Who Chooses the Materials in Your Remodel? 3 Ways It Works in Phoenix

Written by Scott Hochuli | Aug 28, 2026, 6:52:45 PM

In This Article | Hochuli Design & Remodeling Team In this article

Who does the shopping in a remodel, and the three ways companies answer that question.
The 60 to 150 decisions a kitchen asks you to make, across more than 30 categories.
What an allowance is, and why the number on the agreement is not the number you pay.
What selections cost you in weeks, and what the design phase costs in dollars.
Which approach fits you, including when doing your own shopping is the better deal.

Last updated August 2026

Who Chooses the Materials in Your Remodel | Hochuli Design & Remodeling Team

How remodeling selections work

Nobody hires a remodeler hoping to spend eleven Saturdays at tile shops. It happens to plenty of Phoenix homeowners anyway, and the reason is decided long before demolition day.

Who chooses the materials in a remodel?

You do, in every version of this. The question worth asking is who does the work of narrowing the field, who prices what you pick, and when. That answer changes from company to company, and it is rarely written anywhere you can find it before you sign.

In practice there are three models. Some remodelers keep a small design center and hand you a short list, which is fast and limited. Most hand you a placeholder number called an allowance along with a list of showrooms, then wait to hear what you found. A design-build team puts a designer on your project, selects alongside you, and prices every item before you commit to building anything.

Each one is a legitimate way to run a company. They just distribute the work, the risk, and the surprises very differently, and the difference does not show up in the pitch. It shows up around week three, when you are standing in a slab yard on a Saturday with a tape measure and no idea whether the one you love is inside your number.

How many material selections does a remodel involve?

More than almost anyone expects going in. A single kitchen carries somewhere between 60 and 150 separate decisions across more than 30 categories, and that is before anyone asks about window treatments. A whole house multiplies it.

Most of these are invisible until you are in them. You know you have to choose a countertop. You may not know you also have to choose its edge profile, its thickness, and whether it returns up the wall.

Category	Decisions living inside it
Cabinetry	Door style, species or paint color, finish, interior finish, crown and trim, toe kick, soft close hardware
Cabinet interiors	Pull outs, trash and recycling, spice storage, drawer dividers, lighting inside glass doors
Countertops	Material, specific slab, edge profile, thickness, waterfall or no waterfall, backsplash return
Backsplash	Tile, size, layout, grout color, grout type, edge trim, where it stops
Flooring	Material, color, plank width or tile size, direction, grout, transitions, baseboard profile
Plumbing	Sink style and depth, faucet, pot filler, disposal, air switch, finish across all of it
Appliances	Range or cooktop, wall oven, hood, refrigeration, dishwasher, microwave, beverage center, panel fronts
Lighting	Recessed layout and trim, pendants, under cabinet, decorative fixtures, color temperature, dimmers
Electrical	Outlet locations and heights, cover plate style and color, charging, switch style
Paint and hardware	Wall color, ceiling, trim, sheen, cabinet pulls, knobs, hinges, and one finish story tying it together

A representative kitchen. Bathrooms and whole house projects follow the same shape at different scale.

None of it is hard on its own. All of it at once, on a deadline, while the trades wait on your answer, is a different experience. That volume is the thing the three approaches handle differently, and it is worth seeing them side by side.

What are the three ways material selections get made?

Approach	Who narrows the field	What it asks of you	Where it tends to break
Design center	The contractor, from a fixed set of options	A few hours, one or two visits	You want something outside the set, and the answer is no
On your own, with allowances	You, from everything on the market	Weeks of showroom visits and follow up	The allowance was lower than what you chose, and the difference becomes a change order
Designer assisted	A designer on the project team, curated to your project	Scheduled sessions during design, opinions rather than legwork	It takes longer up front, and the design work is paid

1. The design center

Common with tract builders and remodelers who buy in volume. You walk into a showroom the company controls and pick from what is on the wall. It is quick, the pricing is known, and the installer has done that exact assembly a hundred times. The tradeoff is the wall itself. If your house is not shaped like the assumptions behind that wall, or you want a slab nobody stocks, the process has no answer for you. Ask early how many vendors are behind the display, and what happens when you want something that is not there.

2. On your own, with allowances

This is how most of the remodeling market runs. You sign a written agreement with a price built partly on allowances, then receive a list and start shopping. Tile here, plumbing there, cabinets somewhere else, appliances online. Nobody is checking whether the faucet you loved fits the sink you already picked until it arrives. Homeowners describe this as the part of the project that ate their evenings, and it is also where most of the number moves after signing.

3. Designer assisted, inside a design-build team

A designer works from your house, your habits, and the investment range you have set, then puts a curated set in front of you instead of the whole market. You still choose. You are choosing from four options that all work rather than four hundred that might not. Because the same company will build it, every selection gets checked against the plan and priced as it is made. The cost is time and a paid design phase, which is the part people weigh hardest, and reasonably so.

When the price becomes final

The same project, three approaches. The bar shows how much of the number is settled before construction starts.

Design center

On your own, allowances

Designer assisted

Settled during designSettled during construction

Our rule of thumb from 500+ Phoenix remodels, not a quote. Bar lengths are illustrative.

The mechanism

What is an allowance, and why does the number change later?

An allowance is a placeholder price for a decision nobody has made yet. Your agreement says $9,000 for cabinets, or $45 a square foot for tile, and everyone signs. Then you go shopping, and the cabinets you want are $14,000. The difference does not disappear. It arrives later as a change order, and it arrives after you have already committed to the project.

Allowances are not a trick. They are how a company prices work it has not finished designing. But the effect on you is the same either way: the number on the agreement is not the number you pay, and that gap is the mechanism most surprise overruns run through.

