Trending Towards Casual

The home trends used to be to have a formal home. These homes included a separate living room, separate dining room, separate family room, and kitchen nook just off the kitchen. Everything was boxed in to create completely separate spaces with only hallways and doorways to enter and exit the rooms. And there was a lot of carpet. A lot.

As the years went on people started noticing they weren’t using the separate rooms very often, especially the living room. Then began the phase of the great room. This room was designed to be used as one huge family/living room combination. The great room is usually at the center of the home and is used to create a more convenient gathering space. The creation of the great room eliminated the highly unused living room in most homes. Next, came the idea of open concept homes. People thought, why not just create one HUGE space and put a kitchen AND a great room in the space. And now, instead of a kitchen nook, we’ve been seeing a lot of people add on a morning room to their kitchen. The morning room is meant as a more casual dining space as well as another gathering space. With the idea of the open concept we started seeing flooring changes. A lot of people want the same flooring throughout the home to really emphasize the openness. This lead to tile or wood flooring throughout the home and a lot less carpet. Of course, carpet is still used in most bedrooms and office spaces.

Another trending home design is the idea of a large indoor/outdoor space. Many people are putting in sliding door walls or pocket door walls so that they are able to open up the entire wall of their great room. This creates a large indoor/outdoor great room feel with lots of seating for people to gather and enjoy. This is especially great here in Arizona since we have such beautiful weather most of the year.

These changes in home design really are meant to create a more casual home with the idea of one or two large gathering spaces for people. We find that a lot of our clients are revamping their homes to create a large great room and an open concept feel, along with indoor/outdoor spaces.