Say No To Doing Free Pool Designs

Pool design has changed dramatically over the last decade. In the past, builders either did a hand drawing or used a series of stencils to quickly come up with a pool design concept. It’s only been within the last decade that pool companies felt the need to begin incorporating free designs into their sales process. In years past this had become a common practice. Builders created advertisements with tag lines like “Get a FREE Design” to attract homeowners, hoping to sell them a pool and gave the designs away for free.

One thing that the pandemic has done is reignite an interest in swimming pools the likes of which has never been seen. The days of having to go that route and give away a valuable service like design are behind us. Builders no longer have to do that to entice homeowners. These days everyone and their mother-in-law wants a pool. It’s time to start saying no to free design.

A decade ago using 3D design presentations was considered a differentiator. Over the past 10 years that perception has changed. These days the majority of large pool companies incorporate some aspect of 3D design as part of their sales process. Homeowners have come to expect a 3D rendering and their tolerance for quality is quite high given the status of the technology available today.

Why Giving Away Design Is Bad For The Industry

One major and significant aspect of doing designs is often overlooked and that is the amount of time needed to create a sophisticated 3d design. Even when using cutting edge technology like Structure Studios, a design could take anywhere from hours to even days or weeks to complete depending on how elaborate the design plan is.

Accommodating every single prospect that could conceivably want a pool this season with a 3D design is impossible says Cameron Rhodes, co-owner of Southern Poolscapes. “We’ve gotten away from doing free designs a while ago. Honestly, with the amount of folks that want an inground pool right now, you really don’t need to be doing that anymore.”

Ryan Baird of Beyond Blue Pools in Houston said that he has done away with free designs altogther. “Honestly, I feel like if a homeowner truly values the work that is going into the design they should pay for it. There is a cost associated with doing these designs as well as how much time they take.” said Baird whose design / build firm has had their busiest season ever.

Design is a Painstaking Process

There is a growing consensus in the pool & spa industry to do away with free designs. Many experts feel that offering a design service for free commoditizes and devalues the creativity and labor that is involved with creating a custom backyard design for the customer.

The level of detail and intricacy programs like Vip 3D are capable of achieving has upped the bar for pool designers considerably. An incredible amount of personalization is involved with creating one of these designs. Just learning the software itself takes professional pool designers a long time to perfect.

Swimming pool designer Brandt Gibert of Windgate Custom Pools said his process is seldom a one off design. “Each version of one of my designs takes me a few hours to complete and customers sometimes want to see 2 or 3 different concepts before they come to a decision.”

“Even using a design template only gives you the basis for creating a foundation for a backyard design. It’s not like you can hand that to a customer and say here’s your design.” said Denis Nadeau of Your Backyard Haven in Ontario. When formulating the overall design concept of the pool, experts say it’s difficult or impossible to make a one design fits all type of solution.

“There is no cookie cutter or templatized approach towards designing custom luxury inground pools” said Jason DeBosky of Crystal Blue Aquatics, “People want something unique. A truly discerning homeowner is going to want to see their home, their environment, and the elements discussed during project planning in their design concept. I don’t know how you make that happen with a template.”

Lack of Accreditation

Being a designer in the pool industry has its own unique set of challenges. Most designers get their experience once they are actually in the industry. While there are a number of training programs such as Genesis and Watershape University, there are currently no prepatory or formalized college programs specifically focusing on pool design. Quite often, pool builders who are adept at construction struggle with learning the design aspect and mastering the software. In fact, many builders prefer to subcontract out the design process entirely and pay a staff to produce designs for their customers. Which makes one wonder, if companies are paying for the designs, why are they giving them away for free?

Education is one thing that differentiates pool designers from landscape architects or engineers. Each has accredited college degrees associated with those disciplines. Many pool builders say that not having a pool design focused degree they can hang their hat on has been what has held them back from charging for their services.

The vast majority of professional designers have spent weeks and months first learning and then perfecting this new design craft by watching a series of tutorials and engaging in the trial and error process of teaching themselves to be 3D designers without any formal instruction. This certainly begs the question “how does the pool industry determine who is qualified to be a pool designer?” It’s not an easy question to answer.

One question that is easy to answer is “why stop giving away free designs?” Many pool companies are reluctant to do away with free design because they consider it a value added service. This train of thought is flawed and I’ll explain why. Companies that don’t charge for design train customers to associate zero value with the service.

Truth be told, each design takes someone a substantial amount of time to create. When accounting for the hundreds of man-hours spent learning the software and adding on the recurring costs of purchasing high-end computer hardware and 3D rendering software it all adds up.

The toll on the design staff performing their 20th round of revisions to Mrs. Jones’ pool just to get her to sign the contract is mentally taxing, especially when you’re not being paid for them. The price tag associated with allowing that process to continue during this climate when pools are practically selling themselves is unfathomable. If you are still offering free designs, you should probably stop.