UPDATE: We’re sending a giant thank you to the 30,000+ people who completed our survey! We randomly selected a winner of the $500 West Elm gift card and the lucky person is Sarah M from Birmingham, AL. Congrats, Sarah — check your inbox for details!
I’ll admit it: I’m an infographic nerd. (If I really had a membership card, it would probably feature a pie chart.) Over the years we’ve used visuals to share everything from our first year in this house to our book tour and the results of our annual blogiversary survey. With a little convincing, I’ve managed to include several infographics in our upcoming second book — a small victory for the data-obsessed part of my brain.
Book Two focuses on how families actually live, and to illustrate that honestly we wanted real-life data from readers like you. Your responses help paint a clearer picture of the variety in households, styles, priorities, and challenges. We’ve already received thousands of thoughtful submissions and are halfway through shooting the book, and it’s been a wonderful reminder that there’s no single way to make a home. Since we can’t photograph every family, these infographics will help represent the bigger picture.
To encourage participation and to say thanks, we offered one $500 West Elm gift card. We also arranged for international participants to be eligible for a Visa gift card instead of the store card, so anyone worldwide could enter. The winner was chosen at random from survey respondents, and we appreciate everyone who took a few minutes to share their home life with us.
We included a handful of open-ended questions in the survey so we could highlight especially useful, quirky, or inspiring answers in the book. If you gave permission at the end of the form, we might include your name and city alongside a selected response; if you didn’t grant permission, your answers remain completely anonymous. We intentionally kept the survey light and informal — it’s not scientific, just a fun way to capture the variety of real homes.
If you’re curious about the kinds of questions we asked: we covered household composition, design priorities, common pain points, favorite rooms, and little habits that make a house feel like home. Many respondents shared clever storage solutions, kid-proofing tips, and DIY fixes that are genuinely helpful. A surprising number of people wrote about small rituals — a morning coffee routine, a shared reading corner, a beloved nightlight — that reveal how much character and comfort go into daily life.
Compiling these responses has been both instructive and entertaining. We found broad trends — what people prioritize when renovating, what they splurge on versus what they try to save on — alongside beautiful outliers that remind us how personal home decisions are. Reading through submissions also sparked ideas for projects and photography that will appear in the book, and highlighted the many creative ways people make functional spaces feel warm and lived-in.
We truly appreciate everyone who took the time to participate. Your answers not only helped shape the content of the book but also gave us a richer, more diverse set of stories to share. If you were featured or won the gift card, expect to hear from us directly. For everyone else, thank you again — your input made a big difference and helped represent how families really live today.
PS: Because we ran the $500 prize drawing, we paused our usual giveaway, but we’re back at home projects now — currently assembling cabinets — and plan to share a laundry room update very soon.