Living Rooms: Classy? Yes. Wanted? Not So Much.

Over the years we have seen housing trends such as pink tile in bathrooms, shag carpeting, olive green appliances, and many more.

While styles and trends come in and out popularity, it is important to keep on the curve.

Two-story single-family homes generally follow a basic floor plan. Formal living and dining rooms flanking the foyer. Family room, kitchen, and dinette area in the rear of the home, often open spaces for entertaining. Three to four bedrooms all on the second level, sometimes the master suite on the first floor of the home, but you all get the idea.

Now, one of those standards is not so standard any more. How many of you have a formal living room? That room right off of the entry in which you have a nice couch and chair, perhaps some ornate pieces of art, a piano, etc.

You know, that room that you never use, but vacuum every once in a while to make the lines in the carpet visible again. Yes, that room. Trends are moving homeowners away from that, and replacing it with something people will use.

We are seeing those formal living rooms replaced with home offices, reading rooms, and music rooms. More ambitious projects feature walls being taken down and the living room space becoming part of the more informal great room.

I believe it is a generational gap that we will see shorten as time moves on. For example, my grandparents have a formal living room. They barely use it, but would never even think to get rid of it or use the space as something else.

The generational difference exists between even my parents and me. When my parents built their current home 7 years ago, one requirement my mom had was it had to have a formal living room. But even now the thought has been tossed around to use the space more practically.

Personally, I wouldn’t need a formal living room; I’d use it as a home office, or not have the space at all.

We are seeing it in the new home business at Bennett Builders as well, people don’t need or want the formal living room, but want a space that they can use every day.

The formal living room is disappearing from American homes. National home magazines believe that the formal living room will be deleted from new home construction by 2014. That’s just around the corner.

What will go in its place? A room that people will use more often that once a year, or it will be removed completely to make way for more space from another room. Email me your thoughts on this! Do you utilize a formal living room more than once a year? What have you converted that space to make it more useable?

Also email me what you’d like me to write about! To preview my next topic: New Year! New Home? Tips for Prepping your Home for the Market!

Nolan.Andersky@Gmail.com