Function-Driven Interior Design

Lesson Info

Rethink Your Space

I love this idea and I was in a conference about a year ago let's see yeah, about a year ago in april in berlin and there was ah speaker there who studies trends of all sorts not just product trends but living trans and was really introducing this idea of rethinking how you use your space and I got really really excited about the whole concept of uh, knowing that I was also thinking about moving to a new home, thinking about the ideas of why do we fit ourselves in these little boxes or sets of rules just because that's the way everybody else has always done it like, for example, why do you have to have a master bedroom in the house if you have three bedrooms in the house, why couldn't you potentially use all three of those at some different moments in your life depending on how they function what's in them? Andi I just got really excited thinking about that I thought, well, if if one of the rooms in our home my husband wants a tv but sometimes I want to be able to go to sleep without t...

he tv there couldn't we have another get a room that's not the guest room but that's just one of the bedrooms of the house that was also available for us to use right cause many of us are are just relegating ourselves too a small percentage of our house on a regular basis, and we're not thinking about what we would really like the other rooms and spaces to do for us and how they could support us in a different way. So just thought it would be fun to spend some time looking at it, thinking about re thinking how you could potentially use some of the spaces you have, and then we're gonna have some time in this segment to go out and look att some of the other problems spaces that people have submitted, and we can help those people rethink their spaces too. So let's think about this idea of really even changing the way we think altogether so most the time is just a practice. I have it that we have to get ourselves into of not going just to what we know, but thinking about the possibility or asking are just asking ourselves questions, questioning why we do the things we do do I have my bedroom this way? Because it really works for me? Or do I have in my bedroom this way? Because this is just how it's always been or how my parents bedroom was or how you know the house, the people who lived here before, when I came to buy the house, they had it set up this way. But some of the other spaces that we can start thinking about and we've picked on that old dining room a lot this weekend and I happen to love dining room so it's not that I'm against them it's just a great example of a space that a lot of people aren't necessarily really maximizing the use of in their own home. Also formal living rooms for a lot of people have become a new space is now I happen to love both of these because I love to entertain formally I'm a good southern girl I like to use the good china and have people over and really use these spaces, but there's so many people who don't live this way and who have more casual existences and they happen to have these rooms because they're supposed to or because they were in the architecture that they purchased but they don't really have a need for them. So I want to get you to just start questioning what spaces you have in your house and how you could use them differently. So people are starting to really wise up to this idea and using all of their space in their home and making it function for their lifestyle, but I think sometimes they also can feel like they have to keep it a secret like they're a little embarrassed if their mom came over and realized that they had turned the dining room into the billy the game room, like j k oh's dad did one time after he didn't need a guest bedroom anymore, you know, they think, oh, uh, I'm going to go ahead and turn the dining room into this or a guest room into some other function, but it's not really something that they feel like is what they're supposed to be doing so it's a little it's, a little uncomfortable for them, and they're like, I'm not sure the professionals would do it this way. I'm not sure that my family would approve, but it is exactly what I think we all should be doing because we have a live limited amount of square feet, even if it's a large, limited amount there's still a boundary to the space that we have and why not me, every single square inch of it work for us in the most functional way possible. That goes back to the first day when we were assessing our life stage, our lifestyle and the layout all together to make it livable for us. So thinking creatively, what could you do with those extra spaces if you've always wanted to be an artist and have a studio to paint in, but you think you don't have room when in fact, there's? Rooms in your home that you don't even go into or that they, you know, are rarely used to a lot of times were telling ourselves we can't do something when we actually could do it. And how would you even reconfigure your home to function for you and your lifestyle? So another example that some people I know have done and it's not always a good idea, and we'll talk about that and a little bit to wine it's not a great idea sometimes, but a lot of people find that's flip flopping. Their living room in their dining room actually works better for them. So you know, just something like that simple, uh, swapping of spaces to reconfigure your home might be something that makes it work better for you may be the size of the space for the layout really just functions better for the pieces that need to go in there. Uh, if you switch them, so I want you to start giving yourself permission to do things in a way that just fit you. So a lot of people think, oh, I could never do that that's not how that's supposed to be done, and really, you can do anything you want that works for you and your home, as long as you're hitting those list of needs with the the function, the activities, the organization and all of those things that support your lifestyle than you certainly can do it. You don't have to have any certain rooms in your house if you don't really use them, and certainly not because the way that it's always been that way or it's, really, your house and your lifestyle, and so I think you don't have to explain or make excuses