There’s a moment in the process of buying a new home that most people don’t anticipate until they’re in it.
The paperwork is underway, the plot is reserved and someone asks:
What do you actually want your home to look like?
For some buyers, that question is the most exciting thing they’ve heard in months, while for others, it’s quietly terrifying. Most people sit somewhere in between – thrilled by the possibility, unsure where to start and quietly worried about making a decision they’ll regret every time they walk into the kitchen.
Here’s what we tell every Risby new home buyer at that point: you don’t have to figure this out on your own. We know just the people to help.
What happens next?
Once your new Risby home is reserved, you’ll be introduced to our design partners – a carefully chosen group of local specialists who between them cover your kitchen, your flooring and your tiles.
You won’t be meeting them in our office – you’ll be visiting them in theirs.
That means going to their showrooms, spending real time with their design teams and making decisions surrounded by the actual materials, finishes and layouts you’re choosing between – not photographs of them.
You’ll be able to open a kitchen drawer and feel the weight of it, run your hand across a worktop, hold a tile sample in your hand and walk it to the window to see what it looks like in natural light.
It’s an unhurried process, nobody is watching a clock, and the people you’re meeting have spent decades doing this and their job is to help you get it right.
The Kitchen: BMS Kitchens & Bedrooms, Market Weighton
Your kitchen is probably the most significant decision in the process. It’s the room that defines the ground floor – how it looks, how it flows, how it feels to live in every single day. It deserves more than an hour, five worktop options and a handful of cupboard door samples.
Which is why Risby buyers spend a dedicated morning at BMS Kitchens & Bedrooms in Market Weighton, with tiles and flooring typically taken care of in the afternoon, so that by the end of the day the major decisions are made and the picture of your new home is taking real shape. For those who’d rather take their time across two visits, that works just as well. However you choose to do it, we want you to leave feeling clear and confident rather than rushed.
BMS and Risby Homes have worked together for more than 28 years, a partnership built on the fact that both businesses have always refused to cut corners.
Established in 1996, this year marks their 30th anniversary, and like us, they’ve spent three decades doing things the same way: do the job properly, turn up when you say you will and let the quality speak for itself.
Walk into the BMS showroom and the difference between this and a standard selection appointment is immediately apparent. It’s a purpose-built, newly renovated 5,000 sq ft space with fully fitted kitchen displays. Not samples or photographs, but complete, considered kitchens you can move around in. From sleek, handle-less modern designs through to traditional painted in-frame styles, there’s a kitchen for every taste. And every one of them is there to be experienced rather than imagined.
The design team will take your brief – the layout of your new home, how you cook, how you live, what you’ve always wanted and what you’ve never been able to have – and within two weeks of your appointment you’ll receive a detailed 3D render of your kitchen, so detailed that customers consistently say the finished result looks almost exactly like the visualisation they signed off. And that’s not a sales claim, it’s what BMS’s own customers say, repeatedly, in their own words.
BMS holds a Neff 5 Master Partner status and is a Fisher & Paykel Centre of Distinction – accreditations earned through consistent quality and expertise, with Miele set to join their collection of premium brand partnerships soon. They’re a team that will suggest combinations you perhaps wouldn’t have considered and think of solutions to problems you didn’t know you had.
To mark their 30th anniversary, BMS are hosting an open day on Saturday 26th September – a great opportunity to visit the showroom, see the full range and get a feel for what the experience looks like before your own appointment. Full details are on their Facebook page or find out more about BMS Kitchens here.
The Flooring: East Yorkshire Flooring, Hull
Most buyers underestimate flooring until they’re living with a decision they wish they’d thought harder about.
It’s understandable, flooring is easy to deprioritise when you’re making bigger decisions, until you move in and realise that the surface running through every room of your home is the thing that ties everything else together, or doesn’t.
Get it right and a home feels cohesive. The hallway leads naturally into the kitchen, the living room is warm underfoot and the bedroom has the kind of softness that makes it feel like a proper retreat. Get it wrong and no amount of paint or furniture fixes it.
East Yorkshire Flooring – the trade division of East Yorkshire Carpets, Beds & Wood Floors – based in Hull, have been getting it right for buyers across the region for over 30 years.
Every Risby home comes with a carefully chosen selection of flooring included as standard – all carrying a lifetime guarantee and all available to see and choose from at their show room. For buyers who want to explore further, an extensive range of premium options is available across carpet, LVT, vinyl, laminate and real wood, with brands including Karndean, Amtico, Brintons, Westex and Quick Step available at an additional cost.
With over 350,000m² of flooring held in stock – available to see, touch and take away – and a team who understand how different flooring choices behave in different rooms and different lights, you’ll find both the range and the expertise to make the right decision.
