There’s something you need before you begin building a custom home in the Poconos: Inspiration! If you’re like most people, staring at a blank sheet of paper and trying to come up with ideas of what your dream home might look like is tough. Maybe you can identify with the homeowners who say, “I don’t know yet what my dream home looks like—but when I see it, I’ll know it!”

That’s where great design websites can really be a big help. It’s one thing to look at floor plans to get a sense for how the various rooms of your home relate to one another. And here are some great floor plans that can help you do just that. But sometimes you need more visual cues as to how your home could actually look when its completed—and how you could design it so that it turns out the way you want it to.

Here are three home design sites that we love because they help potential homebuyers see how their dreams for a custom home can be realized. And even if you don’t see the exact home you want when perusing one of these sites, you can show a designer or builder features that you want to build into your home. Sometimes that’s a lot easier than trying to explain it in abstract terms.

Houzz.com: This may be the best-known design site for building, remodeling, and decorating homes. There are plenty of great photos and ideas here. They break their site up into specific areas of a home (kitchen, bath, bedroom, living room, dining room, etc.) so that you can focus on one area at a time. They boast more than 5 million pictures, so you’ll have plenty to look at. There are lots of comments from people just like you–so you get unvarnished opinions about what works and what doesn’t. You can save ideas to look at later, and they even feature products you may want to consider for your home.

BHG.com/home-improvement: The Better Homes and Gardens home improvement site is another very helpful place to get ideas. You’ll find house plans, remodeling ideas (which, by the way, can be really helpful in the design of new homes), and tabs for specifics such as color, flooring, lighting, trim, windows, doors, smart homes, and more.

Pinterest may not technically be a home design website, but you’ll find a ton of great ideas in visual form here. You’ll find ideas for individual rooms (everything from kitchens, to laundry rooms, to home theatres), creative suggestions for maximizing the hidden space in your home, and recommendations on paint and color.

We love sites like these because they help homeowners communicate to builders the things that really matter to them. And once those ideas are firmed up, we can help people come up with a plan that turns their ideas into reality. So browse away and then sit down with a reputable homebuilder to come up with a concrete plan for moving forward!