Hi Bubblyjock! Thank you so much for writing in. I think you did an excellent job using the search styles (quotes and +) but are right – it is a bit of an obscure search!

As far as an advanced search goes, what sorts of options would you find helpful?

Thank you for your kind compliments, happy Houzzing!
Alyssa

I think her example would be correct, allow putting things in quotes with plus between for multiple phrases.

Hi Alyssa - thanks for getting back to me. I slightly suspect, now, having done a bit more homework, that I did just have a particularly obscure search - sorry about that!

Anyway, I guess if the search engine let one narrow a search to a couple of short phrases, as corroborated by lljurek, that would be helpful, yes. Library search engines, for example, offer different ways to narrow or expand one's search. Some are incredibly complex and multi-stringed, which I think would be overkill for Houzz, but something along those lines, greatly simplified? Generally, though, I find the search engine works really well (and really, how hard is it to wander through many inspirational photos trying to find the "right one"?!).

On a different tack, I wish those who posted images were better at keeping tabs on questions about them: this is a pet peeve of mine, I'm afraid. I just don't understand why designers, etc, bother to post images of their work if they don't bother following up.

Seems to me that the Houzz concept encourages being interactive and communicative, and if one doesn't think it's worth one's time and effort, as a designer, following up on what people want to know about one's work, then I suspect one may loose more business than one would gain via the Houzz conduit. Time will tell, I guess - it wouldn't be easy to quantify, but it would be interesting to know!

Thanks for the clarification! I did a little digging and it looks like you can search multiple phrases. In this case you would want your search to look like this:

+"suspended range hood" +"vaulted ceilings"

I didn't get any results for those exact phrases but +"Range hood" +"vaulted ceilings" gave me a few.
We are always working on improving and I am going to keep your search suggestions in mind for future improvements. :)

Thanks for the feedback on the image questions, we encourage pros to answer the questions but sometimes they do go unanswered. Questions sometimes get asked multiple times, so scrolling to the bottom to check out earlier answers sometime helps (hope that makes sense!)

Best, Alyssa

Brilliant! - thanks again, Alyssa (and yes, makes sense about checking for other answers first).