Ben Dozier Of Building Roots Reveals How He Gets His Creativity Flowing - Exclusive
For creative professionals, the hardest part of any project often is figuring out exactly what you want it to look and feel like. Some days, you may wake up inspired, with a brain full of amazing ideas you can't wait to bring into the world. But on others, the very sight of a blank sheet of paper or an empty Word file is enough to fill you with dread. And your clients don't care if your muse has gone missing — they're expecting great work from you, and they're expecting it now. So what do you do?
Not even experienced creatives are immune from this dilemma. Ben Dozier, half of the husband-and-wife design team on the HGTV show "Building Roots," understands this well. "Creativity's not a light switch that you turn on and off. It hits you randomly," he told The List in an exclusive interview. Dozier knows himself well enough to recognize that he sometimes needs an extra boost to get his creative juices flowing — so he's developed some reliable ways to help himself get recharged and inspired. He shared some of them with us.
Here's how Ben Dozier's design process inspires his creativity
Ben Dozier takes a holistic approach to his designs, making sure he understands every aspect of the project — the homeowners, the layout of their property, their lifestyles, and their planned activities for their homes — before he starts thinking about specific design features. "We meet with coffee and we [try to] understand their whole scope: What do they need, [and] how many people are coming to this space? Some are family camps, some are maybe a retirement home for a smaller couple," he explained. "We talk about those high-level needs and desires and goals and dreams. Then, we'll visit the property and walk through that and learn about the surrounding area."
After his initial client meeting and fact-finding, he sets to work trying to envision the ideal design for the project. But it's not a predictable process. "Some nights, I'll spend all night in the barn designing, because I got to get this idea out of my head," he said. But sometimes, just the opposite happens. "It may take me weeks to come up with an idea and my client's like, 'Hey, you got anything yet?' I'm like, 'Nope, don't have anything yet. Wait until it hits, inspires.'"
Nature is his biggest inspiration
A central theme in "Building Roots" is celebrating the natural beauty of the Colorado mountains where Ben and Cristi Dozier live and work. Their design sensibilities emphasize local and reclaimed materials, such as stones and wood from trees already on an owner's property, and each of their projects is designed to accommodate the natural topography of the surrounding land. "There's an appreciation of Colorado and the mountains and the landscape, the pine trees and the aspens and the river," Ben Dozier said. "We really try to tie into that with that natural, warm, welcome feeling when you come here to Colorado."
So when he feels his creative juices are running dry, he immerses himself in the Colorado landscape. "Ben always likes to say he has nature deficit disorder, meaning sometimes he needs more nature. He needs, like he's saying, the trail run, the ski run, the fly fishing, something to get his brain working again, because he can get in a stuck place," Cristi Dozier said. "When he gets outdoors, something starts the creativity flowing again, and then he'll come home and yeah, stay up all night, getting it out of his head."
"Building Roots" airs Sundays at 9/8c. Tune in to HGTV or stream episodes the same day on HGTV GO.