Post-COVID Home Design

The single most important message, design-wise, we can draw from our experiences during the pandemic related lockdowns is that we need to make sure our homes, going forward, provide us with options as to how we live our lives. Also that they provide us with the options to spend extended time in our homes, without respite. In essence, we need to ponder how to make our homes wonderful gilded (well, at least as gilded as we can afford) prisons.

So, what does that mean for modifying our current homes and choosing new ones?

Make sure that wherever you live allows you to do your job there, if you possibly can.  Some jobs can’t happen at home (it will be difficult to work at home if you’re a surgical nurse, for example!).

Home office design is discussed in this article from The Space Doctors.  Any future lockdown could potentially be even longer than the ones we’ve already experienced, so if your home doesn’t work for your work, the harm that might be done to your professional reputation might be even more severe.

Also, going forward, people will have greater expectations for the at-home workplaces of others.  Particularly during the early stages of the current lockdown, we were all pretty tolerant of children and pets intruding on zoom sessions.  Even within this one pandemic, our patience has waned;  next one we are likely to expect everyone we work with to have a Zoom space where they can work and talk uninterrupted.

Nature Helps

As we’ve dealt with lockdown, it’s become clear to all that time with nature can help alleviate related stress.  After this set of lockdowns ends, and before the next set arise, as they inevitably will, take the time to work plants and slow moving water into whatever views you have of courtyards, window boxes, lawns, whatever you control outside of your window.  Find plants for your balcony or deck or whatever outside areas you can see without leaving your home.  Plan for future houseplants by setting up grow lights that can keep them healthy.  Add art to your walls that features welcoming green spaces.

Even artificial plants also work well at helping us refresh and calm, as long as they’re “good fakes”—you know them when you see them!

Storage Space

With lockdown came the need to bring in large quantities of supplies.  Pantry type spaces that seemed superfluous in 2019, were actually quite useful in 2020.  Having a cool dry storage space in your home tomorrow is likely to be as important to you as it was to your great-great grandparents.

Kitchens

Kitchen spaces in some sorts of homes have become smaller, which can pose quite the challenge during periods when people can’t leave their homes.  Functional kitchens, places where all meals can be cooked day after day are important in all homes.

Transition Zones

During the pandemic, transition zones became important.  Making sure that your future home has a place to remove and store “out-of-the-clean-zone” clothing is important.  A vestibule with a door that separates it from the rest of your home can work exceeding well, but hooks on the wall and a mat for shoes/boots is still a plus.

Making Space and Zones

Something that’s annoyed lots of us during lockdown is too much togetherness.  Future homes that help people have privacy when they want it, even if only via moveable screens, will be more pleasant places to live.  Creating private bedroom zones with en-suites whenever possible can also help us spend time apart or with our partner, when we want or need to do so.

Hobbies and “Me-Time”

If there’s something that you really enjoy or want to do, you need to find a way to do it in your home.  Like to exercise—make sure you can set aside part of your living room to put out your yoga mats, etc.

Going Forward

Whenever you can, build some flexibility into your home;  we can’t be sure that the restrictions imposed by future pandemics will be the same as those during the COVID-19 one—a sort of swing space that was used as a home schoolroom during this pandemic might be needed as an at-home recuperation/physical therapy area in the next.

Learning from past pandemics will help you create living spaces that make your life more pleasant during the next one.