Long Island Home Remodeling Trends 2021
If you’ve been spending more time in your home and yard this year and considering ways to improve them, you’re not alone.Many of us discovered our homes no longer worked for us during those early days of quarantine. The number of home improvement and renovation projects skyrocketed as more people began to tap into their creative sides with precision and determination to make it work!Given all this recent demand, you and your general contractor are now facinglonger than normal wait times to get started. Unprecedented times seemed to have triggered unprecedented delays across all areas of the industry across the country and in Nassau and Suffolk counties(See our Blog about “Why is it important to start with your contractor early in the process”). If you are patient and realistic with your timing, read on for some cool trends that will definitely addexcitement and sanity to your stay-at-home life.
Let’s start with the kitchen- the command center, the place to craft every meal, mix up every Zoom happy hour cocktail, catch up on emails, help with homework, and a place to reconnect with loved ones. The kitchen has stepped up to be a family room, office, school room, and more, making it a prime place to invest in this year.
With everyone stuck at home there is a focus on function and order. If you jumped on the open floor plan trend this last decade, you know it’sgreat for casual entertaining, open flow, and general ease of living but, there are downsides to removing walls. Less storage means fewer hiding places. When something is left out or untidy, there is no 'closing the door;' it’sall on display. And open space is loud! The pandemic has brought this to light.
If you have that kitchen/living open space, creating small walls with glass French or pocket doors can keep the open feeling, but separate the rooms and provide better acoustics.There’s an upward trend for homeowners who have walls to keepthem when doing over their kitchen. When space allows, double kitchen islands have become more popular. This offers not only more storage, but an area for prepping dinner and for doing homework, eating breakfast, catching up on emails, and working on creative projects.
Kitchens are becoming more colorful. It is exciting to see people getting away from the stark,all white kitchens that have been so popular, although always a classic. Cabinetry, open shelves instead of closed cabinets with artworkor colorful bowls on display, and of course, tileall help to add color. Tile is not just for the backsplash anymore. It'sbeing installed on walls and all the way to the ceiling these days for a fresh, new look. Adding texture or color with tile is a great option for those of us who love neutral kitchens but want to create more visual interest.
If you already have a very functional kitchen, you may need some supporting rooms. People are carving out space from large, underused rooms or adding extensions to create rooms. Some of the most popular requests include:
• The Pantry Closet.A super organized closet that will keep the kitchen looking so much cleaner, especially if you have an open-concept house and the kitchen is always visible.Carve out an area to store dry goods and small appliances you sometimes use, keep school and office supplies on hand, or paper products that frequently run out. If you’ve got the space, go for the “Butler’s” Pantry, a purpose-built area to use a coffee machine, microwave or an additional sink alongside a bench-top for food preparation and a place to store dry goods. This helps keep those small appliances off the counters, reducing clutter.
• A Mudroom:A space to keep backpacks, coats, and outside shoes out of sight. With on-line shopping becoming the norm, the mudroom can also be a holding place for all those delivery packages until you can get to them.
• The Home Office Space:With more people working from home, creating office space has become one of the biggest requests we get. A home office can offer much needed quiet and privacyfor those Zoom meetings or calls when being in the middle of the kitchen won’t work. Often, this can be carved out of an unused bedroom or large closet.With more and more workers taking up remote positions in a post-COVID world, we see an even larger increase in demand for live/work-space renovation, whether that’s the transformation of current bedrooms and bonus spaces into offices or the addition of purpose-built home-office structures. It’s been all about creating functional spaces that can double for both live and work purposes, such as built-in furniture that can be hidden away or used for work and storage, or improving sound insulation in existing walls and areas to create a calm environment for work.
As we spend more time at home, we are learning new ways to maximize the uses of the space that we’re spending time in. Kitchens that are also workspaces, basements that becomeentertainment and recreational rooms. And lots ofother creative, out-of-the-box alternatives to space that pre-pandemic may have been underused such as, garages being transformed into home-gyms, or a rarely used guest bedroombecoming a gaming room or maybe a peaceful yoga/meditation sanctuary! Of course, there’s always in-home theaters, indoor bowling lanes, full home bars, indoor golf simulators, and climbing walls to consider. Transforming existing or new space into something functional and often with multi-purpose usage, is feasible, and what’s trending. The possibilities are endless.