Living / Dining: How to design a great space for your lifestyle - Episode 2 (Season 2)

Hello, this is episode two of season two and in today's episode I'm going to be sharing how to design your living and dining spaces so that you get it right. Welcome to get it right with the undercover architect. This is the podcast all about designing, building or renovating your home. I'm your host Emilia Lee, think of me as your secret ally. I am on a mission to help you create a home that makes your life better, whoever you're working with and whatever your dreams, your location or your budget. Together we'll uncover the nitty-gritty of how to get it right and how to create a home that works, feels great and that you feel great in. So join me now. Now the question that we're asking today is how do we make our living and our dining rooms great spaces. We spent a huge amount of time in our homes in these living and dining room spaces and in fact these spaces along with our kitchen, they probably get the prime use in our homes. So getting it right in these rooms can and will have a significant impact on how our home feels and functions overall. In this episode I'm going to take you through the four Fs that I introduced in the last episode and I'll be talking about how they relate to your living and dining area. I'm also going to share three design mistakes that can really hurt these rooms in how they feel and that many homeowners get wrong. And I'll be giving you three design tips to focus on so that you can get it right in your living and dining room. Now before I begin I wanted to share some information with you. It's actually some research. There was an interesting study that was released in 2013 in the States by a department at the University of California. Now for four years a group of researchers and scientists they observed and documented the home lives of 32 middle class dual income families living in LA. One of their studies actually tracked how these families lived in their homes and I'll pop an image up of what was called family 11's house plan on the block so that you can see how this study was done because it's a really fantastic way to see how a family home gets used. So the study looked at the location and movement of each person living in the home and family 11 had two adults and two children and each parent and child in the house at 10 minute intervals over two week day afternoons and evenings had their location marked with a little red dot. Now family 11's house is quite typical in size compared to the average size of a home in the States in 2013 it's roughly 242 square meters in total which similar to Australia's average house size at the time as well. The image that I'll put on the blog it shows only the lower floor which is around 92 square meters and upstairs were bedrooms and the research focused on activity during the hours that these families were awake henceway it mainly looked at the lower floor. Now the home itself has a formal dining and living space at the front and then you walk through to an open plan area at the rear which has got a kitchen and a meals area and then a family room right beside it and the family room has the TV in it and also the family computer so it's much like an open plan living dining kitchen area that you'll see in a lot of Australian homes as well and that we're often seeking to create when we renovate or build. And as I said the families movement is shown with little red dots now guess where all the red dots are the red dots are concentrated almost exclusively in the kitchen the meals and the family room and there's a few in the toilet as well you can see the random one going up the stairs and in the formal spaces but seriously when you have a look at this image and look at the concentration. They estimate that of the 92 square meters of the floor plan that only 37 square meters of it is used with any regularity so that's like 40% of the floor area and I find this really exciting because what this tells me and what I hope it tells you is this if you have a tight budget and you've also got a burning need and desire to build or to renovate your home. And you know that most of your waking hours in your home are going to be spent in only 40% of your floor area specifically around your living kitchen and dining area isn't that fantastic information to think about where you invest your energy your effort the space in your floor plan the allocation of your budget overall and your attention as you build and renovate your home because chances are when you get those spaces right the spaces that are in that 40%. Then that will have the most dramatic impact on your lifestyle overall. Now let's have a look at the four F's can you remember what they are they were functionality flexibility furnish ability and flow and remember we started with that bonus F of feel. I want you to start with feel I don't want you to take a moment not if you're driving or you're walking just take a moment to close your eyes and I want you to have a think about your newly built or newly renovated living and dining room spaces. Okay, these are the primary living areas in your home and I want you to visualize them as a finished space just take a moment to think about how they look and how you really want it to feel how do you want to feel in these spaces what's the first word that comes to mind for you. When I've done this exercise with other homeowners they'll say things like comfortable relaxing welcoming did you use those words or did you use something else to really great exercise to really nail down how you want your space to feel and how you want to feel in your space. Okay, so whatever those words are write them down somewhere and start to have a think about it for your living and your dining room spaces. Now next let's have a look at functionality. Okay, so what job does this space need to do what role does our living in our dining room spaces perform in our home. If we break it down into the room separately even though there might be one big open plan space would just sort of look at them independently of each other because they do slightly different jobs. Let's have a look at the living space first now it's primary job