Choosing the right flooring for your dream home may seem overwhelming because there are so many options available. Be sure to choose flooring that reflects your personal aesthetic preferences and meets your maintenance needs.

To help you select an option that is on-trend, we have compiled a list of the top five flooring trends for 2016.

1. Bigger is better. If you’ve visited a flooring showroom or perused home decorating magazines, you have probably already noticed the popularity of large, wide planks. This particular trend is here to stay because their format creates an optical illusion—large planks make the space appear larger and feel more open. If you were to look at a wide plank floor alongside smaller planks, you would immediately see that the large planks create an airy, modern feel while the smaller planks appear outdated and less expensive. Interior design experts agree that this modern style will quickly become a classic one.

Bonus—if you are choosing large floor tiles for your kitchen, mudroom or bathroom, you are decreasing the amount of grout lines that need to be cleaned and maintained over time, so large, wide planks are ideal for those spaces. We recommend opting for large, wide planks because their benefits outweigh those of smaller planks. Note that most grout must be sealed unless it is a high-performance grout.

If you’ve been on the fence about building your dream home, here are three reasons to break ground on a new construction home this year.

1. Prices of existing southeast Michigan homes bounced back at least 20% in the last six years. An analysis of sales data for existing homes from 2009 through most of 2015 performed by the Detroit Free Press shows that housing prices have finally returned to pre-recession 2007 levels across most of Southeast Michigan. Gains were greatest in pockets of Livingston County such as Howell and Gregory.

Real estate experts believe that the increase in the region’s home prices are a result of the state’s improving economy, better consumer confidence, still-low mortgage rates and somewhat tight inventories of move-in-ready homes. This means that if you’ve been hoping to build a new home, but were concerned about maximizing the sale of your existing Southeast Michigan home, there is a high probability that you will sell it for much more today than you could have a few years ago—making the possibility of building of your dream home more within reach than in previous years.

You’ve probably heard about Marie Kondo’s bestselling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and wondered, “How could cleaning possibly be magical?” Over 3 million people have read the book and the consensus is that culling and cleaning can in fact improve your entire life.

Too busy to read the entire book? Here are five tips to tidy-up the KonMari way and create life-changing magic in your dream home.

1. Make a commitment. Committing yourself to tidying up means acknowledging that the benefits will far outweigh your effort and time spent. This should be a once-and-done vs. an ongoing project, so plan to tidy up by category instead of the traditional method of organizing room by room.

Last month, over 150,000 gadget geeks and true techies attended the world’s largest annual consumer technology trade show in Las Vegas. 3,000 exhibitors made state-of-the-art product debuts, some of which just might revolutionize 2016!

Here are our four top picks of this year’s consumer electronics which you may want to consider purchasing for your dream home.

1. Revolutionary refrigerator may become your family’s focal point. Samsung’s latest kitchen appliance, the Family Hub refrigerator, was designed with your family in mind. First, its digital screen enables you to post, share and update calendars to keep your family organized and on-time. You can also pin photos, artwork and messages, all from your smartphone. Secondly, the screen displays weather, plays recipe videos and even streams tunes from other devices in your dream home. Thirdly, you can keep food stocked by ordering groceries via the app on the screen. If, you prefer to shop yourself, you’ll appreciate the fridge’s three interior cameras which snapshot contents every time a family member shuts the door. You’ll know what you need even when you’re not at home! The cost has not yet been published, however it will be available for purchase this spring.