Houzz.com

Houzz Renovation Barometer: Pros Remain Confident Despite Slight Softening in Design Sector

Residential remodeling firms report widespread confidence in quarter-over-quarter market gains, according to the Q2 2016 Houzz Renovation Barometer released this week. The Barometer tracks confidence in the home renovation market among industry professionals including architects, designers, general contractors (GCs)/remodelers, design-build firms, building/renovation specialists and landscaping/outdoor specialists. 

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While Barometer readings remain strong among the six industry groups surveyed, scores decreased slightly for five of the six, relative to Q1 2016. As shown in the chart above, there has been a four quarter decline in confidence of design-related firms, including architects and designers – Q2 2016 scores of 66-73 are down from Q2 2015 scores of 75-80. This also shows the widening gap between design-related firms and other sectors.

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Across the board, half or more firms report an uptick in Gen Xer activity so far this year, when compared to the same time period of 2015. Similarly, projects for Baby Boomers also increased by a third or more during the same timeframe. Unsurprisingly, slightly fewer saw an increase in activity from Millennials.

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Many firms have also seen an increase in specialized projects. While landscape/outdoor specialists and GCs/remodelers are most likely to have seen increased activity in relation to smart home projects, architects and design-build firms are most likely to report an increase in aging-in-place projects. Landscape/outdoor specialists are nearly twice as likely to have seen an uptick in green projects than all other industry groups.

For more information from the Q1 2016 Houzz Renovation Barometer, see the full report. This includes additional findings among architects, interior designers, general contractors, design-build firms and more.

Camp Houzz

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When you ask longtime Houzzers about our culture, they all say the same thing: while our team has grown to more than 900 people around the world, Houzz still feels like a close-knit family.

To continue building those connections, Houzzers from our growing Palo Alto team escaped to the great outdoors for an annual retreat in June. This year’s theme, “Camp Houzz,” was filled with fun activities designed to help Houzzers get to know one another even better. The team bonded over campfires, delicious BBQ, fun outdoor activities, and of course, camping!

Here are a few photos from the retreat:

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Our co-founders Adi Tatarko and Alon Cohen led a lively chat with several longtime Houzzers, who shared their early Houzz experiences and favorite stories.

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Houzzers were given the fun challenge of pairing off with people they haven’t had the chance to get to know yet for ten minutes at a time, and talking with one another to find common bonds.

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The team took advantage of the beautiful surroundings by kayaking, biking, ziplining and enjoying yoga classes during their downtime.

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Houzzers also bonded over fun games and activities including cards, coloring, Jenga and ping-pong.

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A festive, interactive percussion performance and line dancing class entertained Houzzers during the evenings.

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Family-style meals provided further opportunities to bond with old and new friends. We even managed to cheer on the Golden State Warriors during the NBA Finals!

Designers in the Houzz: San Francisco Design Week

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During San Francisco Design Week, nearly 200 Bay Area designers gathered at our Houzz HQ  to mingle with members of our design and engineering teams and tour our new office, while enjoying tasty food and drinks. Alon Cohen, Houzz cofounder and president, spoke at the event, sharing the story of how Houzz got its start and the evolution of our web and mobile design – everyone got a kick out of the original Houzz website!

Here are a few photos from the event.

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Guests getting their network on.

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Houzzer UX/visual designer, Aran, discusses our design approach.

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Taking a break for a bit of photo booth fun.

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Guests walked away with some cool Houzz swag.

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Houzzers strike a pose with Alon.

Houzzer Profile: Arya Goudarzi, Infrastructure Software Engineer

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Arya is an Infrastructure Software Engineer at Houzz whose responsibilities include automation, monitoring, availability, scaling, and security of the Houzz infrastructure. When he’s not at work, you can find him doing yoga, reading, improvising, exploring nature and cooking.

How did you get into computer science?
My love and curiosity for computers started when I was 11 years old and my dad bought a PC for my brother’s college coursework. At that time in Iran, where I grew up, it was very rare to have a computer. In many ways it was like a magical box that people were afraid to touch since no one knew how to fix it.

When I was home alone, I would play games on the computer. Soon after I started secretly disassembling and reassembling parts of it. Then, in middle school, someone donated 20 computers to our school and since our principal knew I had a computer at home, I was asked to help set up a computer lab and put it into good use.

My interest in computers continued to grow and I learned coding with QBasic and Pascal, and taught it to my classmates in 8th grade. We made a few games for fun and an accounting tool for the school. A few years later, when the Bulletin Board System (BBS) networks became really popular, I used the phone line from our upstairs unit to start a small network until our phone bill became unaffordable. The Internet made it to Iran, and I built my first website when I was 16 and ran a side business assembling and selling desktop computers.

During college in the U.S., I managed IT for a department in school with four computer labs while studying computer science and engineering. My boss at the time introduced me to administrating the servers on campus and learning Linux and modern programming languages. I used to dream of dealing with racks of servers and never imagined that would come true. I never had to think “what am I going to do.” I knew from the time I was 11.

