Adapting Floor Plans For A Changing World
By Paul Bielinski, CEO & VP
Change is inevitable. Whether it’s new technologies, new trends, or new demands, Bielinski Homes has been adapting to change for over 60 years. Here is how we’ve used our experience as home builders to create and adapt floorplans for the modern world.
THE NEW LIFESTYLE
2020 forced us to reevaluate what a home needs to be. Remote work, virtual schooling, and safer at home orders made it so our homes became conference rooms and classrooms. And even though there is a light at the end of the COVID tunnel, last year has fundamentally changed what homes need to accomplish.
Working from home and virtual learning will continue to be common for the foreseeable future. That’s why we have been working on adapting floor plans to accommodate this. Expanding the size of secondary bedrooms will allow kids to have desks for schoolwork or online classes. And creating flexible workstations throughout the house in addition to home office options will allow more than one person to work from home in comfort.
While spending so much time at home we’ve also realized that self-care has become more important than ever. By creating improved bathrooms with oversized showers or soaking tubs, you can have a mini getaway right down the hall.
CHANGING PRIORITIES
As our lifestyles change, so do our priorities. Obviously, we’ve seen workstations and home offices become much more important to our customers. But that’s not the only thing.
Extending the comforts of your indoor space to your backyard has shot up on the home wish list. Many of our customers are adding a covered outdoor living area, along with oversized sliding glass doors to their builds. Not only is this an added bonus living space to your home, but also allows a seamless transition to enjoying the outdoors, no matter the season.
We’ve also seen mudrooms rise in popularity with customers. This is a trend that began before the pandemic but has only grown since. Not only is the mudroom a perfect place to store jackets, shoes, and leashes for your afternoon walks with pets, but it also doubles as a staging area for package deliveries from the online shopping we’re all doing.
We’ve also seen some areas of the home wane in popularity. We’ve already discussed the disappearance of the formal dining room in a recent blog. But we’ve also seen the square footage of where a morning room or formal dining room once was, reprioritized elsewhere in the home.
LOOKING AHEAD
Adaptation is a never-ending process, and our floor plans never stop evolving. In 2021 we’re going to continue to evaluate and modify floor plans, be it the home office, bathroom, or outdoor living area. We’re also going to focus on improving our floor plans for the kids in your home by expanding secondary bedrooms and including compartmentalized bathrooms. With a compartmentalized bathroom, the shower and toilet are separate from the vanity. This allows more than one child to use the space simultaneously. Which means, no more fighting over who gets to use the bathroom first.
And as always, we’re going to keep evolving based on insights learned from listening to our customer’s needs, industry trends and digging into our own years of unique experiences.
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