House trends leaving your home behind?

Housing trends come and go, some fleeting, others more enduring. One-time ‘must haves’ are now passé.  Features formerly frowned upon as old fashioned re-emerge as the next big thing.

So what is ‘out’ and what is ‘in’? We reveal the trends emerging to shape the new residential real estate landscape.

What about my bar and tennis court?!

Thankfully, trends in home design aren’t quite so fickle and faddish as they are in say food or fashion. But they do move in response to economic, environmental and demographic changes, affecting choices in materials, layouts and amenities.

Our own observations of emerging homebuyer preferences led us to investigate more widely the latest trends identified by social researchers and fellow industry professionals including architects and builders.

We’ve come up with our Top 10 trends. Once, criteria such as size, social status and appearances ranked highly.  Now it’s all about healthy habitats that enhance the human experience.

1. Private wellbeing: Houses are becoming more of a destination for their owners as they turn away from crowded health clubs, spas, even clinics. People want their own pampering, fitness and relaxation areas.  Bathrooms are big, literally.  Spa-influenced bathrooms with island tubs are ‘in’.  So too are home gyms, yoga rooms, meditation decks, even private clinic rooms for in-home massage and treatments by visiting therapists (who wants to line up in a public waiting room for your injectables?!).
2. Bartender to barista, media to meditation: Cafés have become our modern-day pubs. Now the trend is translated into the home and it has enormous appeal.  Swap the old well-stocked bar and liquor cabinet for a barista station with snazzy coffee machine, jars of baked goodies, bookshelves and comfy conversation chairs. You might designate a room as formal dining room or study, but hardly ever use it.  Instead, it makes sense to have rooms with less defined purposes, easily transformed.  Media room ‘out’, yoga studio ‘in’.
3. Kitchens rule: Top-raters on TV and social media, kitchens and food are trending in our homes too. Architects call it the ‘activator’, the main space in the home.  Everything happens in the kitchen and everyone wants to be there, participating, interacting, sharing.  Bigger, open kitchens with multi-workspaces and eat-in facilities are a big plus.  Formal dining rooms are ‘out’.  In fact, kitchens are so ‘in’ that you might want two.  A ‘back kitchen’ or scullery is coveted to hide messy appliances and add more prep and storage space, allowing the main kitchen to be better presented and more open to the rest of the house.
4. Natural materials: Cambridge University cites research that shows timber buildings can have positive effects on their occupants’ health. They’ve even proposed London’s first timber skyscraper, saying “people have a greater affinity for taller buildings in natural materials rather than steel and concrete”.  Certainly the introduction of wood is making a comeback in home designs, adding warmth to contemporary styles that can be otherwise cold and hard.  Queensland’s timber and tin houses are back on trend!
5. Outdoors are ‘in’: Outdoor spaces are increasingly replacing formal living and dining rooms. Blurring the lines between indoors and out adds great appeal, using glass doors that create a seamless transition.  Outdoor rooms that incorporate kitchens and dining areas rate very highly, as do water features, green walls, edible gardens and fireplaces/fire pits.  The emerging pampering and outdoor room trends have even merged to give us the ‘outdoor bathroom’ trend (requires careful design, unless for the exhibitionists among us!)
6. Game change: Resort-style facilities like tennis courts and pools used to be all the rage. Now they’re not everyone’s idea of luxury.  Change it up.  Transform the court into a flexible activity space or outdoor fitness area – safe play and bike riding for kids, practice nets and hoops, stretching zone, jogging track around the perimeter.  A small pool can even be turned into a fitness asset with the addition of a current generator.
7. Screen it out: It goes without saying state-of-the-art technology is a must. But, with our lives now so endlessly connected, living areas that provide calm respite are welcomed.  CSIRO Futures leader and senior principal scientist, Stefan Hajkowicz, this week told a Future Cities event in Brisbane that “we are digitally immersed but we are also digitally overwhelmed and exhausted.”  We actually want to unplug and focus on the human experience.  No-tech spaces devoid of digital distraction are the way to go.
8. Healthy houses: Awareness of past problems caused by asbestos and lead paint, and general concern about pollution in our environment, make people more conscious of potential invisible dangers. Increasingly, we seek to avoid or eliminate harmful fumes and chemicals that may be found in building products such as glues, sealers and finishes.  Like food, will builders soon come with organic certification?
9. Smart and sustainable: We don’t need to be avid greenies to understand the importance and value of sustainability in our houses – energy and water conservation, use of renewable energy, smart use of natural light and ventilation, and optimum orientation and aspect are all increasingly important. The sustainability trend is one that is going stay.
10. Parking imperative: Despite green leanings and cries for better public transport, we find demand for car parking space at home has never been stronger. Parents encourage offspring to live at home for longer, and the kids seem in no hurry to leave.  So many homeowners need to accommodate three, four or even more vehicles.  Perhaps that’s another conversion idea for the unused tennis court!

So, that’s our Top 10. Good news is, many of them can easily be incorporated into or added to existing homes to create lasting appeal and extra value.

Finally, there is one thing more important than any trend. Decades ago, when the Dixon name was still relatively new to the Brisbane real estate scene, industry pacesetter of the time, Gail Havig, said something we’ve never forgotten.  It remains true to this day, and will for a long time to come.

Perhaps inspired by Yves Saint Laurent, who said ‘fashions fade, style is eternal’, she told us:

“House fashions may come and go, but a good location never goes out of style.”