Design Center Guide
The Richmond American
Home Gallery: What to Expect
Richmond American Homes calls their design center the Home Gallery. It's a boutique-style showroom with color studios, full-scale kitchen vignettes, and a complimentary design consultant who already knows your floor plan. Here's what the appointment looks like and how to walk in prepared.
March 2026 · Finch
What the Appointment
Is Like
They call it the Home Gallery. Not a warehouse full of samples. Richmond American's Home Gallery locations are boutique-style showrooms with curated displays and full-sized kitchen vignettes built around popular floor plans. Some galleries have multiple complete kitchen setups so you can see finishes at actual scale.
Your consultant already knows your plan. Before you arrive, your design consultant will have been briefed on your floor plan and the structural options you selected at the Sales Center. You don't have to re-explain what you bought. They walk you through each category with your specific home in mind.
Plan for a few hours. Your consultant will give you a more specific time estimate based on your floor plan and how many options your community offers. Complimentary drinks and snacks are provided. Each consultation room has a flat-screen monitor for reviewing additional finishes and reference images.
The color studios do the coordinating. The Home Gallery has color studios, each with a professionally coordinated palette of finishes. Cabinets, countertops, flooring, paint, and hardware are pre-matched within each studio. If you like one element in a studio, the rest of the scheme is designed to complement it. This is one of Richmond American's standout features and it takes the guesswork out of making everything look right together.
What You'll Choose From
Richmond American organizes selections into about 13 categories. The exact options vary by market and floor plan, but here's what most buyers walk through at the Home Gallery.
Kitchen and living area
Cabinets, countertops, backsplash, flooring, lighting, and appliances all come together in one room.
Cabinets
Kitchen and bathroom cabinet style, finish, and hardware. Richmond American lets you choose from door profiles, stain or paint colors, and functional upgrades like soft-close drawers and rollout organizers. Cabinets set the visual tone for every room they touch, and the range of options at the Home Gallery is wide enough that it’s worth going in with at least a general direction in mind.
Countertops
Quartz, granite, and natural stone options for kitchens and bathrooms. You’ll choose a material, a color or pattern, and an edge profile. The Home Gallery displays full slabs so you can see the veining and color variation at actual scale, not just a 4-inch chip.
Backsplash
Tile patterns and materials for kitchen and bathroom walls. Richmond American carries Daltile and Emser Tile, with options ranging from classic subway tile to herringbone, picket, chevron, and brick layouts. This is one of the categories where the color studios help most, because the backsplash has to coordinate with both your countertop and cabinets.
Flooring
Hardwood, tile, and luxury vinyl plank options from Mohawk and other vendors. You’ll choose material, color, and plank width or tile size for different zones of the house. Flooring is one of the most expensive categories and one of the most disruptive to change after move-in, so this is a good place to invest.
Paint
Interior wall and trim colors from Sherwin-Williams. Richmond American’s color studios include pre-coordinated paint palettes that are designed to work with the other finishes in each scheme. If you’re not confident choosing paint colors, the studios take the guesswork out of it.
Sinks & Faucets
Delta faucets and sink options for kitchens and bathrooms. You’ll pick a faucet style, a finish (brushed nickel, matte black, chrome, and others), and a sink type. Farmhouse-style sinks are available as an upgrade. Matching your faucet finish across rooms gives the house a more cohesive feel.
Lighting
Fixtures from Progress Lighting and Kichler, including overhead lights, pendants, recessed cans, under-cabinet lighting, and ceiling fans. Electrical work is structural, so adding recessed lighting or fan-rated boxes later means opening the ceiling. This is a "do it now" category.
Door Hardware
Interior and exterior door hardware from Kwikset. You’ll choose handle style, finish, and lock type. It’s a small detail that touches every room in the house. Matching your hardware finish to your faucets and lighting gives the home a consistent look without much extra cost.
Appliances
GE appliances, including ranges, refrigerators, dishwashers, microwaves, and double ovens. Richmond American carries multiple GE tiers, so you can stay with the included package or upgrade to higher-end models and finishes. Ask your consultant which GE package is included in your community’s base price.
Home Technology
Whole-house audio, security systems, and structured wiring prewires. If you want built-in speakers, a security panel, or prewired Ethernet and coax, this is the time. Running wire through finished walls later is expensive and invasive. Think about what you’ll actually use in the first year.
Window Coverings
Blinds, shades, and other window treatments available through the Home Gallery. Ordering through the builder means they’re installed before you move in. You can always change window coverings later, but having them from day one means privacy on move-in day.
