My kitchen rules

The key to house design, setting price and making a sale

At this time of year, we typically have friends and relatives gathered around at our place.

And I am always interested to observe where our guests, and we spend, most of our time awake whilst at home.

In short, the kitchen area and family/tv room gets the lion share.

This reminded me of a study we completed a few years back for a home builder client who engaged us to find out where residents actually spent their waking hours in their home.

This work involved a survey of 100 family households - each holding two working adults and at least one child living at home - in Sydney, Melbourne and SEQld.  The survey period covered a typical week.  Most households surveyed spent, on average, about six hours – 360 minutes - awake in the house each day, including the weekends.

The results of this survey are as follows:

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Some observations

Obviously, some areas of the typical family home are no longer needed.  The classic examples being the formal living and dining rooms.

Other areas, whilst having little waking time use over the typical week, are still important.  These include a study, yard, shed and garage.

It is interesting given the trend towards fast, pre-prepared meals – so the kitchen is increasingly acting as a food assembly area rather than a place where many actually ‘cook’ – that the kitchen still rules.

My opinion here is it is where everyone congregates which is important rather than the kitchen’s traditional functionality. 

Other recent research by us – this time questioning potential buyers after they had visited a home display village – found that one of the first things a home buyer does when looking to a new home design is to check out where their family and friends can gather and if that space/s will work for their tribe. 

This area, often by default in most houses, is the kitchen space, followed by the family room and/or balcony-porch. 

For mine, a home that has these three spaces in a continuous, free flowing expanse more often than not comes up trumps.