Are you renovating your home and have received so many quotes you no longer know which to choose? Discover why 90% of the time you end up making the wrong choice — and how to avoid it.
When you start renovating your home everything seems very easy. You love browsing options: flooring, tiles, kitchen furniture, windows…
Within a few days you visit several companies and they show you their products, talk about their materials, quality, finishes and durability.
So far so good. The problem starts when every professional recommends a different product and explains why their option is the best.
You need to be an expert with prior experience to truly evaluate the options, because on paper everything can look excellent.
Since you are not a professional in this specific sector and lack the technical knowledge to assess each option, making a choice feels overwhelming.
You have a thousand ideas in your head, a hundred new concepts you had never heard before, and zero prior experience.
Things get even more complicated when each contractor recommends a different solution and the technical advisors don't clarify your doubts either — if they push too hard, their advice is probably motivated by the commission the contractor will pay them for closing the sale.
In your renovation or self-build project there is no room for second chances.
What started as something exciting has turned into a nightmare. You need to make the right decision — the success of your project depends on it.
In construction there are no second chances. If you get it wrong you will pay the consequences for the next 30 years — probably the length of your mortgage. Some decisions may have no solution for the entire useful life of your new home.
Because of all this, you try to take charge of these decisions yourself and, like a good builder, you decide to get multiple quotes from each contractor.
Every professional recommends a different material. You know their opinion is not impartial — it is obvious that everyone wants to close the sale and have you choose their product.
Let's look at a practical case: choosing windows for your project.
One supplier recommends aluminium with double glazing and low-emissivity treatment to improve insulation, and their arguments make it sound like exactly what you need. But you won't settle for the first proposal, so you consult a few more professionals.
The next supplier pulls a face when you ask for aluminium and low-e double glazing, arguing that PVC with triple glazing will insulate better.
The third professional tells you that PVC turns yellow and is banned in Germany, and that the aluminium brand in your first quote is very low quality.
The next one offers PVC that is 20% cheaper than the second, from a new brand that is performing very well.
The last one talks about a very affordable aluminium profile and explains that with that profile and double glazing you have more than enough — no need to spend more, as the insulation will be excellent.
Are you really prepared to absorb all that data, compare specifications correctly and make the right decision?
To decide, you need to evaluate hundreds of technical parameters you don't know and that can be difficult to understand without the necessary training.
The most important handicap is the lack of experience. Honestly, even professionals in the sector cannot evaluate a brand without having tested it on several projects. Only by checking real results on real projects can we form a well-founded opinion.
The Builder's Syndrome
I call it the Builder's Syndrome: the situation in which the client, trying to make the best possible decision, ends up paralysed by an excess of contradictory information and finally chooses by price — the only parameter they can compare objectively.
The result is that 90% of the time the client ends up choosing the cheapest option, not because it is the best, but because it is the only one they can compare without technical knowledge.
And a low price almost always means lower quality: profiles with fewer chambers, lower-quality glass, cheap hardware and less careful installation.
The consequences are not visible in the first year. They appear after 5–10 years: condensation, draughts, noise, difficulty opening and closing, loss of airtightness…
And by then there is nothing to be done. The windows are installed and replacing them means paying the full cost again.
How to avoid the Builder's Syndrome
The solution is simple: find a trusted advisor who has no interest in selling you a specific product, or research thoroughly before requesting quotes.
At Instal Tancaments we work with the best brands on the market — Veka, Kömmerling, Rehau, Schüco — and our advice is always based on the needs of your project, not on the commercial margin of each product.
If you want honest advice on which windows best suit your home on the Costa Brava or in Girona, contact us with no obligation.