Home Designer Gift Guide

Holiday seasons are meant to be exciting times spent surrounded with family and friends (and good food!). It also means gifts - and lots of them. For some people, knowing what to get loved ones is evasive and stressful. This gift guide is put together to help you come up with some great gift ideas for a home designer in your life. As always, pick something from the heart and choose based on what resonates with you and what conveys your message of affection to the person in your life.

This guide is not meant to be the end-all be-all of gifting, nor is it even meant to link you directly to your options. Rather, it is meant to inspire and give you a jumping off point. You can jump to a specific section via the contents below, or you can read this guide from cover to cover (so to speak).

Note:

Although I tried to keep it generic, I have written most of this guide from a very holiday-related point-of-view. If you are buying a gift for a wedding or baby shower, for instance, your needs will differ strongly. Keep this in mind, though most of the tips do stand for any occasion.

If your home designer is a professional or very enthusiastic hobbyist, then you'll probably want to look into things used by professionals. This can include home planning software, organization tools, and books or subscriptions to professional trade magazines. Be sure to insert as personal a message as possible, such as putting an encouraging message in the book.

Sometimes, professionals need a little encouragement too, so I like to give them some sentimental and encouraging decoration for their offices. For example, you could simply frame a typography of a meaningful and supportive poem that resonates with you.

Hobbyist home designers, like most just beginning a craft, like to hear encouraging words. One way of doing this would be by giving them a book to match their level of expertise. You wouldn't want to buy a two-year-seasoned beginner a For Dummies book, but then again, you wouldn't want to buy him or her a $500 program either.

Smaller gifts would include a gift card to his or her favorite home design store, like Bed, Bath, and Beyond, or a ticket to take a couple classes with a professional. You could also, potentially, buy a small interior design item - like a lamp or pillow - but this could be risky if your tastes differ.

As with all gifts, a mix between relevance and personal sentiment and affection is important in gifting to a home designer. In knowing this, keep your gift's message in mind and keep the message personal.