,” she says. “That’s the worst thing you can do. If a room is green, paint the ceiling a real pale shade of greenish white. It will make the room feel so much warmer.”

Photo credit: Possibilities for Design
Ceiling treatments make rooms visually stunning, both by adding volume and providing the opportunity to add impact with color.

Show them the green

If you already specify many green products, make sure to tell your customers. ENERGY STAR® appliances and WaterSense® faucets and fixtures are easy to find, so specify and highlight them in marketing literature, Be advises. Other eco-friendly touches that consumers may recognize are Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified wood and GREENGUARD-certified products for good indoor air quality.

ICI Homes in Daytona Beach, Fla., promotes its green homes through a special Web site, myefactor.com. They thought buyers would respond to the energy savings, but “it’s the cleaner living that’s gone to the top of the list,” says Judith Lawrence, ICI vice president of customer relations. “It’s just healthier living all the way around.”


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