If you say you want to cook, is your home designed to support that?
If you want to entertain more often, will the common areas in your home help or hurt that?
The life you want to live can be helped or hurt by how your home is set up. That might come down to cabinet design, or having walls where they shouldn’t be, or access to the outdoors, or other factors that range from the superficial to the full re-dos.
Your home affects how comfortable and relaxed you are…it impacts your productivity and your mental health.
Of course, it impacts you for better or worse, depending on whether your home was tailored to YOUR lifestyle needs.
Here are just five ways that key lifestyle changes can be supported by the design inside your home…
1: “I want to cook more”
Maybe you want to cook at home to save money, or maybe it’s because you really do love the experience! Maybe you’re into meal preparation, or you’re a baker who wishes you could mix and make something every day.
Your kitchen design has EVERYTHING to do with how you eat. If you have limited space in cabinets, you’re probably not going to have everything you really need to make the things you love…
Or, for example, if you’re a baker but all your trays and molds are shoved precariously in some floor-level cabinet, the thought of digging through a pile (with CLANGING sounds so loud they can be heard next door) is not an inviting start to baking something great…
Bakers who truly want to bake more need custom cubbies to store cookie sheets and more in their kitchen cabinetry, just like people who love to cook need a clean and accessible way to store pots and pants.
Talking to your contractor and designer about the types of cabinetry customization is ESSENTIAL, otherwise the roadblocks of pure inconvenience will get you every time…
The flow of a kitchen, too, is important to think about. How much do you really want to work in the kitchen if you’re spinning every two seconds to a different surface as you chop, mix, cook, and clean?!
EXPERT TIP: think about your kitchen now. Walk through the steps of making what you most love to make. What parts of the process are cumbersome? THAT’S your opportunity to support your lifestyle…discover a solution for each barrier along the way, and your kitchen can be your own idea of paradise.
2: “I want to have people over more often”
If you LOVE to entertain but don’t have the perfect space for it, then you live in a constant tug of war. Your instinct tells you to give people a call and set up an event…but when it comes down to preparing your home, it’s stress after stress.
Perhaps your home is set up with a kitchen that’s completely blocked off from the main living area. This limits how much you want to cook because you can’t be stuck in a corner while your guests are out in the living space without you!!
Or maybe you LOVE hosting soirees with your friends, but without a devoted bar area the dining room table ALWAYS turns into a hodge-podge bar, and it’s messy and inconvenient…
Or maybe the trouble is how you feel about your entryway, décor and finishes when people do come over…are there things you secretly hope no one will notice?! Do you have to clean ALL areas of your home just so guests can get to the “nice” bathroom down an inconvenient hallway?
From deliberate design in a breathtaking entryway to every other way to tastefully show off your home, the right design is the launchpad for successful entertaining.
EXPERT TIP: ask yourself honestly, how easy is it to set your home up to entertain? What are the biggest headaches for you as you get ready? And what are those details you secretly hope NO ONE catches onto?! These are hurdles you SHOULDN’T have to jump every time. Your home can be engineered to make hosting as easy as it is fun.
3: “I want my home to be fit for all ages”
When we experience any change in health or mobility that impacts how we live in our homes, the change can be hard. It can be isolating. It can seem like our home is no longer ours.
Home design can be done in a way that is inclusive for all ages and abilities, however, and not just when our own mobility declines.
What about the grandkids? Or what about a parent who moves in?
Design for all ages is when home environments (especially the kitchen and bathrooms) are engineered for safety and convenience. No-slip tile selections, curbless shower entry and shower benches are all examples of graceful solutions that serve everyone’s comfort—from the grandkids to Grandma and Grandpa.
Material selections and window treatments are part of that equation, too. Performance fabrics in the right places will allow you to take worry totally off the table when the kids climb around the living room! Occupancy sensors do amazing things for safety and convenience, too…
EXPERT TIP: think about those people who come to your home often who have any special needs or limited mobility, young or old! What areas do they spend the most time in? Are those areas comfortably equipped for them?
4: “I want to work out more”
This is a statement virtually everyone has uttered at least once.
There’s no sugarcoating it…most of the motivation to work out more has to come from within us.
That said, if your home lacks basic features that could support you in your efforts, that’s something to think seriously about!
The most obvious solution is to design a home gym, or at least dedicate part of a room to gym equipment…but even having a space large enough that you can roll out a mat is more than some homes can say!!
What kind of workouts do you really want to do? What do you need (space, equipment, etc.) to do more of them?…
EXPERT TIP: if you love workouts that require some kind of video to guide you, simple changes to your home’s staging can make ALL the difference! Maybe you need to position the TV differently to provide space to move in front of it…or maybe instead of monthly gym memberships you can install a dedicated TV in your favorite workout space at home.
5: “I want to enjoy the outdoors more”
This is an “I want” statement that LOTS of homeowners are talking about!! The wave of biophilic interior design in recent years reflects our growing lust for natural light, green spaces, and access to the outdoors.
The most robust indoor-outdoor design choices bring the biggest rewards, of course. Opening your kitchen up with wall-to-wall windows that can lower and raise gives you an indoor-outdoor cooking space! Or maybe a custom, 15-foot door installation can turn your living room and patio into a shared, indoor-outdoor space of divine luxury…
What outdoor spaces you do have can be better designed, too. Imagine small clusters of devoted seating areas that nurture the kind of mingling you want, for you AND your guests…or maybe you just need some outdoor lighting to transform your yard into a space you truly want to spend extra time in.
EXPERT TIP: access to the outdoors can mean bringing the outdoors in, too! Have you played with adding plants indoors, even faux plants (what we call “permanents” in interior design)?
These design concepts might sound like dreams…but if you’ve found yourself making ANY of these “I want” statements, your home should support you in living that out.
Otherwise, you’re trying to make lifestyle changes while the very walls around you box you in!!
Design that’s based on your needs, desires and lifestyle is design that brings true return on enjoyment. It can improve your daily interactions with loved ones and your quality of life in so many ways…
It can actually shape your future.
Which of these “I want” statements resonates the most with you? Join us in our private design community on Facebook to tell us what you think!!
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