Not just for professionals, Houzz was made for homeowners because it is strictly home design and inspiration. While I prefer Pinterest to find and organize my inspiration, the pull to Houzz is the fact that it doesn’t carry all the distractions that Pinterest does, like noisy ads and various topics unrelated to house design.

Another great thing about Houzz, is you can also find professionals for your project directly from this site. Other things include browse ideas by room or style, read stories written by professionals and homeowners, shop interior products, and more. Enjoy this very specific Houzz rabbit hole.

[VIDEO]

00:00:40 - 1. Create a Single Main Ideabook
00:01:19 - 2. Filter Your Searches + Save to Your Ideabook
00:03:05 - 3. Commenting on photos effectively
00:04:17 - 4. Share the Ideabook with your Team

READ THE TRANSCRIPT AND ADDITIONAL NOTES BELOW

If you don’t already have a Houzz profile, Sign Up with Email or login with your Google account. Choose Homeowner and tell Houzz a little bit about yourself. Go to your profile, add a picture of yourself and update your user name to something a little more recognizable. 

1. Create a Single Main Ideabook

Once you've finished creating your profile, you can start creating your ideabook and saving photos. 

🗣 With Houzz, unfortunately you can’t create one ideabook and have sections within, so instead you will have to have one master or main ideabook of all your pictures. The reason being is, when it comes to sharing with your team, sharing multiple ideabooks will only spam your team (with multiple clients, that's a lot of Ideabooks!). Therefore the single ideabook, but if you’d like to organize the pictures for yourself, you can create multiple Ideabooks and label based on each room. 

From the Houzz homepage, click on Your Houzz in the top right corner of the window and under the Ideabooks folder, choose Create New on the right.

Next you will want to name your Ideabook, the same as you would for your Pinterest Board. “Name’s Ideabook” or “street name project”, etc.

Just like Pinterest, you have the option of making your Ideabooks private or public. You will want to keep them private. I will explain why in a minute.

No need to choose a space since it will include all rooms, but when you're creating your individual ideabooks, choose the room type for search-ability.

Click on the green Create button.

If you look at the Ideabooks section of your profile page, you will see your new Ideabook listed, shown in grey since you haven’t added any photos to it yet. 

Remember you can access all of your Ideabooks from any page on Houzz by clicking Your Houzz in the top right corner or the 🖤 icon.

2. Filter Your Searches + Save to Your Ideabook

If you're unsure of your style, or what you would call your style, to help Houzz help you find More ideas they think you'll love (see folder), have some fun and take a quick quiz. If a quiz isn't your thing, once you begin saving pictures, Houzz will begin showing more similar pictures.

Begin filtering your searches with the room or area type. You can choose location of project, budget (although not very accurate), project size, color, number of stories, materials, type, etc. The filters will change based on the room or area type chosen at the beginning. 

For using the search bar at the top, you have access to your recent searches as well as trending searches. Make sure you get specific in your description. For example, Don't just search 'modern home' if you're looking for an exterior picture. Search 'modern home exterior' or 'modern house exterior'. You can also add the same filter key words in the search bar to help narrow your search.

You can search your description in either photos, products, professionals, stories, and discussions. If you're unsure of what to put in the description, you can use the dropdown menu 'get ideas' based on the room types, magazines and discussions, find professionals based on their area of expertise, and shop products based on locations, sales and trends.

When you see a picture that you like, hover over the photo. You will see two buttons pop up at the bottom – Save and Email. Click on the Save button.

3.  Commenting on photos effectively

Comments are especially important if you have saved a quite a few photos that have no obvious correlation to one another. Or you only like a specific item in the picture, and not the whole picture. For example,

Let’s say that you saved this photo, which is from my Windsail Project / HGTV feature, to your Ideabook.

You might comment something like: “I love the symmetry and how open and bright the space is. I really like the 2-way fireplace but would like it finished in stone or something to stand out more, as well as higher ceilings. Not wild about the wood stain color but I love the beam accents."

If you find a photo you like but aren’t sure why, just say so. The reason will probably become apparent to your team if you save other photos with correlating details. Remember: These commenting specifics also relate to Pinterest.

Back to Houzz, when you save a picture, a pop-up will appear prompting you to explain what you like about this picture. 

Remember when we made your Ideabook private? The reason we want to keep our Ideabook private is so that our comments remain private as well. It can be just as helpful, if not more helpful, for you to tell your designer what you dislike about a picture you've saved. As designers, we know it’s all just personal preferences, but you'll want to make sure that those types of comments remain between your and your team.

When you find a picture that you like, when you click on it you can see more from that project in the images below. Under that, you can ask the owner of the picture a question by clicking the Ask a Question button in the bottom right corner. Questions like "what kind of siding did you use?" If they respond, you will find it in your messages, but if not, you can leave you and your team a comment on the picture in your Ideabook.

A bullet point description works really well for most cases but if you do use sentences, please try and keep them short. 

Add a comment to all of your pictures, and if you miss any, go to your Ideabook through the 🖤 icon in the top right banner and leave a comment under each picture. You can also access your notifications, your shopping cart, your profile, settings, Ideabooks, messages, your uploaded pictures, your orders, upload a picture, and sign out.

❗️WARNING❗️You might notice an Upload File button on the right side of the Ideabook. This button is for uploading photos to your Ideabook from your computer, but they should only be photos that you own or took yourself. It is against Houzz’s policy to upload photos without permission.

4. Share the Ideabook with your Team

Once you're ready, click the Invite button in your Ideabook. Enter the email address or name of your Designer (it’s also a great idea to share with your partner), and click send. They will then get an email prompting them to view your Ideabook.

Once you click Send, it will show all parties who have access to that specific Ideabook. You will be at the top and the others will be listed below. Click the drop-down next to their email address and make sure it is set to Can Edit. Now your team and S.O. can add photos and comment on the photos you have added as well. You can add as many people as you like. When you are finished, click the green Save Settings button.

Now you will see their profile picture beside yours indicating their access.

Just like Pinterest, make sure you follow Professionals in your area that you would like to work with, but most importantly those who inspire you. And of course, feel free to follow us at Potts Design & Co. 

We hope you enjoy everything that Houzz has to offer.