Home Design After COVID-19: 6 Ways The Coronavirus Will Reshape Our Homes
July 7, 2020Home is no longer simply “home.” Right now, it’s also your office, classroom, gym, restaurant, movie theater, bar, and so much more. In a span of a few months, we had to change how we view our home in order to cram all these activities under one roof. And now more than ever, we are all discovering what our homes really mean as a place of comfort, safety, and inspiration.
Along with all that, you might’ve also discovered the various inconveniences and inefficiencies your home has in regards to your new lifestyle. You might be looking for a better home office set. You might want more privacy from your partner. You might even want a better kitchen set up to accommodate your increasing time cooking your own meals. The bottom line is, while the pandemic continues to reshape our society at large, the change is also becoming more obvious on a more micro level in our very own homes.
While we still don’t know how we’ll come out on the other side of this, the change in how we view and interact with our homes might last long after the health crisis has passed. Considering how our daily habits and cleaning routines have changed, here are some predictions design experts have made on how the coronavirus will reshape our homes.
1. Must-Have Home Offices
A few months ago, a spot on the couch or the kitchen table can do as well as any place for your workspace at home. But as more and more people discover that they can do their work just as efficiently at home, they’re becoming more and more invested in having defined home offices. For those living in smaller spaces, they’re becoming more interested in multifunctional pieces like drop-down desks that would fit into their space perfectly. Before, the home office was just a luxury. Now, it’s quickly becoming a must-have part of the home.
2. Flexible Living Spaces
When your home has to serve as an office, gym, entertainment center, and so much more, you’d need much more space than before. That’s where flexible living solutions can help you. Instead of sticking with those old, huge, blocky furniture, you might become more and more interested in furniture that folds away to make room for activities like exercising. These can truly help you adapt an efficient lifestyle even within the confines of your home.
3. More Private Spaces
As much as we love them, we all know that being stuck with the same people for weeks on end can have its toll. We all need our own space to maintain our productivity, to keep us sane, and to keep us from actually biting each other’s head off. This renewed focus on privacy could result in designated workspaces, designated entertainment areas, or separate kids’ bedrooms. The bottom line is we need our own spaces to do our own things.
4. Rise of Hygienic Surfaces
This health crisis has permanently scarred the world. People are most cautious now than ever. That’s why, in the future, people might invest more on designing high-traffic areas in their homes with antimicrobial materials or easy-to-clean hard surfaces. Some materials like copper, brass, and bronze have intrinsic properties that destroy microorganisms. Meanwhile, surfaces like glazed ceramic tiles naturally repel bacteria and are very easy to disinfect. In addition to those, no-touch technology might become more common than anybody ever expected.
5. Return of the Mudrooms and Entryways
With this pandemic, the simple act of walking through any door has turned into a much more complex process. We wipe our shoes well, we take them off, we take off our masks, we take off our gloves, and then we slap on some sanitizer or go wash our hands. Even after this crisis passes, these new habits and cautiousness might be so ingrained in us. And this might give way to the resurgence of mudrooms or entryways or alternate places where we can remove or disinfect anything that came from the outside world to prevent the germs and bacteria from entering our homes.
6. Kitchens Receiving More Love
A few months back, a lot of people might not have even paid attention to what their kitchen looked like. But now that we’re spending a lot more time cooking up our own meals, we might also be reevaluating how to maximize the efficiency of our kitchens. Instead of the plain basic setup, we can expect more functional kitchen storage, more efficient kitchen organization, larger pantries, and even more specialty appliances that can help any amateur chef perfect those recipes at home.