is really as a space for the whole family together. It's it's set apart from everywhere else in the home and whatever the weather or the occasion it's where your whole family can be in one room casually interacting and enjoying each other's company. It's going to have a bunch of secondary jobs as well though. So whilst it's for the whole family it also needs to be a relaxing space for just one or two of you to occupy and to still feel comfortable and not overwhelmed by the size or the feel of it. It can also have to perform as a party zone for much bigger groups. Okay, so large groups will gather and they need to feel comfortable as well. Of course there's TV watching and that may be for one or two or the whole family or even more and you can also need it as a reading space sitting and using digital devices such as iPads and sometimes it's also a space for a nice afternoon nap on a weekend. Now the demands on it of course can change over time as well and we'll get more into this as we start to talk flexibility in the next F. All right. So have a look at your living room. What jobs do you think yours will need to do and how will it need to function for your family. Now let's have a look at your dining room. Obviously it's for sitting around a table and eating a meal together. However, if your dining table and your dining room is like most that are in the homes that I visit and to be frank in mind as well, it will be used for a lot more. It's a home workspace. It's an art project space. It's a breakfast table. It's a dumping ground for paperwork and paraphernalia that piles up until somebody snaps and sorts it all out. And it's a makeshift office as well if you work from home. In some homes, the dining table will actually rarely be used for meals. Homeowners, they'll eat around their kitchen bench. They'll eat outside in their fresco area or they'll eat from their laps in front of television. The thing to remember with our climate in Australia is that we are really blessed with a lot of warm weather which makes dining outside and entertaining outside a great thing to do when we have the space for it. So our internal dining areas instead can be used for sharing meals in the cooler months and in the evenings when it's dark outside. They can be used for entertaining friends and family at those times as well. Now remember when we talk about functionality and we determine the types of jobs that these rooms and spaces need to perform, then we also start to think about the type of light and natural light that they'll need as well. And then that leads to thinking about orientation. Because we occupy our living spaces so much, it makes sense that they get the prime position in our homes and on our blocks of land as far as orientation goes. So in the southern hemisphere, that means on our northern orientation. Living rooms and spaces work best when we locate them on the northern edge of our home and particularly on that north easterly corner. When you put them on that north easter corner, it means that they can start getting sunlight from early on in the day right through to the middle of the day and later. Now if because of your site or the planning of your home, you need to locate them on a different orientation, then be sure to find ways that you can still bring northern light into them. And if your living rooms are going to end up being on the western side of your home, be sure to shield and protect them from hot afternoon sun because it'll heat them up and it'll make late afternoon use and evening use particularly uncomfortable especially in summer. If you haven't listened to them yet, head back to season one where I go through each orientation in a lot of detail. And you can see some great tips there about how to deal with different orientations for your home. Now let's have a look at the second F which is flexibility. When exploring how our living and dining rooms need to function, we've certainly uncovered how flexible they need to be as well. And given that we build our homes to last four years and that these rooms are going to be the most used in our home, you can see how they'll also need to flex and change as our families grow both in size and potentially in number. When you have little ones, this will generally be where they want to be right under your feet near you and playing with their toys and have everything that they need and want with them in that space. And when your kids are bigger, chances are that they'll be wanting a bit more space away from you. However, they'll still share the living room with you at certain times of the day and the week and sometimes they'll want to just completely take it over with their own friends. So you can see how much will be demanded of this space as it changes and responds to your needs over time. It's worth knowing that, investing in creating flexibility, it's seriously the best way to stretch your budget. We can get attached to this idea of creating different rooms for different functions, which in turn means that we usually need more money and more space to create them. We get so fixated on how we think things should be that we sometimes don't realise that we're compromising the design overall, ultimately because we don't have enough budget or space to make all of these spaces happen properly. I always encourage homeowners to think about how to get one space working really hard, alright, rather than trying to squeeze in several different spaces that don't. Now let's have a look at furnishability. The biggest thing that you can do to work out if a space in your home will work is to draw your furniture into it on your floor plan. I cannot tell you the number of times I've seen homeowners stuff this up. They move into their finished or their renovated homes and then that's when they start to work out where they're going to put their furniture and what they're going to put in different rooms and what they're going to store in cupboards. And for somebody who plans a lot, it may sound strange to you, but some people just don't even think that they can plan this ahead and really work this all out ahead of time. And what happens is you're making all of these choices about where you're going to have