As an interior designer working during COVID, all sorts of new challenges have arisen with your client’s needs shifting dramatically throughout this past year. One of the demands interior designers are met with currently, is finding ways to accommodate the changing circumstances of this pandemic within the home. With so many kids remote learning from home and many of your clients working from home themselves, your job is to create functional spaces without the disruption or cost of substantial construction.
Keeping the peace within the home during a time when communal spaces are being used more than ever, and homeschooling shapes our workday, these design challenges must be met with ingenuity and with your client’s daily schedules in mind. With regard to home life, there are at least three main necessities that have been born out of the pandemic.
- Finding space where it doesn’t exist
- Creating a sanctuary
- Maintaining a healthy balance
Your task as a designer is to address these necessities and give your clients the gift of a well-designed space. Here are some (very) helpful spatial solutions for those challenges you’ve been met with.
Finding space where it otherwise doesn’t exist
Now more than ever, it’s so important to analyze every nook and cranny of the home to determine what works and what doesn’t work for space. With more family members (or roommates) using shared spaces, these rooms can quickly become inundated with people’s belongings, school and work tools, toys, clothing, projects, and just general clutter. Organizers and well-functioning closets are a great place to start. Consider installing sliding closet doors to replace front-opening swing doors in order to save more floor space and modernize the home’s aesthetic. The key is easy access to everything inside! Labeled bins and baskets keep individual belongings tidy and easy to find. Bring in a standing organizer drawer system for the kid’s school supplies. These will act as cubbies where they can put away their work, technology, and art supplies at the end of each activity to keep the communal space decluttered, organized, and open to everyone. When kids have free rein of a room or a space, it can quickly go from a family area to a kid zone, pushing the parents to their bedroom or other areas of the home. Some great organizational systems never hurt!
Creating a sanctuary within the home
Most parents are still working from home, meaning their daily distractions and lack of personal space to focus on work has dwindled significantly. Help your clients out by installing large-scale spatial dividers in common spaces to afford them that extra privacy they need to get through these turbulent times. Sliding glass wall dividers offer flexibility for the modern family, separating working parents from kids in one easy solution. Simply slide the Glass Wall Partitions to one side to reopen the space when needed! These require no major construction and come in a plethora of sizes, glass opacities, and individualized accessories to choose from. Simple, affordable, and quick-to-install spatial dividers are a homerun for the working parent.
Maintaining a healthy balance between work life and home life.
Most parents (aka your clients) are forgetting to address their own mental and physical health while trying to hold it all together during the COVID crisis. Without their own home sanctuary or office away from home, it can be tricky to create a home/work/health balance. Parents need a lot of R&R these days, so it’s up to you to provide the interior inspiration for them to relax in. Integrate a calming color palette into the home, keeping it homogenous with the wall paint, textiles, and decor throughout each room. This will help keep the interiors calm, and un-chaotic. Consider also bringing in plants and increasing the amount of available light in the home. Mirrors are great reflectors of light and can be placed strategically throughout darker spaces to bounce light around the room. Especially now as we head into the colder months and shorter days, being stuck indoors can become depressive. Plants are great at clearing the air, restoring the tranquility of an indoor environment, and providing the indoor/outdoor experience we naturally crave.
Give your clients the gift of peace and tranquility this fall with awesome space optimizing solutions offered at the sliding door Company. Hop online and check out our viewing catalog of sliding glass closet doors, Pocket Doors For Bathrooms, and stunning sliding barn doors, among others! Schedule a free initial consultation with one of our knowledgeable experts to get started on your exciting project today. With home delivery and online ordering, it’s never been easier to create a space out of nothing for your wonderful clients.