SOUTHERN EXPOSURE

Southern Living unveils inspirational Idea House in Texas Hill Country

The 4,000-square-foot Idea House is located in a new Fredericksburg development.

Photo courtesy of Laurey Glenn/Southern Living

The 2026 Southern Living Idea House opened for public tours on September 18 in Fredericksburg, bringing the magazine's long-running showcase-home series to the Hill Country.

The 4,000-square-foot house is in Friedën, a planned community about three miles from downtown Fredericksburg. The development is expected to include roughly 230 to 250 custom single-family homes when complete, along with commercial space, retail, offices, multifamily housing, trails, lakes, and green space.

The Idea House program is part model home, part design experiment, and part brand statement for Southern Living. For more than 35 years, the magazine has worked with builders, architects, designers, and landscapers to create homes in different parts of the South, usually pairing regional references with current home-design trends. Past projects have included homes in Nashville, Louisiana, Georgia, coastal Texas, and the Carolinas.

$Southern Living Idea House 2026\u200b$ This room really plays with textures, including an abstract art piece that looks a little like crushed velvet.Photo courtesy of Laurey Glenn/Southern Living

Texas last hosted a Southern Living Idea House in 2018, when the magazine renovated a 1980s fixer-upper in Austin's Northwest Hills. That project leaned on local architecture and design talent to turn an older house into a more open, family-oriented home.

This year's Fredericksburg project is a new-build contemporary farmhouse. The exterior mixes limestone, brown siding, and a dark metal roof, with separate wings arranged around a broad drive. The home also has floor-to-ceiling windows, multiple porches, and a backyard fire pit, which are meant to connect the interiors to the surrounding Hill Country setting.

The design team included a secondary private casita, a feature Southern Living says was intended as a nod to Fredericksburg's historic Sunday houses. Those small in-town homes, traditionally near churches, were once used by German settlers who had to travel long distances into Fredericksburg on weekends for church, shopping, and social visits.

$Southern Living Idea House 2026\u200b$ Dark wood cabinetry and brass hardware frame the kitchen’s veined stone backsplash and large island.Photo courtesy of Laurey Glenn/Southern Living

The interiors were split among three Texas designers: Jean Liu of Dallas, Marcus Mohon of Austin, and Paloma Contreras of Houston. The broader team includes builders Melanie Sparks and Chris McGinley of Kurk Homes, architect Andrew Bray of Mustard Architects in Fredericksburg, and landscape designer Melissa Gerstle of Dallas.

The kitchen uses dark wood cabinetry, brass hardware, pale pendant lights, and a heavily veined stone backsplash. It is more formal than a typical farmhouse kitchen, but the long island and six counter stools keep it oriented around gathering rather than display.

One bedroom takes a more traditional approach, with a four-poster bed, exposed wood beams, and green scenic wallcovering wrapped around the room. A matching green chair near the window and a pale patterned rug keep the palette tied together without making the room monochromatic.

$Southern Living Idea House 2026\u200b$ Green scenic wallcovering surrounds a four-poster bed beneath exposed wood beams.Photo courtesy of Laurey Glenn/Southern Living

Southern Living editor-in-chief Sid Evans said in the release that the house was designed to take cues from the Hill Country landscape while showing "a home that's as warm and welcoming as it is stylish and innovative."

Public tours run through December 20 at 518 Interlaken St. Tours are scheduled Thursdays through Saturdays from 10 am to 5 pm and Sundays from noon to 5 pm. Tickets are $44, with part of the proceeds benefiting Operation Finally Home, the Hunt Preservation Society, and the Gillespie County Historical Society/Pioneer & Vereins Kirche Museums.

$Southern Living Idea House 2026\u200b$ Look out for this cover on newsstands to pick up a copy and learn more about the home.Photo courtesy of Laurey Glenn/Southern Living

Southern Living is also scheduling several event weekends during the tour run, including Volvo test-drive weekends and a Holiday Classics event from December 4-6.