What’s your favorite part of working at Houzz?
My favorite part is that it doesn’t feel like work! For me, Houzz feels like a second home because I really love the people I work with; we work and play together. We typically don’t do things conventionally, and encourage each other to apply our own creativity to solve problems in any aspect of our business. These are some of the qualities that are unique to Houzz based on my experience.

How would you describe the engineering culture at Houzz?
Oh! I wrote a blog post about that. Read more about it here.

What do you like about your role at Houzz?
I really enjoy my role because it combines three things I love: helping people, solving challenging problems and taking care of business like working with vendors and decision makers. This is the first role in my career that has given me the opportunity to do all these at the same time.

What do you do when you’re not working?
The list is long, but I like to emphasize on activities that help me grow personally and professionally. At least once a week I engage in some relaxing activity, I either do yoga to align my mind and body, or cook something. On weekends, I like to grab a book and go on a hike or to the beach, find a secluded spot and read. I mostly read nonfiction books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to team building and science. Some of my favorite authors are Stephen Hawking, Malcolm Gladwell, Thomas Friedman and Richard Dawkins.

How have you used Houzz at home?
I use Houzz for my apartment. I’ve already decorated my bathroom and need to work on my living room. I have lots of ideabooks for my “someday” house.

What should an engineering candidate know about working at Houzz?
I would call it the two B’s – be bold and brave. Bold in terms of creativity. Lots of problems we face are new to us and it’s important to have a creative approach to solve new problems. Brave meaning having the guts to accept the challenge and take the risk of utilizing your creativity. These two qualities are important in being really successful at Houzz.

Architecture for Play: Engaging the Next Generation at the AIA National Convention

Why did Houzz and the American Institute of Architects (AIA) put a playhouse at the center of this year’s AIA National Convention in Philadelphia? To inspire the next generation of professionals to appreciate the power of great architecture, and provide happy, playful moments to children in need.

The inaugural PlayHouzz 2016 charitable design competition challenged architects, students and design enthusiasts to create playhouses with a sense of adventure. Submissions were showcased to the Houzz community of more than 40 million monthly unique users, who voted for their favorites among over 400 entries from around the world. The winning playhouses will be built and donated to charitable organizations serving underprivileged kids.

This year’s top winner, “Explore Adventure,” was designed by Edgardo Jorge-Ortiz, AIA, NCARB, LEED. His playhouse will allow children to jump, climb, crawl and slide, all while exploring different colors, patterns and textures. Sustainable design-build firm Kole Made LLC brought Edgardo’s design to life. The playhouse will be donated to Families Forward Philadelphia, the largest emergency shelter for families in the city.

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Edgaro joined PlayHouzz runner-up Adam Weintraub, AIA (co-owner of Koko Architecture + Design and designer of the “Hachi House” playhouse) and Bob Borson, AIA, LEED, AP (creator of Life of an Architect) on a panel moderated by Houzz’s Liza Hausman on how architecture impacts children at an early age, how to approach design when your client is a child, and what the architecture community can do to foster the next generation of architects.

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Check out the entire PlayHouzz 2016 showcase here.

Welcome Home! Tour Our New European HQ

Our European headquarters just moved into a beautiful new home in London and we’re opening our doors to take you on a tour.

Welcome! The Houzz logo greets visitors to the penthouse floor. You will quickly notice the open-plan layout, which allows for great collaboration between teams and countries (teams that support our communities in the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Denmark and Sweden all work out of this office).

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Here’s the Houzz cafe, where teams meet for lunch, office gatherings and, of course, birthday cake!

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All the meeting rooms are themed to represent our international teams. Below you can see the British library, our Mediterranean terrace and a Parisian loft.

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The beautiful wall murals were selected from the most popular images on Houzz. The Mediterranean terrace features an amazing view from the south of Spain that radiates warmth and sunshine.

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Some meeting rooms are a little more energetic than others! Here’s the European sports room, which features a ping-pong table for standing meetings and a basketball hoop for sports enthusiasts.

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For those who like peace and solitude, there’s always the hanging chair to inspire a little creative thinking!

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Everything in the office was purchased from Houzz’s marketplace. Carl Hansen even customised their Shell Chairs in Houzz green for us!

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We’ve basked in the sun many times on our roof terrace - yes, even in London! With a 360O view of London we can see St. Paul’s Cathedral, St. Pancras and the Shard from our lofty perch.

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If you’re in the King’s Cross area in London, please stop by and say hi to the team - we can promise you a nice cuppa!

Houzz Wins Google Play’s Best App of the Year


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Last night was a heartwarming night for Houzz: we were named “Best App” at the inaugural Google Play Awards!

We’ve always been focused on creating the best mobile experience – whether that’s ensuring we have the smoothest scrolling or the fastest image loading – to provide our community of homeowners and home professionals with the best mobile technology and tools.

