The National Association of Home Builders’ 2016 International Builders Show recently took place in City of Lights–Las Vegas, NV–and Jerod Allen (Giroux Glass’ Vice President of Business Development) and I were pleased to attend.
NAHB IBS is one of the largest annual light construction shows in the world, and usually attracts around 50,000 visitors from more than 100 countries. There, in the middle of that big crowd, I learned more about remodeling, design, and many other amazing aspects of our trade than I’ve ever been exposed to before.
I enjoyed every booth I went to and took away a lot of information from the many manufacturing companies that were there. I also really enjoyed seeing the outdoor exhibits where they built a floorplan of a home, and showed us the ins and outs of what building a home really entails. Many exhibitors demonstrated (their) products that they recommended as best to use during the building process, and the potential damages of using other products.
I saw a lot of great innovative designs, like those at the Dongguan booth. They had awesome mirrors whose surfaces you touch to turn on and off, which would be great for hotels or at home. The mirrors had LED lighting built-in, and they had settings available so one could set the lights to a daylight setting or a nighttime setting with a dim, blue light behind the mirror. I thought it was really neat.
I also enjoyed meeting some outside sales reps from Oldcastle, CRL, Nanawall, and PPG. Oldcastle had an outdoor exhibit and something they called a “hardscape” product. It’s typically used for landscaping, and I thought it was really cool, because I didn’t know that Oldcastle even offered that type of product–I always thought they offered only glass and mirrors.
At CRL, I saw some stunning frameless showers and multi-sliding doors. I also talked with CRL President of Canada, Gavin Brin, whom I really enjoyed meeting. At their booth, I was shown textured finishes on glass as well as how they work. In some cases, they would put the textured glass on the inside of a door so you could still feel it, and then in other cases, the textured sides would be in the airspace so it was just for effect.
I met more great people at Sengled LED Lighting, a company which designs amazing hardware around LED lighting. They had one of my absolute favorite booths. One cool thing they install is an-LED-lit closet rod, which is stunning! It looks more like something you’d find in a hotel, but you could also put in your home. The company representative told me that the products they use are “wet-rated,” so they can use LED lights in exterior hardware as well. The look of the product was very clean and sleek because you couldn’t see the actual lights, as they were completely hidden. Sengled showed many such innovative uses of incorporating lighting into design.
Northstar‘s booth featured vintage-looking appliances, except with lots of new technology inside–suprise! It updates refrigerators, ovens, and stoves, but keeps the vintage look, which I loved. They also had beautiful touch faucets at Kohler, and other modern appliances booths like Moen‘s. I saw built-ins for kitchens, customized cabinets, quartz and granite countertops, and much more.
I could keep going, but overall, attending the IBS Show was a great experience for me. I learned so much about what goes into building and construction, the complex industry behind it, and I also took away some really fun ideas (as well as lots of catologs). If you have any questions, or would like to chat about this or other posts on our company blog, email us at [email protected]!