If you’re planning on building a new house, you’re in for one wild ride. Building a home can be an incredibly rewarding experience that creates a strong bond with your house and family; it can help you cultivate a unique space that is perfect for you and your household. It can also be a trying experience where you’re pushed to your limits. The following will explore a few useful tips you might want to keep in mind if you’re building a house.

Schedule Sanity Dates

Building a house is a huge project that takes time (often more time than you were at first expecting). During this process, there are going to be moments when you’re stressed, overwhelmed, or feel like you’re never going to be done working on the house. To help mitigate these completely normal feelings, you want to schedule some days away from home building to enjoy nature, spend time with your family, or practice hobbies you love. 
If you’re living in the new house well before it’s completed, this point is especially important. You need days away from the construction site where there isn’t constant noise and sawdust. It’s also important to schedule alone time for everyone in the household if you’re all sharing a much more cramped space than usual throughout the building period.

Think About Maintenance

When the home is finished, you’re not just going to look at it, you’re going to live in it, and this means that you need to think about the experience of maintaining the choices you’ve made. When choosing flooring types, consider what cleaning those floors for the next several years is going to feel like, and make any appropriate changes to your plan. When selecting materials, consider how they can be cleaned and what that process is like. How often are you going to have to refinish elements of the home?
Another huge component of your maintenance considerations is the process of tidying the home. Open concept homes are beautiful and beloved, but you need to understand that it’s a lot harder to stuff a mess into a backroom behind a closed door when the in-laws suddenly show up without any notice. Think about how it is going to feel to get behind on cleaning and maintenance because life is complicated and messy, and there are going to be weeks when you get behind.

Consider Resale Value

You might not be planning on moving anytime soon (or ever), but you still need to consider the impact your choices will have on resale value. Extremely unusual or unique elements can often be a deterrent for future buyers, whereas classic things like a working fireplace can increase the expected value. If you’re having trouble with this or if the home is part of your retirement or savings plans, it’s important to reach out to a real estate agent and get their opinion on the choices you’re making.

Revisit Images You Love

When the building gets tough, it’s good to have some images of what you’re aiming for to keep you motivated. Save photographs from magazines or collect digital images on websites like Pinterest. You might be absolutely in love with living rooms that feature cushions with black accents; you might have been obsessed with having a skylight since you were a kid. Whatever gets you excited to work on the home should be kept handy in case you need a little inspiration or encouragement.

Study Color Psychology

Not enough people look up the impacts of their design choices on the mental state of people within the spaces they are creating. In particular, wide swatches of color can influence the way you feel when you look at them. When selecting wall colors, flooring colors, or statement pieces like sofas, beds, and dining room tables, think about how looking at those colors every day will affect you. If this research really appeals to you, you can also learn about environmental psychology more broadly. Things like layout and texture also influence how people feel within a particular space; you’ll quickly realize that those friends who have a home no one ever wants to leave employ some of this information, whether they’re aware of it or not.
The above list should help you throughout the process of building your own home. It’s important to understand that the experience will probably last longer than you’re expecting, and no matter how you feel about the project, you’re going to be confronting a wide array of emotions as it unfolds. There will be hiccups and moments where you need to compromise your vision for other factors like cost, time, or practicality.