your rooms and your walls and the sizes of them and how they're going to work. And none of it's done with this intention of actually thinking about how you're going to live in it as a finished home. So I'll share some more detail about this when I talk about the three mistakes and the three design tips, okay, because I've got some really handy things to help you out in this in this area. Now the last F is flow. So flow in home design is about the movement to and around the room or space, okay. And as well as the physical connections, it's also looking at the visual connections as well. So for example, it could be handy to see outside where your kids are playing when you're sitting in your living space. This means that you can be having a moment to relax, very precious moment, or even having a cup of tea or a drink with a friend. And you can still feel like you can see the kids playing that you can get to them quickly should you need to. And that sense of safe surveillance really helps provide comfort in the use of your home. What other visual connections like this do you need from your living space and what ones don't you want? What do you want to cut off a view of from your living room space? Don't forget other sensors as well. For example, having kids bedrooms near the living and dining areas may not work if you watch TV late at night or you entertain and have dinner parties at home a lot. Think this through because as you do this with all of the rooms in your home, you'll start to see a pattern of connections that are really going to help you create a home that will function for you overall. Now let's have a look at the three mistakes that I see homeowners make with their living space. The first mistake is this. They don't think about the type of so far or setting arrangement that they want. And then they also don't think about how they're going to move in and out of that room and around the space. How do you see people sitting in your living room? Do you want an L-shaped modular sofa all-round or do you want two sofas say a three-seater and a two-seater sitting at right angles to each other or sofa sitting opposite each other? Do you want some single comfy chairs for example does hubby insist on having a lazy boy recliner or are you dreaming of a king modular sofa like a Jasper unit? All of these furniture choices will have a big impact on the space that you need and how it should be laid out and they'll also impact where windows and doors should be located as well. So drawing them to scale on a plan and seeing how you'll arrange them at the design stage that's fundamental for you getting it right. Another mistake that homeowners make will be in where they locate the television and there's really two parts to this mistake. So the TV, it's become our modern fireplace. It's the point where all furniture and focus in the living room is directed to. However, what it does is it puts a great big whopping mark on the living space and it's used because TV is a quite big whopping pieces of electrical gear these days. When the TV is the focal point of the room and furniture is arranged purely to maximize TV viewing pleasure, it can really make all the other living room functions less achievable. Listen, I'm not suggesting that you ignore the need for your living room to become fee for TV viewing, but as you're arranging furniture and windows and how people move through the living room space and around it, keep in mind how you'll support other activities besides TV viewing. The second part to this mistake is that because of the way the space is designed and how you arrive in it, your first view is of this TV, alright. So the TV area itself with all the other electrical gear, it can be a mess of cords and equipment and open cabinet doors and remotes and the list goes on. So what will happen is you arrive into your living space and that's the first thing that you see, it's pretty much going to kill that relaxing, welcoming feeling that you're seeking. Now, this takes me to the third main mistake that I see homeowners make with creating their living room and that's that they don't create sufficient storage or the right kind of storage. Now, as I said, there's all the electrical gear that we need to store in this room if we're using it for TV watching. But there'll also be toys if you've got little people in your house and blankets, for example, if you want to curl up on a sofa in winter, there might be books, magazines, TV remotes, other gear. So don't forget storage in this space, okay. Often we can create a living room and just put the TV unit in and then forget that we've got all of these other bits and pieces that we need to store as well. So how can you create it so that the other things that you keep in a living room, don't clutter the area and make it feel less relaxing. Now, let's talk about how you can get it right as you design your living space and I've got three main design tips for you. So design tip number one is that your living room works best when it's a destination in your home. So when I asked you, how did you want your living room to feel? Did you say words like relaxing and comfortable? So what do you think is going to happen if you then create your living room as a thoroughfare in your home? So you have to walk diagonally across it to get to other rooms and spaces in your house, for example, or you're walking past it or weaving through it to get to your dining room or to your kitchen or to other rooms in your house. Do you think that that movement through it and around it is going to help it feel like a relaxing place in your home? Not so much, hey. Making your living room an actual destination in your home means that it's the last stop as you move through your home before you possibly head outside and into the garden. And it's not a room that you pass through to get somewhere else in your house. And this seriously is one of the most fundamental things that you can do to make a living space feel relaxing and welcoming. If you do have to walk through this room at all, then make sure that there's enough room to circulate between the coffee table and the TV, because then you're not doing that awkward kind of dance of weaving