Should You Design Multi-Purpose Rooms For Your New Home?
There is seemingly endless advice on how to arrange the various details of a custom home, but it can sometimes be easy to lose track of the big picture. After all, there's more to designing a home than picking out cabinets and choosing to mould. A significant part of how you will interact with your home revolves around you will use the rooms within it. Of course, it's easy to know what to do with a kitchen or a living room, but what about the rest of the house? Multi-purpose (or flex) rooms are a common trend for modern homes, and this article will give you the information you need to decide if they are right for your house.
Understanding the Multi-Purpose Room
If you've ever turned an unused bedroom into a home office or stored boxes in a family room, then you already know everything you need to know about multi-purpose rooms. These flexible spaces can grow and evolve with you, changing as your life changes. Depending on your current needs, a multi-use space can serve as storage, a home office, or even a home gym. In some cases, you may also choose to add rooms for future needs, such as if you expect a little addition (or several!) to your family in the future.
Differentiating Extra Bedrooms From Multi-Purpose Rooms
If any room can be a multi-purpose room, then what's the sense in designing specifically for flexible use? The key is in understanding how versatile design can enhance your use of the space in the future. Bedrooms are often placed together and designed with specific requirements in mind. Planning in this way is useful if the rooms will be used as bedrooms, but it can make these spaces inconvenient as offices, dens, or other specialized rooms. A home theater directly next to the master bedroom is less than ideal, for example.
When deciding if you want to add multi-use rooms to your new house, start by considering your current and future needs. Will you need a crafting room? A home theater? A den? Is there an existing room that can fulfill these roles, such as a family room or extra garage bay? When working with your designer on room placement, be sure to consider noise levels and isolation if you have specific future uses in mind.
Design for Durability
Finally, keep in mind that any room intended to serve multiple purposes may be subject to more wear and tear than other parts of your house. If your home will use hardwood floors, for example, it may make sense to install carpet or vinyl flooring in a multi-purpose room. Choosing durability over aesthetics gives you more flexibility for future use, and it is often relatively simple to tie these more durable materials into the overall aesthetic design of a home.
As with any aspect of custom home design, focus on both your current needs and your needs in the future. Discuss your options with a home builder such as Integra Builders, so that you can determine the best way to integrate one or more multi-purpose rooms into your new home.