For a real estate search, the user can specify bedroom count with valid values being 1,2,3,4,5+ or any continuous range in-between (e.g. 2-3) and I'm looking for a way to represent that other than a range slider.
As the first part of a faceted search, the user will input such a value with text, i.e. "3 bedrooms" or "2-3 bedrooms" or "5+ bedrooms". On the results page will be an advanced filter with lots of configurable settings. Right now we have that as a range slider but I don't like it, especially when a majority of the time users choose a single value anyway.
My favoured idea right now is to use 5 "buttons" as pseudo checkboxes, although there is a downside here that it allows users to enter "invalid" inputs such as 2 and 4 selected but not 3. I'm still leaning towards this as I think only a small fraction of users would ever change the values after they have inputted them initially.
Are there any other options I should be considering?