The End of Formal Living Rooms?
Remember the formal living room? For many homeowners it sat unused, plastic covering its sofas, love seats and chairs until company arrived. Then it became the centerpiece of the home.
Well, those days are becoming history. The traditional stand-alone living room is seeing its popularity take a nosedive.
Builders, both locally and nationally, agree that more buyers of new homes are requesting that their residences not include formal living rooms. Instead they are choosing open floor plans and great rooms that allow for more flexible layouts.
This trend has not gone unnoticed. Though there are not yet any statistics available, officials with the National Association of HomeBuilders, in their recent report What 21st Century Homebuyers Want, state that a growing number of new buyers are looking for alternatives to formal living rooms.
The good news for such buyers is that more area builders are offering floor plans that provide these alternatives.
Warrenville-based Neumann Homes is a good example. The builder’s Caton Ridge subdivsion in Plainfield offers 12 floor plans. Only two include a traditional stand-alone living room. The floor plans of these, and other Neumann properties that don’t have the traditional living room, include large central great rooms with open dinettes and kitchens. Many of the builder’s two-story designs feature an open great room to the rear of the home while combining the living and dining rooms to provide more flexible space toward the front of the home.
Larry Wisdom, Midwest regional president for Neumann Homes, says that the trend away from formal living rooms spreads across all price categories of new homes. In fact, he says, the trend actually started with entry-level buyers who were searching for a practical way to maximize their living space. By creating larger, more open great rooms in lieu of boxed-in standard living rooms buyers also created the illusion that their homes featured more living space than they actually did.
"It was a way to add more living space without having to suffer the cost of stepping up in home size," Wisdom said.
The trend now, though, is growing even among more expensive new homes. The reason? Families are spending more time together at home, and even the buyers of more expensive homes prefer to sacrifice living rooms to gain more flexible living space.
This trend is common among all types of new homebuyers, builders say. Everyone from first-time new homebuyers to empty nesters are choosing to build homes that don’t include stand-alone living rooms.
Sommer Jandula, sales manager with builder Ferris Homes, points to her company’s Liberty Grove subdivision in Libertyville as an example. The project, which is still under construction, includes 30 townhouses and 18 single-family homes. All of the floor plans for these homes include great rooms. None include living rooms.
Jandula says that a wide range of buyers have expressed interest in these homes: empty nesters, young professionals and everyone between. One of the main reasons for this is that each of these groups of buyers are entertaining more frequently at home, Jandula said.
Both buyers and builders doubt that this trend will ease. The great room, they say, is here to stay, while the formal living room may one day become extinct.
