How to create your own interior lifestyle for 2021 

When the pandemic first hit in March 2020, people had to adjust to interior living fast. Now we’re a year in, and people haven’t just adjusted, they’ve evolved their spaces into a fully functional interior lifestyle! Good Space has received great inspiration from clients wanting to adapt their homes to more indoor living, even having to think a little outside-of-the-box! For instance, bedrooms have become offices, living rooms into gyms, and garages into sacred spaces just for you. Instead of seeing this as the “new normal”, we see it as the human capacity for adapting.

This has created interior design as we’ve never seen before, and we want to share these ideas with you so you can start planning your own creative space. We have worked on 2 interior design plans and are currently working on 1 plan that gives our clients new interior lifestyles. This includes: 

• a his and hers shared office and a sewing area just for him
• building a She-Shed for a mom to find a creative retreat in, 
• and a basement “Batcave” that a family can enjoy entertainment in. 

Read below to find out how we infused the new interior lifestyle for each of these projects. 

Sewing Room Delight 

Husband’s Sewing Room Plan

Do you have a room for your specific hobby? This is always important so you have a place to express yourself and grow your skills. We featured our client’s cozy Bungalow in an extensive case study a while back, but there was one room we didn’t feature. This is the husband’s brand new sewing room and their fun two workstation office.

In the initial Inform Phase, we planned out with them what they wanted the space to accomplish. The husband loved to sew but didn’t feel like he had the room to do it and they each wanted a workstation for their various projects. We then devised a Good Space Plan Online to put the sewing area in the home office while maintaining two work areas. We sourced them functional desks, storage, while reusing existing bookshelves and specified millwork design that could give him a place to sew in a small space. 

What this design tells us is no matter how small a space may be – there is always room to utilize. Take a look around the room you’re in right now. Are there nooks and corners that aren’t being used? This is the best way to create a hobby space for your new interior lifestyle. 

Part of interior design is ensuring that all the pieces of a space work together. Our blog post “hang your art” helps to aesthetically decorate an space.

She-Shed for a Busy Mom

Dwaina Sprague She Shed

Our founder Dwaina’s blog on her She-Shed was hugely popular! In it she talked about the need to create a shed in her backyard just for her. She said the “size of a space doesn’t matter, but the intention does”. For busy moms and partners who have a lot on their plate, finding a space to retreat and relax that’s just for them is important for your overall wellbeing. That’s where the She-Shed has become so revolutionary. 

“Size doesn’t matter but the intention does.” – Dwaina Sprague

Our new client echoes the feelings a lot of working moms share right now. Women still do most of the heavy lifting for domestic responsibilities. Plus, work is done primarily at home now (thanks Covid)! Our client needed a place to seek calm, relax, study and get some work done and that’s why we’re creating a personalized She-Shed.

She-Sheds are different for each woman, but they have this in common: 

• Warm and comfortable in design, 
• Highlights your hobby or specific things that spark joy,
• A place to reflect and dance or stretch or just sit on the floor and meditate.
• Always includes a potential for extra seating and that extra teacup to share the moments. 

We hope this new She-Shed will be ready by this summer. Until then we’re enjoying creating a space for our client that she can call her own. 

Entertainment Batcave for the Whole Family

The new interior lifestyle is not just about spaces for work and meditation, they’re also for fun! It’s important that we enjoy the time we spend indoors right now. What better way to do that then create an entertainment room for the whole family! 

Our client recently built a custom basement entertainment room, or “Batcave” as he calls it. In it we used a bold wall colour to give a sense of grounding. We sourced them a stunning and comfortable custom sectional from Van Gogh Designs, plus a media unit from Mobital Group. The entire renovation was done with the professional help of Lyle Construction. It’s now a room befitting for Bruce Wayne and an entertainment space that every family deserves. 

We can’t wait to see the movie marathons they binge while enjoying their new interior lifestyle in this room. 

How to create your own multifunctional space

With these great examples of functional design done differently, we bet you are eager to start to recreate your own space! Well, we are happy to start you in the right direction with a few tips. 

In the past, we wrote about how to create a sacred space. A sacred space is a small corner, room, or nook that is just for you to decompress after a long day. To create a sacred space you should: 

• Declutter your space,
• Giving purpose to your space,
• And add the right lighting and ambiance.

Creating a multifunctional space is not that different from creating a sacred space. The main difference is you want your multifunctional space to be able to serve more than one purpose. Your living room may need to become a homeschool for your kids, and your garage may need to be a place for you to exercise right now. 

Here are the top tips on how to create a multifunctional space for your interior lifestyle from Canadian Home Trends:

Invest in Storage

Store away any unnecessary furniture or clutter that doesn’t serve the interior lifestyle you’re trying to accomplish. The amount of space in your home is more important than ever. Our frequent partner and favourite professional organizer SOS My Space can give the best advice on how to organize and store clutter. 

Use Every Inch of your Space

There are ways to maximize the entire surface area of your homes. For example, corner desks are a great way to utilize often forgotten corners into office spaces. They look great too! 

Design it Up

Multifunctional spaces still need to feel homey. Just because we’re adding practicality to it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t let the fun of design go. Make sure to add personal touches to your multifunctional space that are unique to you. This will make using your new space more fun and invigorating. The last thing we want is to turn your bedroom into a cubicle. 

Creating a creative, multifunctional space is what makes an interior lifestyle more fun! As we mentioned before, instead of seeing this as the “new normal”, we see it as a way for us to adapt and come out of it stronger than before. 

Not New Normal, New Lifestyle 

We’ve learned a lot from this pandemic through the bad and the good. But the best thing we can take from it is our newfound respect for and the privilege of our homes. Our homes give us so much to look forward to. It’s now the place we work, Zoom, educate, dance, exercise, and play in. Our newfound appreciation for our homes will be part of our lifestyles forever. 

Good Space wants you to look around your homes and make mental note of the functions each room gives you. Ask yourself if the room is doing each function to the best of its ability. If not then, we are more than ready to help you create your own hobby space, multifunctional space, She-Shed, or entertainment room. Contact us now to share what you would like to accomplish this year with your home and create the multifunctional space you’ve always dreamt of. You yourself can improve your home for free. Just study our blog post. Let us know if you have any questions.

Contact us for a quote!