Home styles change with shifts in societal desires

Jim Baker, president of B and G Drafting, will present the seminar "What's Hot and What's Not in Home Design" at the HBA Home & Remodeling Show. The seminar will be held at 7 p.m. Feb. 4 and 4 p.m. Feb. 5.

"It's not a new seminar," Baker said of the presentation. "We trace the popular movements in home design. Some trends come and go, and some last a lifetime." Baker added that he will not only explain past trends in residential design, but isolate and explain current ones.

Traffic patterns are one evolving area in home design, according to Baker. "From the 1940s on, a house pretty much had four rooms," he said. "In the late 1950s, formal living room areas and dining rooms were added.

"Then, in the 1970s, we began to see more homes with one large or great room. In the last few years, the houses are being redesigned so you don't have to walk across the living area to get to the dining, kitchen and bedroom areas."

One trend closely tied to both technological and societal influences is the split bedroom design, where the master bedroom of the parents is separated from kids' rooms. With the advent of baby monitors and other such equipment, parents feel they can sleep farther away from their children, eliminating the necessity of clustering the bedrooms together, Baker said.

Baker said that there is one option that nearly every home designer gets frequent requests for a computer room.

"In the last two or three years, we've begun to see the computer become part of the home design," he said. "The computer has become a component of home design today." In addition to computer rooms and home offices, people are also asking for computer nooks where they can easily locate a second computer.

The exterior appearance of the home is another area where design trends crop up. "We're seeing a lot of Old World-style looks, a combination of brick and stone," Baker said.

On the inside, "Visually, we don't build rectangular rooms with a door and a window anymore," Baker said. Popular visual effects include taller ceilings and interior arches.

There is one prominent design trend that is hot and sometimes pricey choices.

"People say housing has gotten so expensive, but there are really just many more options," he said. From practical to luxurious to downright eccentric, home builders have more options than ever.

"We see his-and-her sinks, his-and-her vanities, intercoms, front door cameras, security systems, lighting options ... there's no end to what you can put in," Baker said. "There's so many thing we can do today, and that has an influence on the cost of the house."

But just as trends come in, there are always a few that go by the wayside. First in the "what's not" column are interest rates. "Interest rates are up, and that's not very popular," Baker said. "Interest is up, but it's still a bargain for housing."

Societal changes give clues to what's on its way out, as well as what's in, and small closets are definitely out, Baker said. "The field of architecture is closely related to what's going on in society," he said. "We're affluent, we can buy things, which is why closets are rapidly approaching the size of the bedrooms of the 1970s. We have a saying that room-sized closets are in, closet-sized rooms are out."