While flooring is the one element in the Risby design process that you can also choose to arrange independently after completion, for buyers who want everything considered and sorted as part of the process – so you move into a finished home rather than a work in progress – East Yorkshire Flooring is the company we trust and where we suggest that conversation starts.
Perhaps the best way to describe what the day feels like is to let a recent Risby buyer do it:
“From selecting flooring to designing our dream kitchen, we’ve been supported all the way. Thank you to Risby’s chosen suppliers, East Yorkshire Carpets for our gorgeous herringbone flooring, and to the guys at BMS Kitchens who outdid themselves with helping to design and then fit our incredible kitchen. We could not be happier with the quality, high standard, high spec and overall result. Our home really is a dream home.”
– Risby Homes buyer, The Vines development
The Tiles: Ceramic Tile Merchants, Beverley
Tiles are one of those decisions that feel manageable until you’re standing in front of hundreds of options and realising that the difference between a bathroom that feels genuinely considered and one that simply looks nice comes down to a handful of choices that are easy to get almost right and harder than they look to get exactly right.
Risby Homes has been working with Ceramic Tile Merchants since 2017 and in that time, they’ve become our trusted tile partner across every development we’ve built.
Grout colour, scale, finish, whether to run a tile vertically or horizontally or whether the floor should contrast with the wall or continue it. These aren’t small details – they’re the details that determine whether a room feels designed or merely decorated.
Ceramic Tile Merchants in Beverley have been helping people make those decisions well since 2003, when Managing Director Garry Cammidge founded the business with a straightforward purpose: genuine choice, genuine expertise, genuine service. More than two decades on, the team carries over 70 years of combined industry expertise and membership of the Tile Association – credentials that reflect real knowledge, not just longevity. And they’re our choice when it comes to creating a Risby-quality home.
Their stock runs to thousands of wall and floor tiles in ceramic, porcelain and natural stone, and they offer full-sized samples to take home, which matters more than it might sound. A tile that looks right under showroom lighting isn’t always the tile that looks right in your bathroom, in your light, at seven in the morning. The team at Ceramic Tile Merchants understands this and they’ve built their entire service around helping you find the one that works in your actual life, not just in the showroom.
Their customers – architects, interior designers, tradespeople and homeowners alike – return to Ceramic Tile Merchants for the same reason: they trust the team to get it right. And Risby buyers do too.
What this process actually gives you
By the time a Risby buyer has spent time with BMS, with East Yorkshire Flooring and with Ceramic Tile Merchants, something has shifted.
You come in with an idea of what you wanted – or no idea at all – and you leave knowing exactly what you’re going to have. The kitchen you’ve always dreamt of, designed around how you actually cook and live. Flooring that feels right the moment you stand on it and tiles chosen in your own time, with people who helped you find the ones that were right rather than just available. The decisions you’ve made aren’t guesses, they’re informed choices made with people who know their product and who have the time and the inclination to help you get them right. By the time you’ve finished choosing, your new home isn’t just a dream, it’s real.
That’s what we mean when we say a Risby home is designed for the way you actually live. It’s not just about the layout or the specification, it’s about the process that gets you there.
One recent Risby buyer, reflecting on their selection day, said they were “blown away” by the specification included as standard – a reaction that captures something we hear regularly from buyers who arrive expecting to be choosing upgrades and discover they already have them.
Another buyer, who spent two days with the team at BMS and the other suppliers, summed it up simply: “We had a great two days with Mark, Karl and Ben choosing our choices, we’re absolutely delighted with how they’ve made our home truly ours.”
Come and see what's possible
Our newest development, Maple Croft in Cherry Burton, is where this process begins for buyers who want to be part of one of the most considered new build communities in the East Riding.
The design and selection process described above is something we work hard to make available to every Risby buyer. We’ll always give you as much opportunity as possible to personalise your home, from the kitchen through to the tiles and flooring, and we’ll hold off on making choices for as long as the build programme allows.
Occasionally, where a plot needs to progress and selections haven’t yet been made, we’ll step in to keep things on track but even then, buyers often find themselves with finishes that exceed what they’d have chosen at an earlier stage.
The best way to understand what’s possible for your specific plot is to have a conversation with us early. The sooner you’re in the process, the more of it you get to shape.
A number of completed homes at Hornby Walk in Walkington are currently available to view, giving you a clear sense of what a finished Risby home looks and feels like before you commit to anything.
For a closer look at the kitchens, flooring and tiles our buyers have chosen – and the homes they’ve become – our Instagram and Facebook pages carry an extensive library of photography that’s well worth an hour of your time.
If you’d like to talk through the process, find out what’s coming next or simply have an honest conversation about whether a Risby home is right for you, we’d genuinely welcome the call.
Call us on 07542 030 900, email sales@risbyhomes.co.uk or register your interest via our website.