for why you want a certain kind of room in your space, and I really love to get people to open their minds to this way of thinking, so not letting others or outdated ideas or things that just is really aren't of interest to you dictate how you use your home. Now there are a few words of caution, is I was just a leading to a moment ago don't forget that the idea of being different just for the sake of being different can really cost things to have go awry with this sort of thinking. So if I get you so excited that you're just thinking, oh, this is so much fun, I'm just gonna move everything around in my house, you can really undermine the function, so don't just start moving rooms around to be weird and creative because you're one of those people that loves toe, you know, move the furniture around all the time. If it's really working for you, sure, go for it, but just make sure that you don't throw out as we say the the baby with the bathwater don't get rid of the list of functional items just because you're having fun, moving things around or thinking differently remember it is still very much about function, and then we can always make it beautiful afterwards, but make sure the spaces really function for you and you don't want to actually make things more difficult by your creep create extra work for you because you hadn't really thought things through. So this is where the example of switching the living room in the dining room sometimes it doesn't work for people because they think I'm gonna switch those spaces because it just makes more sense to me to have the dining room over there. But they weren't thinking about the fact that the kitchen is on the other side of what will now be the living room, and you have to walk through the living space with the food to get to the dining room so that's not very functional, right? But if they both are connected to the kitchen and either one has the same sort of access, but one allows for a larger living space in a smaller dining room, and that works for you, or vice versa. Then go right ahead and switch those up. It makes sense for you, but just just a little word of caution to make sure that you're sort of playing devil's advocate thinking of the pros and cons and making the decisions that make the most sense for you. So let's, look at a few rooms, these rooms that I think they all our rooms have designed, if not all, I'll let you know, but this next one in particular is and let's think about how we've created creatively thought of ways to use spaces. So this room wass and upstairs interior space, I suppose it was really a guest room, possibly, but it doesn't have any windows to the outside first of all, so it was a little bit tricky what it hadn't really almost no purpose for this family, and there were three kids bedrooms upstairs and so the sort of catch all space I thought about using it for a home office, but they weren't going up there, so what we decided is we would create a tv living rooms own upstairs for the three kids to have movies. It was a perfect room for media because there were no windows, so we didn't have to deal with any lighting, and so we had a fun time really creating. Basically a theatre room, but we use living room furniture there, so this is what worked for this family, they didn't need an extra bedroom that even don't even have a guest bedroom, and it could have easily been a guest bedroom, but they did have three kids spaces upstairs, and if they needed guest to say there, they couldn't let them stay in one of the kids spaces and let the kids bunk up together. So as opposed to going out, we need a guest room let's put that in this space, we really thought about what do we need? And I said, you know, we've only got one living real living space downstairs. I really think we need a kid hangout, living room, sort of space media room, tv zone and especially as they grow up, it can become almost like this teen kind of hang out. And then so that's what we decided to do, so no guest room, even though they had the square footage for it because they just didn't think it was really what they needed, and we made this really fun media space there's a big tv on the other side to swivel chairs and that that does happen to have a hide, a bed and it's so in case they needed it for, I guess space, it could certainly convert to that let's think about bedrooms I love this idea my my good friend is a designer in your new york city name named alex papa christina's came up with this idea of the snow oratory um and it's a real thing and there's a growing trend will see when we look at pinter's sports in just a minute there's a growing trend of people having separate his in her bedroom's because of snoring and people can't sleep and we're going to look at some statistics about that I think I think it's even on some of the slides maybe but decide he's several times created like a tiny little small library or additional space with a bid and it off of the master suite that's called the snow oratory in which I would love to have you as my husband definitely stores and if I could just go honey go to the snow oratory um I need to get a good night's sleep it would be amazing and it's funny but a lot of people truly deal with this I'm so thinking about creative ways to use other rooms for this creative ways to use the other bedroom combining your closet with the laundry room in the master which is what we were talking about I think I alluded to that yesterday but I certainly I'm talking about it on my block today that I'm going to do that very thing and bring a laundry space into the master bedroom so there's lots of ideas that have to do oh, there's much statistic you can't see it it's a minute's, but in twenty thirteen study showed that fifty nine percent of people said there partner snores s so even seeing and we're going to see right now on the pincher sport some ideas for duel master suites, which is interesting question is already coming up in the chat and our viewers are students are asking about this as well. So this is something we really want to get really into the whole idea of dressing rooms, etcetera is intriguing people and how you create that space a dressing room so like, for example, fairy ants, theory and desalvo I apologize if I keep getting that we're wrong, they're saying now they were thinking