How Design for Living in Place Can Make Your Life Easier
Photo: Victor Zastolskiy
No matter what stage of life you’re at, your home should be easy to live in. What that means exactly will be different for everyone. But ideally, your home should provide a safe and comfortable space where you can easily perform the necessary tasks required in your day-to-day life.
Of course, how you need your home to function will change as you move through life. But design for living in place can give you a home that will grow with you. Creating spaces that adapt to meet both the expected and unexpected challenges that life presents will offer the ability to remain in our homes for longer.
What is Living in Place?
Your home is probably the place where you feel safest and most comfortable. But it can sometimes conceal hazards that pose a danger as we transition through life. Living in place aims to overcome these barriers by creating supportive living environments that help people live independently as much as possible, in the communities they love.
Design for living in place takes both your current and future needs into consideration. The use of thoughtful space planning, mindful material and colour selections, and smart new technologies can make your home safer and more comfortable for all. Combining these practices with good design results in a home that is beautiful, inspiring, and easier to live in.
Living in Place Can Help You Prepare for Lifestyle Changes
Major lifestyle changes such as an addition to the family or retirement are usually something we can plan for. But we tend to make decisions based on our current needs rather than looking ahead. Design for living in place takes future changes into consideration and helps ensure that your home will work for you now as well as further down the road. Incorporating adaptable designs and features, such as wider hallways, larger rooms or smart home technology can save you from needing costly renovations in the future.
Be Ready for Unexpected Life Events
But what about life’s unexpected changes? If nothing else, 2020 has taught us that a lot of surprising things can happen. And for many of us, our homes were not ready to handle all the changes the pandemic brought about.
Do you feel productive working and/or learning at home full time? Could features such as a designated sanctuary space and more food storage make quarantine and sheltering-in-place easier? Would you still be able to function in your home if someone in your family were to experience a sudden injury or illness? Thoughtful design with living in place in mind can make the challenges life throws at us easier to live through.
Photo:Elnur
Will These Changes Become the New Normal?
Many employers are finding that remote work is just as successful as working in the office. As a result, we could see working at home become a more permanent reality. But our open-concept homes might not be as conducive to working at home as we might like.
And with the problems occurring at long term care facilities, more people are looking at multi-generational housing. Will homes that allow aging parents to live with their families while still having their own space become the norm? By designing spaces that easily adapt to accommodate different needs, dealing with change can become much easier.
Photo: Petar Chernaev, Getty Images
Lifestyle Considerations for Living in Place
When designing for living in place, my goal is to make life easier regardless of age or ability. No matter what stage of life you’re in, your home probably presents challenges that you work around on a regular basis. But thoughtful universal design creates homes that work better for everyone.
Features such as an accessible entryway with room to maneuver a stroller can benefit a young parent. That same feature could also be important later in life if you were to require a mobility aid. And a separate space for working from home could make you more productive now. But by designing with future needs in mind, we can create a space that easily adapts to house an elderly parent or caregiver if the need should arise.
Barrier free door design. Photo: DP Productions, Getty Images
How a Living in Place Professional Can Help
A living in place professional incorporates principles of universal design, aging-in-place, and health and wellness to make your home easier to live in. With features that improve safety, accessibility, and comfort they can ensure your home will be ready for all your current and future needs.
If you are building or renovating your forever home shouldn’t it be functional now as well as in the future? If you’re planning to sell, incorporating universal design features that make your home more user-friendly, safe, and inviting will increase market value and appeal to all types of homebuyers.
By considering wellness and future needs along with style and beauty, design for living in place creates homes that not only look good but also make you feel good too!