Zillow, Inc. operates the leading real estate and home-related information marketplaces on mobile and the Web, with a complementary portfolio of brands and products that help people find vital information about homes, and connect with the best local professionals. Zillow’s brands serve the full lifecycle of owning and living in a home: buying, selling, renting, financing, remodeling and more. In addition, Zillow offers a suite of tools and services to help local real estate, mortgage, rental and home improvement professionals manage and market their businesses. Welcoming nearly 81.5 million unique users during its peak month in 2014, the Zillow, Inc. portfolio includes Zillow.com®, Zillow Mobile, Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, Zillow Rentals, Zillow Digs®, Postlets®, Diverse Solutions®, Agentfolio®, Mortech®, HotPads™ and StreetEasy®. The company is headquartered in Seattle.
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More than two-thirds (68 percent) of remodelers are planning outdoor home improvement projects this season, a 70 percent increase compared to last summer (40 percent), according to the summer Zillow® Digs® Home Design Trend Reporti. Open-air living rooms, featuring wood arbors, fully upholstered seating and muted colors, will be popular with homeowners this season.
This one-of-a-kind trend report depends on a survey of members of the Zillow Digs Board of Designers, a group of design experts from across the country, and the most popular outdoor photos on Zillow Digs, a hub for home improvement and design inspiration.
Summer remodel budgets increased since the beginning of the year, up 100 percent to $1000 on median. With a larger budget, many homeowners are considering more extensive outdoor remodels such as open-air living rooms to expand useable square footage for year-round use, adding value to their home.
Luxury Living Outdoor Home Renovations
Top three trends for open-air living rooms:
Wood arbors: Wood arbors will be all the rage this summer with homeowners wanting a clearly defined outdoor space that functions as a second living room. Expect to see “arbors featuring lots of greenery” to create the illusion of an “open-air ceiling,” says Melissa Klebanoff of Melissa Klebanoff Interior Design in Seattle. Wood arbors with white curtains and outdoor twinkle lights also will be popular this season.
Fully upholstered couches: Zillow design experts identified fully upholstered couches as a growing open-air living room trend as homeowners want to invest in “comfortable seating and lounging pieces for a real indoor/outdoor feel,” says Mara Miller of Carrier and Company in New York City. In addition to indoor-style seating, other typically interior accessories such as rugs, lamps and wood coffee tables also will gain popularity among remodelers.
Muted colors: Homeowners and designers identify soft, muted hues as the most popular colors for open-air living rooms. Outdoor colors this season are about “subtly not saturation,” says Marc Thee of Marc-Michaels Interior Design in Winter Park, Florida. Expect to see homeowners “dialing back” those louder accent colors from last summer such as “turquoise to sea glass, watermelon to a greyed shrimp and bright orange to a beautiful sherbet,” Thee says.
Zillow Digs is a hub for home improvement and design inspiration, where users can browse more than one million photos of interiors and exteriors of real homes, organized by space, style, cost and color. Patent-pending Digs Estimates help people understand what it would cost in their geographic location to recreate the actual bathrooms and kitchens they are viewing. In addition, Zillow Digs users can collect images, share favorites and follow others for inspiration, from the Zillow Digs App for iPhone® and iPad® or on the Web.