about turning a guest bedroom or a playroom into a dress. We're just having a really large close yes, so we're gonna look at some of those right now specifically that very thing s so here's the idea of actually just the closet come s o a master closet combining with a laundering this's exactly something that I'm going to do in my new home and I like this for a number of reasons for one I don't like where the laundry spaces in my new home and I really want to take that space into the kitchen but we were talking about this a little bit yesterday the closet is where you put on your clothes and where you take off your clothes and so being able to turn around and then put them into the laundry right there in that space fold him in that space and put him back in that space save so much time so much energy so many steps back and forth and it also clutters up the house for a lot of us we'd have to bring loads of laundry into another room a lot of times it's just a closet in the hallway like in my new house until I change it it's just a closet in the hallway so there's piles of dirty clothes on the floor while I'm doing laundry and it's just not that attractive so I love the idea and I've done this for many, many clients of bringing the laundry room and the closet together. What do you think about this idea? We were saying yesterday that in europe washing area zone laundries that tends to be in the kitchen yes doesn't make a lot of sense when you really think about it that's just the way most houses were built that but of course the difference I think in culture is that europeans and I think asian communities liketo hang their clothes outside to dry I think americans are much more comfortable using tumble drives and using internal drying that's true in a lot of these we do sometimes hang our clothes to drives americans but that doesn't necessarily have to be outside so in in my closet I intend to have an area like maybe where the to the right that those air cem drying little you see those shelves they have mesh and you can lay sweaters on them to dry which I do love those and I also want to have a sink and a rod hanging over the sink so you can hang things up better delicates and left them drip dry into the basin the saint basin so we do but I really do love those those shelves for the drying sweaters they're they're mesh and they could just lay on there when you have clothing a lot of us have clothing that's his life flat to dry and he's late on the shelf fold the arms into the sweater and it can dry right there on the shelf think it's a really smart idea this next picture is the idea this is laundry in a closet but also just thinking of potentially taking I think this is a good example of the size of a room that you might be dealing with if you made a dressing room or a closet out of an entire bedroom so it's really just a rectangular space and I know lots of people and have lots of clients who have done this particularly clients who had who are either empty nesters or at least one or two of their children have gone away to college and they don't really expect them to return to live with them full time and so they've decided to take one of the three extra bedrooms that maybe is adjacent to the master and turn it into a nice sizeable master closet ah and often that's when we put the laundry in that space is well, this even has like rolling laundry bins under here, which I think is into like hampers just interesting, but I think it's not a bad idea to taken entire room and turn it into a closet if you're really small on closet space and you have extra rooms that you're really not using that often what your thoughts are on resale then if you think you made this conversion and using your laundry room is your closet, I would think that be a benefit when you come to sell it depends on so if you're only in a two bedroom and you take one of the bedrooms for the closet probably not a good idea, but if you're you know potentially going from uh four bedroom house to a three bedroom house but having a really nice master closet it it could probably not hurt you that much in resells it just it depends on the scenario um certainly that bathroom's extra bathrooms add so much value so even I think you were saying that someone in your family turned a entire extra bedroom into wonderful master bathroom, and that can actually add a lot of value to your home because people want bathrooms, but closets are really important to people these days. Storage in general. So I do think if it's done well and it's not your only extra space than it can actually add some value. Yes, I was just thinking, if you're running thewalters and sewer whatnot, all the pipes to that closet space, you could easily convert it. If you're looking at that home and seeing that all the utilities for there would be really easy to thank all, turn this into an in law suite or I could make it into a little studio that's true, have a pitching, it could have any kind of bathroom because you would have the plumbing there, so I agree and has some cost would be getting the and most of the time you can go back to the condition it was before, you know someone could if they wanted to. We were just talking also jacket about a lot of things your parents uncovered that had been done to their home, so just because, you know, there's a fine line, but I certainly don't want people tio damage there.

Class Description

Lessons

1Why Function in Design is Important
2Examples of Strong Functional Spaces
3Web & Student Questions
4What do YOU Need for YOUR Home?
5Functional Space For Your Lifestyle
6Make Your Layout Work For You
7Assess Your Space
8How to Measure & Photograph Your Space
9Laying Out Your Space
10Space Planning: Kitchen
11Designing Your Home With Apps
1Industry Design Terms
2More Design Terms & Student Questions
3Biggest Layout Challenges: 1-5
4Biggest Layout Challenges: 6 - 10
5The Healthy House Approach
6Age Related Design
7Student Problem Space Submissions
8Multipurpose Spaces
9Getting Organized
1Useful Home: Working From Home
2Useful Home: Wired & Inspired
3Family Spaces, Small Spaces & Large Spaces
4Rethink Your Space
5Formal Dining Room Cross-Overs
6Viewer Room Challenges
7Framework for Creating a Budget
8Where to Splurge & Save
9DIY vs. Experts
10Pinterest Examples & Student Questions
11Maintenance Binder