We do not use allowances, and we do not use contingency funds. Both let a number look finished when it is not. Our position is published on our change order page along with the reasoning, and two commitments that go with it. If we measured wrong, ordered wrong, or built something off the approved plan, correcting it is on us and it never becomes a change order. And when we open a wall and find something nobody could have seen, you hear about it the same day, in writing, with photos and a price before we touch it. Typical change orders on our projects run $2,000 to $5,000, and a structural discovery can exceed that.

Ask any remodeler you are considering the same two questions. Who pays when the mistake is yours, and how many allowances are in this price. You are entitled to both answers in writing. Arizona sets a floor here as well: the Registrar of Contractors publishes the minimum elements every residential agreement must contain, and a detailed scope with specified materials is the part homeowners most often let slide.

What does the selections process cost you?

Two currencies, and most people only price one of them.

The first is time. Shopping 60 to 150 decisions across a dozen showrooms is measured in weeks, not evenings, and it lands on whoever in the household is least able to say no to it. That cost is invisible in every proposal you will read.

The second is money, and it moves in two places. Selections drive a large share of what a project costs, which is why a Phoenix kitchen spans $75,000 to $200,000 depending on scope and finish level. Our kitchen remodel cost guide breaks down what pushes a project from one end of that to the other.

The design work itself is the other place. We charge for it. Our Project Development Agreement is typically five percent of the midpoint of your investment range, or $15,000 to $25,000 on larger projects needing engineering and architectural plans. It is non refundable, and it credits toward your project when you build with us. We would rather charge to get the number right than hand you a low one that grows once the walls are open. You can see the full sequence on our remodeling process page.

How do we run selections?

Selections happen during design, before you sign anything to build, and they end in specifics. Part numbers. Cabinet specifications. The actual slab. No placeholders left in the document.

Lorrie leads design. She starts with how you live in the house rather than what you saw online, then brings you a narrowed set. Pinterest boards and saved photos are welcome and useful, and they work better as evidence of what you are drawn to than as a shopping list. Because our field team prices each selection as it is made, you find out that the slab is above your range while it is still a decision instead of a change order.

When it is done you get a fixed price in writing before a nail is driven. Not a range. Not an estimate that drifts.

We are a family owned design-build firm in Scottsdale, serving greater Phoenix, Paradise Valley, Tempe and the surrounding valley since 2001. Kitchens, bathrooms, whole house remodels, additions, and guest houses, more than 500 of them. Scott is a past president of the Greater Phoenix chapter of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry, and our design work follows the planning standards published by the National Kitchen & Bath Association.

Which approach is right for you?

Not everyone should hire us, and we would rather say so here than in a first meeting.

If you love the hunt, you have the weekends, and getting the lowest number matters more than getting a settled one, the allowance model can work in your favor. People who enjoy sourcing sometimes find things a curated set would never have shown them, and they save money doing it. If your project is small and standard, a design center is quick and there is nothing wrong with quick.

The designer assisted route earns its keep when the project is large enough that a wrong selection is expensive, when your house has anything unusual about it, or when the household does not have weeks to give this. It also suits people who want the price settled before construction rather than discovered during it. That is most of the homeowners who call us, but it is not all of them, and the difference is worth being clear about before anyone spends money.

Common questions

Selection questions we hear most

It depends entirely on who you hire, and it is worth asking before you sign. With most remodelers, yes. You receive a list and visit showrooms on your own time. With a design-build team, a designer narrows the field first and you choose from a curated set during scheduled design sessions. You are still the one deciding either way. The difference is how many hours it takes and whether anyone is checking the pieces against each other.
Between 60 and 150 individual decisions across more than 30 categories, in our experience. Cabinetry alone carries door style, species or color, finish, interior finish, trim, and hardware. Countertops carry material, slab, edge, and thickness. The count climbs fast because nearly every category contains several decisions rather than one.
A placeholder price for something you have not chosen yet. The agreement might carry $9,000 for cabinets before anyone knows which cabinets. If your selection lands above the placeholder, the difference comes back as a change order after you are already committed. We do not use allowances or contingency funds, because a number nobody has pinned down only breeds confusion later.
Bring the images, always. They tell a designer more about your taste in five minutes than a conversation does in an hour. Supplying your own materials is a different question and worth raising early with any remodeler, because it changes who is responsible when something arrives damaged, short, or wrong, and it can affect warranty coverage on the installation.
Because a complete plan and a fixed price take real design hours, and a company that gives those away has to recover them somewhere. Ours is typically five percent of the midpoint of your investment range, or $15,000 to $25,000 on larger projects requiring engineering and architectural plans. It is non refundable and credits toward your project when you build with us. The first conversation is no cost and no pressure.

When you're ready

Decide who carries the load before you sign.

Every remodeler answers the selections question somehow. Very few put the answer in writing before you commit. Ask the three you are considering how many allowances are in the price, who pays for their own mistakes, and how many hours of shopping the process expects from you. We are Hochuli Design & Remodeling Team, a design-build firm in Scottsdale serving greater Phoenix since 2001. If you want your selections settled during design instead of discovered during construction, let's talk through how your project would run. You can also read what Phoenix homeowners say in our Google reviews.

Let's Start the Conversation

Scott Hochuli is the founder of Hochuli Design & Remodeling Team and the author of Crush Expectations. Pronounced Ha-Cue-Lee, he has been remodeling Phoenix homes since 1992 and founded the company with Lorrie in 2001. He is a past president of the Greater Phoenix NARI chapter and holds Arizona contractor license ROC 173428. Since 2001, the Hochuli team has completed 500+ remodels across Phoenix, Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Tempe, and the surrounding valley. Hochuli Design & Remodeling Team · 2501 N. Hayden Rd, Suite #102, Scottsdale, AZ 85257 · (602) 451-0323 · Google reviews.

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