Create usable square footage instead of wasting it

While the living spaces in your home might have traditional purposes, there is nothing holding you back from how you want to use them.

Some of us work from home and need more than a cozy corner on the family room sofa to do our work. Or you may require a home gym for personal health. If the living spaces you need do not exist in your home, you can take non-essential square footage and repurpose it in creative ways.

Everyone’s house plan is a little different, but there are three living spaces that can

JENNIFER LEISCHER DESIGN & DÉCOR easily be transformed and used in nontraditional ways: the dining room, living room and a spare bedroom.

The living room has long been designated as a formal gathering space. It was a shrine – a room you looked at, but seldom used.

These days, it just doesn’t make sense to waste this square footage on a pretty vignette. Consider changing it to a game room with a pool table, a few big TV screens and a wet bar. Or an overflow family room with a huge TV where your family and friends congregate for football and movie nights.

Maybe you need to create extra space for your family or group of friends with similar interests. This might be a music room or home study where everyone can stretch out, with their instruments or classwork spread out and easily accessed.

The formal dining room is another space that may not add much value to your everyday living. Think about turning your dining room into a den with books lining the walls, a writing desk, a couple oversized comfy leather chairs and a good sound system. Now you have a place to just sit, read and breathe. A space for children is another option for the dining room as our “littles” aren’t very little for very long. Extra bedrooms are like bonus square footage. The most obvious answer is a home office or a great place for a treadmill or Peloton. But you could use this space as a generously sized walk-in closet or a perfect spot for your hobby. A craft room, a TV room, an art studio, a music room, a meditation room, a library, a rental for family or friends coming and going, a posh place for your pet, and so on.

If COVID taught us anything, it reinforced that our homes are truly our sanctuaries. Thinking outside the design box may feel uncomfortable, but when your family and friends are actually using these new spaces you created, you’ll wonder why you waited so long to change things up. For a more extensive version of this column, visit the Pioneer’s website at pionerpublishers.com.

Leischer is the owner of J. Designs Interior Design based in Clayton. Contact her with questions, comments and suggestions at jenna@j-designs.com.