If 2019 is the year you plan to remodel or add onto your Portland, Oregon, home, you’ll want to know what’s trending in architecture and interior design. Here are some developments to watch for in 2019.
The popular open floor plan, which merges the kitchen, dining room, living room, and family room to encourage communication and connection, isn’t going away in 2019. But designers will be looking for ways to define the different areas of the room, to provide visual interest and to set apart spaces for a variety of functions. This can be accomplished by changing the floor levels, varying the colors and textures on walls and floors, grouping furniture, adding screens or tall pieces of furniture for separation, thoughtfully placing kitchen islands and peninsulas, and designing the lighting to highlight separate areas and tasks. Sliding walls, doors, and bookcases also can work to temporarily close off or open up areas.
Eco-friendly architecture will continue to grow—literally and figuratively. Architects are designing green roofs and adding rooftop gardens and green walls indoors. Those living features won’t show up everywhere, but other “green” designs will become ubiquitous, such as more and more energy-efficient heating and air conditioning, tighter insulation, appliances that require less energy, and recycled building materials.
New homes and remodels will be built with better wireless systems that allow full connectivity in all areas of the home, indoors and out. And connected appliances will become more common, such as ovens, dishwashers, and washing machines that can be controlled by voice command or from a mobile device miles away.
In part because of an environmentally aware desire to dial back sprawl and in part because big houses on big lots are so expensive, the trend toward small is growing. Also, infill development—filling unused gaps in cities—is popular with younger home buyers who are forsaking the suburbs because they want to be closer to the jobs, attractions, and public transportation of the city. This kind of development is challenging architects to design smarter homes for smaller spaces. And these Millennials want custom homes, not cookie-cutter boxes.
Millennials, it is said, want to be their own bosses, and they are driving the “gig economy,” where companies hire workers on a contract basis for specific jobs. Thanks to laptops and the internet, many of these people can work almost anywhere. But when the coffee shop “office” gets old, remote workers start to wish for a space at home where they can work comfortably. Home design will accommodate that home office, but now it can be found in a more flexible form than a converted spare bedroom—because smaller homes might not have a spare room. So the workspace could show up in a closet off the dining room, a corner of the master bedroom, or behind a partition in the family/living/dining room.
At the other end of the homeowner spectrum are the Baby Boomers who are experiencing a diminishing of their mobility and vision and who are thinking about building features into their homes that will make life easier. The concept of universal design creates homes that are accessible to people in wheelchairs or walkers and who have trouble turning knobs and seeing in low light … but such design is “universal” because it also makes a home eminently livable for people who have no physical limitations. New homes and remodels increasingly will include universal design—no-threshold showers, stepless entryways, wider doorways and halls, grab bars that do double duty as towel racks, extra lighting, etc.
In terms of dressing your living spaces, interior designers are always looking for what’s in and what’s going out. Here are a few insights from designers across the country.