around sofas and other furniture in the room. Now design tip number two is to try and determine what furniture you'll have in this room during your design phase. This may be easy because you're using items that you already own. Otherwise, if you plan to get a new sofa, go measure it. Look at how it will need to be arranged and what size room you'll need. You know, is if it's an L shape sofa, will it only be able to be L shape on one side? And so will that change how you're going to create your living space? You'll be able to design the space so much more confidently if you've thought about this upfront. If you can't choose yet, then just go and check some out. You'll get a feel for how you like living rooms being organised and arranged by just seeing them on showroom floors and how you think you want to have it in your home. Now design tip number three is to make your lounge or your sofa or the view to outside the first thing that you see as you arrive in your living space. Not your television, okay? So one of the biggest design wins that you can have when you're arranging a living room is that you make it the destination in your home. And then you make the layout of furniture such that the view that you get first is of the lounge or of the view outside. This can really change how the room feels, how relaxing it is and how relaxed you feel at getting to it. It's that shoulders drop. I'm home. Let's put our feet up moment. What about the dining space? Because I've talked a lot about the living room space and how to arrange the living room space and all of those types of things. So there are similar mistakes regarding the size and the movement through and around this space in your home. So taking those same tips, you know, make sure that you're getting the furniture figured out, making sure whatever else you want to put in that room that you know that upfront, sizing the room to make all of that work. But the biggest mistake that I see homeowners make is in physically where they actually put the dining room. What they'll do is they'll actually put their living room internal in the house and then they'll put their dining room against the outside wall and next door to the outdoor entertaining area. So what will happen is that you'll look across the room and you'll look from an indoor table to an outdoor table that's sitting immediately next to it just outside. So if you across one table to another one inside one outside which one will I use today? Do I sit inside or do I sit outside two metres away? Look I'm being cheeky, but perhaps you can see what I mean. As I mentioned earlier, we're very fortunate in Australia to have warm climates that allow us to sit and eat outside for a good part of the year. And then your dining rooms that are inside, they'll be used as interior spaces generally when it's too cold or it's the evening. Now there are some exceptions to this. I've done a couple of projects lately where owners didn't have a dedicated outdoor dining area. So for example, the renovated Queenslander project that's in the project diaries on the blog at the moment, they didn't have enough space for a deck as well as an indoor dining area. So what we did was we put the dining area on the outer edge with big sliding doors, a very narrow, veranda space so that they can then choose if the weather's lovely. They can peel back those doors and make it feel like an external space and then when it's cold or it's wet or it's dark and they don't want to have all the doors open, then they can close up those doors and it can feel like an indoor dining room as well. So my design tip for dining rooms is that you look, I generally recommend that you save the external edge of your home for your living space. Alright, if you have sufficient edge, sufficient width on your floor plan, then consider putting your living room and your kitchen next to that external edge. And we're going to be talking more about kitchens in a couple of episodes. I'll have some more tips for you there. So how have you gone? I hope you found this episode useful in thinking about how to design this living and dining space in your home, which has got to be one of the most used areas in your home. In the next episode, I'm going to be talking about the secondary living space. So this can have lots of names to delineate it from the main living space in our house and they can be things like family room, lounge, media, playroom, rumpus, multi-purpose room or NPR, snug or even library. Some of these names will certainly give clues to the different ways that family use this second living space in their home. However, with more and more families wanting to have this second living space in their house, and then also make sure that it's useful over the lifespan of them being in their home, of course flexibility is going to be key. But do you even need a second living space in your home? Perhaps you're noting, of course I do. But I'm going to suggest it may not be the case. And that's all in the next episode. So I'll see you there. Thank you so much for joining me here at Get It Right with Undercover Architect. If you're wanting to learn more about how to design a home, I've actually created a special five step E guide to get you started. It's free and you can get your copy now. It's called How To Design A Home, five simple steps to getting it right, and you can head to www.undercoverarchitect.com/homedesign. To get your free copy emailed straight to your inbox and I'll put that link in the show notes. If you've enjoyed listening to the podcast, please head to iTunes and subscribe. Because that way then you'll be the first to know about new episodes, and you'll also help others like you find out about this podcast. I'd really love it if you could leave a review to please, because it'll tell iTunes to share this podcast with other homeowners like you. And if you have friends or family planning their future homes, please let them know about the podcast as well. Everyone who is renovating or building can then get support in getting it right. This has been Amelia L.A. from Undercover Architect. Thank you for tuning in, and for letting me bear your secret ally. Looking forward to next time. Bye.