Once a home’s showcase, the formal living room began disappearing from house plans years ago. According to a study by the National Association of Home Builders, by 2015 the living room may vanish from new homes. “When I was a kid we were never allowed in the living room. It was reserved for formal entertainment,” said Jerry Levine, president of the Silver Spring-based Levine Group Architects and Builders, and president of the Washington chapter of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry. “People are a lot more informal. And that informal lifestyle is not going away for a while.”
The living room is from an era when people dressed up for air travel and men wore suits to football games. As Americans shed suits for khakis and bluejeans, they also moved the hub of family activity to the kitchen and family rooms.
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“After the arrival of television, builders began building family rooms in addition to living rooms. As early as 1999, the Builder Practices Survey of the NAHB Research Center reported that one-third of the new homes in 1999 had no living room,” said Stephen Melman, director of Economic Services, Economics and Housing Policy for the National Association of Home Builders.
In the NAHB’s report, the New Home in 2015, the family room was the one area expected to increase in floor area. Among rooms and features most likely to be included in new homes in 2015, the great room, encompassing the kitchen, family room and living room, ranked at the top.
The great room emerged in the early 1990s, with two-story ceilings, huge open floor plans and a built-in desk in the kitchen.
“I’m getting a lot of requests to have the second story filled in to create an extra bedroom or second floor family room,” said Pete Hampel, owner of Moss Building and Design. “Twenty-foot ceilings look great when you buy it. But you can take the same footprint and use it more efficiently.”
In the NAHB’s 2007-08 Consumer Preferences Survey among households contemplating buying a new home or who had recently purchased a new home, 47 percent of the respondents reported that given the same amount of money, they would prefer a much larger family room and no living room over a family room and living room of equal size.
The evolution of kitchen design also pushed the living room into obscurity, Hampel said. “People spend more time in the kitchen,” he said and added the terms great room and family room are sometimes used interchangeably.
“Sometimes people don’t even have a name for the room. They just know they want to spend time in the kitchen and interact with people who are in other rooms.”
“I’m in my 40s and I remember before I graduated from high school my parents got rid of the living room, expanded the house and added a bigger kitchen and sunroom,” said architect Robert Braddock, owner of Red House Architects in Arlington. “Before, the kitchen was small and was in the back of the house. You cooked or the help cooked in the kitchen. You didn’t entertain in the kitchen. These days people spend a lot on appliances and have some really nice things in the kitchen. They want to show off their kitchens.”
Still, some people believe a living room has value. “People are guided by what they want or what they think the next person wants,” said Braddock, who has designed many bungalows in the Arlington area. “So they keep the living room whether or not they use it. That makes me wonder if it will ever evolve away.”
Perhaps like fashion, the disappearing living room could be a trend, and return in another cycle, Levine said. “But I think this country has gone informal and the old-fashioned formal living room might be gone for good.”
interiors,decorating,remodeling,real estate
