9 Tips for Designing a Family Home
Always, good design starts with truly understanding your needs, wants and aspirations. A busy family home needn’t result in a compromise of sophisticated and grown-up style if that’s what you love.
We know it’s almost impossible to maintain a magazine-worthy photographic home with a young family, but with clever design, there are ways you can get close to it. Your home should resonate with all who live there; so it’s important to ensure your personal treasures sit alongside your child’s creative masterpieces too.
We aim to ensure that when you enter your home, you immediately feel surrounded by things that please you. Our homes are the one place we can control our influences and we can enhance the feeling of well-being for the whole family by doing so in a considered way.
Architects and interior designers weave into their designs the needs of the household chefs, musicians, students, workers and entertainers and hopefully deliver an environment for those skills to excel, thrive and be happy.
There are many starting points to creating a functional yet beautiful family home and identifying a layout that works for everyone is probably as good a place as any. It’s only by learning about your family’s daily routine and the requirements for your space, flow and lifestyle, that architects and designers can do this well.
Understanding your family’s social habits leads to better provision through good design for everyday dining, entertaining and relaxation. Ensuring there are spaces for everyone to be together but equally for each individual to make their mark and retreat to, is also essential. Even the smallest, shared spaces can be zoned to meet the needs of the individual. From cosy snug areas to home theater seating, your spaces can be catered to each family need.
Also consider the lighting options that are available to your home. With so many different types of ceiling lights, you’ll be able to design your family home in a way that suits you and your family best.
9 Tips for Designing for Families
Keeping the number of different materials used to a refined selection and repeating key elements throughout the house provides a cohesive flow from one space to another and can improve the general feeling of tidiness.
Choosing materials that are natural and feel wonderful to the touch will help to create an environment that improves a sense of well-being.
Natural wood is a great choice for family homes. It’s warm to the touch, tactile & versatile, gains character over time, can be sustainably sourced and can be renewed after time to restore it to its previous glory.
The same goes for fabrics, natural is always best! Wool, cotton and linen are generally hard-wearing, tactile and easier to repurpose after use. If you’re not already thinking about sustainability, your children will be and making responsible choices for furnishing and decorating our homes is a lovely way to endorse this.
We try to future proof children’s rooms by choosing colours and materials that won’t define their age. Little children love contrast but are appreciative of subtle colours too. The primary-coloured, Plastic toys are soon replaced by desks and technology! Thinking about the many stages of your child’s development when designing their spaces, will save time and money in the long run.
Storage is key when it comes to accommodating different ages within a home and a place for everything will help to keep you sane during chaotic family moments.
We like to encourage, even small children, to be independent within a home safely and whenever possible. Simple things like hanging their own coats up and providing organised storage for their belongings, in general.
Even beautifully lit display cabinets in living spaces, can be designed to have closed elements for hiding games and jigsaw puzzles at the end of the day.
Children’s books and yours can be housed on the same bookshelf, assembling their books within their reach and grouped by colour tidies up their visual impact and makes putting them away a learning exercise in itself.
Header image: Strawberry Hill Home, Kindly
About the Author: Danielle Beeken
 | With over 20 years of experience in interior design, Danielle has developed an in-depth understanding of the true impact our living and working environments have on our wellbeing, creativity and positivity. Danielle brings this knowledge to all of the KINDLY projects with a focus on key elements; colours, material use, lighting and air quality. Having studied Holistic Interior Design and being an advocate for biophilic design, her aim is to connect the natural world with our clients home to produce the loveliest environment for them to spend time in. |