Working from Home While Learning from Home: 4 Floor Plan Tips that Help Parents and Kids Balance a Remote Lifestyle
Remote work and remote learning are reshaping what families need from their homes. For instance, the solution isn’t as simple as adding an extra home office. More and more, homeowners recognize they need an intermediary space between where they work (and where their kids study) and where they relax.
Realities like these are prompting homeowners to rethink how their floor plans flow, especially when building a custom home. Here are four tips to help you think through what your family will need so everyone can work and study from home in peace.
1. Treat your kids’ educational needs like your professional needs
It’s not just adults working more remotely. As schools expand home learning courses, kids receive more of their education online. The same goes for teens taking college classes.
Customize your home office so it becomes a space both you and your kids can use. For instance, optimize the acoustics so it supports video conferencing. While you’re on a call, your kids can focus on quiet work in a separate space, like a loft or flex room.
When you finish the call, your kids can use the office for eLearning, and you can move to a different room to refresh your headspace and focus. Alternatively, if you need to be in the office all day, create a space for your kids that’s just for learning, such as a pocket office.
2. Lean on flex rooms for organization
Flex and bonus rooms continue being popular in custom house plans. With the rise of online learning at home, it’s worth turning some of those flex rooms into bedrooms from the start. Here’s why.
Organization is key when it comes to working and studying from home. By adding closets to your flex rooms, you . This gives you dedicated space for organizing school and work materials so they don’t mix with household items. That helps everyone maintain healthy boundaries between their homelife and work or school.
Turning a flex or bonus room into a bedroom means you might need to add or enlarge a window, too. That’s also to everyone’s benefit. Since working and studying at home can lead to more time indoors, it’s important to make sure you and your kids are still getting natural light.
3. Consider a not-so-open floor plan
Speaking of healthy boundaries between homelife and work or school, it’s worth considering how your family will feel about an open-concept floor plan. The more often everyone is home, the more privacy they’ll naturally want. Not to mention, the more people online using video at once, the more everyone will need quiet areas.
Though open-concept floor plans remain popular, has emerged, too. By using elements such as partial walls, and even french or pocket doors, you define spaces (and keep sightlines open) without fully closing them off from each other.
4. Encourage activity with a drop zone
Plan your home’s layout and organization so it encourages everyone to get outside, especially the kids. Adding a drop zone with a locker system is a smart way to do this. Just like your kids need a dedicated space for school supplies, they also need a place for their sports and recreational gear.
Put a drop zone in the mudroom or garage entry where kids can quickly hang their jackets, bags, and uniforms. Likewise, add cubbies and baskets where they can drop their cleats, pads, and other equipment. Now every time your kids pass through the entry, they can grab what they need to have fun outside.
About Schumacher Homes
Schumacher Homes, based in Canton, Ohio, is America’s largest custom homebuilder, with operations in 32 markets in 14 states across the country. The National Housing Quality award winning company has built over 19,000 homes, customized to fit each family’s lifestyle, since its founding by Paul Schumacher in 1992. Schumacher Homes takes each customer’s inspiration and gives it a home. Each Schumacher Homes location includes a one-stop shopping design studio and model homes displaying the latest in architectural and product trends. Stop in today, be inspired and receive your no obligation price quote.