Closet Systems
Organizational systems for closets, including shelving, drawers, and hanging configurations. This is one of the more practical upgrade categories. A well-organized primary closet makes a real daily difference, and it’s cheaper to install during construction than to retrofit.
Electrical & Solar
Outlet placement, USB outlets, dedicated circuits, and prewires. In select markets, solar panel options are also available during your appointment. Electrical is entirely behind the walls, so anything you want that’s not in the standard plan needs to be decided now.
How to Prepare for
Your Appointment
A little prep goes a long way. People who walk in with a plan spend less time agonizing and more time getting excited about their home.
Visit a model home first
Richmond American’s model homes show the included finishes in context. Seeing the base countertop, base cabinets, and base flooring installed in an actual room gives you a reference point for what you’re starting with and what an upgrade actually changes.
Browse the Home Gallery before your appointment
The Home Gallery is open to the public. You don’t need to be under contract to walk through. Most locations are open weekdays and Saturdays, but check your local gallery for current hours. Going in early lets you see the samples, start narrowing your taste, and arrive at your formal appointment with a head start.
Know your structural options
Structural options like room configurations, extra windows, and ceiling heights are selected at the Sales Center before your Home Gallery visit. Your design consultant will already know what structural choices you made. If you’re still deciding on structural options, lock those in first because some finishes depend on them.
Set a budget range
Richmond American curates finishes at a variety of price points, but it’s still easy to let upgrades stack up. Decide on a total upgrade budget before you walk in. It’s easier to allocate that number across categories than to add everything up at the end and try to cut back.
Use the color studios
The Home Gallery has color studios with professionally coordinated palettes. Each studio groups finishes that work together, so if you start with a countertop you like, the studio shows you cabinets, flooring, and paint that complement it. Don’t fight the coordination. That’s the whole point of the studios, and it’s one of Richmond American’s strongest features.
Ask about regional options
Some categories vary by market. In certain regions, your Home Gallery appointment includes electrical options like outlet placement and prewires, plus solar choices. Ask your sales counselor ahead of time what’s available at your location so you’re not caught off guard.
Bring inspiration photos
Screenshots from Pinterest, Instagram, or anywhere else. Your design consultant has a flat-screen monitor in your private consultation room to pull up reference images and compare. A few photos of kitchens or bathrooms you like gives them a starting point for your taste without you having to describe it in words.
Where to Spend and
Where to Save
Richmond American curates finishes at a variety of price points, and the named brand partners (GE, Delta, Sherwin-Williams, Mohawk, Kwikset) mean you're choosing from known quantities rather than mystery vendors. That helps with the spend/save calculation because you can research the brands ahead of time and know what you're getting.
Do it now: Flooring, cabinets, countertops, and anything electrical (can lights, prewires, outlet placement, home technology). These are either structural or disruptive to replace once you're living there. If you're going to upgrade anything, start with these.
Can wait: Paint, door hardware, window coverings, and basic light fixtures. These are all relatively easy and inexpensive to change later. If you need to trim your upgrade budget, these are the categories to pull back on.
The kitchen drives most of the upgrade spend for a reason: cabinets, countertops, backsplash, and appliances all live in one room, and they all need to work together. The color studios help here because you can see those combinations pre-coordinated instead of guessing. For a deeper look at each category and what's worth the money, see our complete guide to new construction upgrades.
The junction that matters
Where cabinet meets countertop meets backsplash. This is the combination you're trying to picture from three separate samples on a shelf. The color studios help, but even there you're looking at small chips and swatches side by side. That's exactly what Finch does: you pick finishes and it generates a photo of the room with those selections applied. You can try a demo with sample finishes to see how it works.
See What Your Upgrades
Could Look Like
The Home Gallery's color studios are a great start, but you're still looking at small samples and trying to imagine them in a full room together.
Finch solves that. You pick finishes from real swatches and it generates a photo of the room with your selections applied. The demo below uses sample finishes, not Richmond American's actual catalog, but it shows you what the experience looks like. Imagine doing this with your real floorplan and the actual options from the Home Gallery.
Are you a builder? See how Finch works with your catalog
The Home Gallery is the best part of building a Richmond American home. You get a professional design consultant, pre-coordinated color studios, and named brands you can research before you walk in. The trick is going in prepared, knowing where to invest, and being able to picture how it all comes together. That last part is what Finch was built for. You can try the demo to see what it's like, and if you want the real thing with your builder's catalog, it's worth mentioning to your sales rep.