The Indianapolis Home Show is a yearly event that provides inspiration for home decor and renovation and connects you to the companies that can help you transform your home. This year’s show included the Centerpiece Home and Tiny Home Village, as well as the usual home and home decor-related vendors selling products and services.
The Centerpiece Home
The Centerpiece Home is the major draw for the home show — at this point, it’s really the only reason I go. It’s a fully decorated home showcasing the best, newest building materials and decorating styles inside and out, and a must-see if you attend the home show. There’s usually a bit of a wait to get in, but once in, you have ample time to walk around the home and take photos.
This year, the Centerpiece Home was decorated in a modern farmhouse style, which was perfect since that’s exactly the style I’ve been transitioning to in my own home. Sadly, there was no shiplap on the interior, but there was a lot of natural wood, comfortable furnishings, and rustic fixtures.
The most notable room in the house actually broke out of the farmhouse style — a nursery featuring pink glitter wallpaper. It was a cute room in the home, but definitely felt like the decorator was determined to put glitter wallpaper somehere and didn’t care a bit whether it fit the decor of the rest of the house.
Once out of the centerpiece home, it was on to the tiny homes, which are always cool to walk into, but unfortunately, I’d seen them all before in a previous tiny home show in the city.
Vendors
From there, I continued to the seemingly endless looping aisles of vendors. My next major home renovation project will be replacing countertops, so I focused on looking at countertop samples, but didn’t see anything that caught my eye during this visit.
What did catch my eye is The Artisan Markets, in the third building of the show. Many of the Artisan Markets wares fit within the farmhouse style and there was a variety of items available for purchase, from coffee mugs to blankets to end tables.
Food
It’s also worth noting that there are concession stands available, selling foods like burgers, pretzels, hot dogs and ice cream, with a few of the stands a limited offering of healthier options like salads and soups. It’s helpful to have food available on-site if, like me, you were heading there straight from work with no time to grab a meal beforehand.
There are also many booths selling other treats like coffee cakes, chocolates, and popcorn. And, this year, the South Pavilion featured a Beer Garden, which would have been the perfect spot to relax if you got tired of walking around the show or were waiting for someone.
Pros and Cons
The good thing about the show is that if you’re in the market for a home improvement vendor, there are many of them all in one centralized location, which makes it convenient to ask questions and potentially get discounts on future home improvement projects.
The worst thing about the show is the number of aggressive vendors. It would be a much more enjoyable event if salespeople weren’t constantly yelling at the attendees to try to get them to buy something — I’d we’re interested in your product, we’ll come to you. Leave us alone!
Although I attended the past few years, the benefits of the show to me are starting to be outweighed by the endless stream of pushy salespeople. I’m not sure if I’ll continue to attend in future years since the only part of the show that interests me is the Centerpiece Home. I’ve found that it’s really a much more enjoyable experience to attend local home tours instead of this event.