This focus has made mobile very important to our business, with over half of our users engaging with our platform via our apps. Houzz users flip through more than one billion photos on our apps every month! Many of the features we introduce are exclusively on mobile, such as View in My Room, which gives users the power to experiment with home decor options by virtually placing products from the Houzz Shop in their home before they buy; and Sketch, which makes it easy to communicate through photos and add products from the Marketplace to any photo.

We have an incredible team of engineers and designers that works very hard to constantly enhance the experience and make it best-in-class. We’d like to thank them for all they do. We’d also like to thank our incredible community for trusting Houzz to help them create homes they love. And we’d like to thank Google Play for recognizing our app and for building a great platform for Houzz.

Houzzer Profile: Ania Kurek, Front End Engineer

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A longtime Houzz user, Ania is a Front End Engineer for Houzz. When she’s not at work, you can find her upholstering furniture, cooking up a storm and browsing Houzz, of course!

How did you get into computer science?
I’ve always been really interested in math and science. I also love art and art history. When I was growing up in Poland, I wanted to go into art restoration, but when I moved to the U.S., I found that most schools don’t offer art restoration majors.

Studying computer graphics was a good way to merge my interests in math, science and art. Over time, front end engineering became what worked best for me. I managed to use my science skills and art skills at the same time.

What’s your favorite part of working at Houzz?
I really love the product! I discovered Houzz when I was considering a kitchen remodel years ago and decided I wanted to work here. Since I was a user, I had plenty of ideabooks and feedback for the engineers who interviewed me.

Sometimes in the evening, I just browse Houzz for inspiration. It’s always fun to test your code on something that you actually love. I often learn something from reading comments on photos.

What’s the development process like at Houzz?
It’s really great. I’ve worked at other places and, in comparison, Houzz inspires a lot of creativity because we have an open, flat organization where everyone can share their thoughts and opinions. We have a very collaborative process where everyone’s input is taken into account. Also, the engineering team works very closely with the design team, which is really rewarding.

What technical challenge have you been most excited to work on?
I like working on projects that are new and different for me, that I have to spend time researching instead of just using a library someone else wrote. I enjoy going back to math problems and solving things on a whiteboard.

At Houzz, we have the option of being in charge of a project from the beginning, so you get the chance to pick the flow of how the back or front end is going to work. Everyone gets the chance to be their own architect and decision maker.

How have you used Houzz at home?
I’m a long time Houzz user! I recently used Houzz to find a contractor to build a custom entertainment center. It was so easy - I knew exactly what I wanted and that he could do it, based on his profile.

Now, I’m working on a nursery and found a photographer on Houzz who does pictures of baby animals. I purchased a lot of prints from her to put on the wall.

I have a ton of ideabooks for future projects.

What should an engineering candidate know about working at Houzz?
Houzz is a fun environment and has a great team. You’re not just working by yourself to accomplish things, everyone works together to solve problems. We really want to help the user, and that shows throughout the team. On top of that, everyone is really smart and nice.

What do you do when you’re not working?
I love to work with my hands and make things. I particularly love to sew and made all the curtains in my house. Sometimes, I even reupholster things myself. I love to cook, also.

Houzz New Zealand is Here!

Six years ago, Mal Corboy, an interior designer in New Zealand, stumbled upon Houzz.com and decided to set up a professional profile. Little did he know at the time that his colorful, modern kitchens and beautiful cabinetry work would inspire a growing community of Houzz users around the world. Fast forward to today, and Mal’s exposure on Houzz has brought multiple global opportunities to his business, including a current project in Trinidad – a complete home design – for which he has designed custom cabinetry that’s soon shipping from New Zealand.

This is just one of the many incredible stories we’ve heard since our team began customizing Houzz for our community in New Zealand and we’re thrilled to announce that houzz.co.nz is now live.

Even prior to launching, New Zealanders have been active on Houzz, with over 200,000 Kiwi homeowners and over 4,000 local trade professionals already using the site and apps every month. Now, New Zealanders will find a tailored experience that surfaces relevant content (such as this story on the Kiwi ‘sleepout’) and inspiration (like this Bach house), and fosters more connections between Kiwi homeowners and local home pros. At the same time, New Zealanders can access all of the global resources that only Houzz provides. The global Houzz community benefits, too, with more access to inspiration, talent and products from New Zealand. Houzzers have been particularly inspired by the Kiwi indoor-outdoor lifestyle; this courtyard is among the top photos from New Zealand saved by Houzz users around the world.

Check out 100 of the best New Zealand homes on Houzz here; you’ll soon see a lot more!

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Tony Been from our New Zealand team speaking to a packed room of home pros

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A full house at our launch event

A Glass Houzz at Salone


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Earlier this month, Houzz Italy took part in Salone di Mobile 2016, the biggest furniture industry trade show in the world held in Milan every year.

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The team built a glass house in Tortona, where the more than 300,000 Salone visitors could check out the Houzz.it experience, relax and meet members of the team.

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Throughout the week, a different professional from the local community joined us at the house for one-on-one consultations, which was a bit hit with visitors.

A presto, al Salone del Mobile 2017!