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home design trends

Hottest bathroom renovation trends right now are all about self-care

Photo courtesy of Signature Designs Kitchens & Baths

Stone accent walls are a great way to make a bathroom look more natural.

The interior design experts at Houzz are unveiling the hottest renovation trends for Dallas homeowners who are ready to say goodbye their outdated bathrooms and step into updated, self-care retreats.

The "2026 U.S. Houzz Bathroom Trends Study" surveyed over 1,600 homeowners who are currently renovating or have recently completed a bathroom renovation to determine the top design choices, features, and the overarching goals for their projects.

"Homeowners want their bathrooms to work harder for them to support both daily routines and self-care," said Marine Sargsyan, Houzz head of economic research. "That's showing up in the numbers, with median spend rebounding to $15,000, and nearly half of homeowners making their showers bigger. Pros are helping their clients to reconfigure layouts and make more room for the features that elevate everyday comfort."

Below are the most sought-after bathroom upgrades in 2026.

Bathrooms stay relatively the same size, but self-care tops the priority list
One of the main highlights in the report was that half of all homeowners surveyed said they spent more time relaxing and "soaking up self care" in their bathrooms after renovations were finished. Fore 28 percent, that's for beauty and pampering routines, and for 23 percent, it's for rest and relaxation.

With this in mind, most homeowners also said they don't want their bathrooms to be larger and take away precious space in the primary bedroom. Instead, homeowners are making strategic improvements like reworking the bathroom layout; increasing the size of the shower area; or updating ventilation, heating, or plumbing.

"The vast majority of bathrooms (82 percent) keep their size after renovation, while just 1 percent shrink," the report said. "When bathroom footprints increase, they tend to be modest."

Additionally, about 90 percent of homeowners said they were hiring a professional to help with their renovation projects rather than doing it themselves. This takes away some of the stress of executing renovations, though it might come at a higher cost than a DIY project.

Top-picked styles and design details
The majority of homeowners (81 percent) update the style of their bathroom when they renovate, the report said, with transitional and contemporary styles leading as the most popular choices.

Specifically, homeowners are most often choosing solid wood (like maple and white oak) for their cabinets, and white or off-white quartzite for countertops, and white or off-white paint across the shower walls and non-shower walls. While this may seem sterile at first, about 34 percent of homeowners are including an accent wall to add a touch of personality to the space.

"Renovating homeowners who include an accent wall in their bathroom projects mostly use patterns to make them stand out (53 percent)," the report said. "Color is the second choice (48 percent), followed by surface material (45 percent) and texture (25 percent)."

Porcelain and ceramic tile are the top two choices for shower flooring and for the flooring outside the shower, Houzz reported.

Specialty features surging in popularity
Recessed lighting, bidet toilet seats, and mirrors with adjustable lighting color temperature are a few of the hottest specialty features being added to bathrooms, the report found.

"[A] third of renovating homeowners add a specialty mirror feature (33 percent), most often LED lighting (26 percent) or an antifog system (21 percent)," Houzz said.

For vanity updates, 61 percent of homeowners upgrade to entirely custom or semi-custom piece, and 21 percent of homeowners opt for stock models. These new vanities are most often wider than what was previously used, and feature soft-close drawers and doors. Built-in features — such as electrical outlets, hair tool organizers, and drawer organizers — are another popular choice for vanity upgrades.

Accessibility features for homeowners planning for the future
Nearly three quarters of homeowners are planning bathroom upgrades to address their future needs.

The top aging-in-place features incorporated by renovating homeowners are grab bars, continuous or nonslip flooring, low-curb or curbless showers, additional lighting, ADA-compliant toilets, and wheelchair-accessible doorways. Four percent of homeowners said they were lowering the height of their vanities, and two percent said they were lowering their shower fixtures.

Several of these ideas were also highlighted in Houzz's 2025 renovation trends report.

Photo courtesy of Signature Designs Kitchens & Baths

Stone accent walls are a great way to make a bathroom look more natural.

home design home design trends houzz bathrooms renovation