Flexibility is the key to making your home work

A well-functioning home is one that can easily adapt to the ever changing needs of life, and family life in particular.

At an exhibition recently we constructed a house where we showed how to maximise the potential in our homes. One of the areas was what we called the kids’ apartment, which was basically their bedrooms connecting to a den area, plus a study space where they could hang out with their friends or do homework. This is exactly what many of our clients are looking for. And with a little reconfiguration and reworking of under-used spaces it’s available in many homes.

Whether it’s creating room for children to do homework, to free up the kitchen or for older kids to hang out with their friends so you can reclaim your sittingroom, these kinds of reworks make the layout of the home more flexible – which is the key to making your home work well.

The goal is to use every inch of available space. Benches are a great way of maximising the space you have, whether it’s creating a dining space in a small kitchen or a reading area in a living space, this can be a really simple and attractive feature in a room and super functional too.

We had clients with a long narrow kitchen where they had to keep their dining table pushed up against the wall until they needed to eat. We turned a window into a small bay with a window seat to create a lovely dining area.

Choose furniture carefully. Replace a large coffee table with smaller side tables, which can easily be moved around depending on how you want to use the room. Try to avoid buying very specific pieces. This is especially tempting when decorating children’s rooms but over time you will find that your house becomes filled with redundant furniture items. Instead opt for pieces that could be used elsewhere in the house should you decide to update the room. For example, we had a book shelf that we used in our livingroom many years ago which is now filled with toys in my son’s bedroom.

Valuable storage

Just because you are tight on space doesn’t mean that you have to compromise on the things that will make a difference to you and your home. We have clients who had a very compact bedroom but wanted a dressing table. There was a small alcove at the end of the bed which was a foot deep, which we filled with a floating shelf with a lift-up top to reveal carefully sectioned off drawers to store make-up and jewellery. This very small addition provided valuable storage and created a perfect dressing table without taking any space from the room.

Other clients had a large landing which was one of the sunniest parts of the house. By building in a window seat and lining the walls either side of the window with book shelves we created a really lovely reading area, opening up an otherwise unused part of the house.

Denise O’Connor is an architect and design consultant