home.php instead of index.php

I am trying to st up a custom homepage for my wordpress site. I followed a few tutorials and they all instructed me to creat a “home.php” file and to upload it in themes/theme-name/home.php. I did this and instead of using home.php for my home page it using home.php for the “about” page in my site. What is causing this to happen? I thought by default the theme would see the home.php and use it for the home page?