The Ozzie and Harriet house—designed for mom, dad and the kids—has been the gold standard for decades. Now builders are thinking outside that tried-and-true residential box.

Specialized designs are being created for singles, for seniors, for men and now, for women. Most housing experts agree that women have the dominant influence in the choice of housing, but not all houses are designed with women in mind.

“As builders and architects, one of our biggest challenges is to design the home as if women really matter,” said Anne Olson, owner of Olson Architecture Inc., in Niwot, Colo.

“Houses have been the same for so long that people don’t consider the ramifications of their designs. It makes sense to plan houses around the needs of women,” Olson said.

She believes that houses should be designed to reduce stress, which is “the common thread in women’s lives.”

Olson noted that a man’s blood pressure drops when he comes home. “But when the typical 25- to 45-year-old, college educated woman walks into her home, her blood pressure goes up three points. She’s about to start her second job.”

She suggested one way to reduce a woman’s stress is to create master baths that are like hotel spas. But stress can also be reduced by changing the way a home is laid out. Olson criticized traditional floor plans with the laundry room located immediately off the garage. “A woman walks in and is immediately reminded that the never-ending laundry has to be done. A better plan would be to have a mud room off the garage. Even in smaller homes, we have figured out ways to include a mud room.”

Furthermore, kitchens aren’t just about cooking; they are also about encouraging relationships, she told an audience at the International Builders Show in Orlando. “Relationships are at least as important as food. Kitchens are places for family interacting and should be designed for that purpose,” she said.

Olson suggested that a command center—a “typical planning desk on steroids,” she called it—should be included near the kitchen, but tucked away in an alcove.

“It can be messy, with stacks of bills, lists, reports and paperwork, but the mess is hidden,” she said. “There is room to spread out, with file storage, a computer and message center. The problem with the typical planning desk is that it becomes a dump zone, and since it is in the middle of the nook, it becomes an eyesore.”

The home theater is often cast as a place for the family to gather, but Olson had a different take.

“The reason why the remote is controlled by men is because women rarely sit still long enough to watch an entire program,” she said. “Women are amazing multi-taskers. Most women resent the dominance of the TV set in the home. The home theater is a guy’s thing.”

A better way to promote family togetherness is to gather in outdoor spaces. “If well designed, outdoor living areas can greatly expand the usable square footage of a home,” Olson said.

Outdoor “rooms” are increasingly important, said Mary Cook, a Chicago interior decorator. “Outdoor grilling is a big trend, even in colder climates.

“A built-in gas grill can be located just outside the kitchen to allow for year-round grilling,” she said.

Cook has put her ideas for women to work. Her firm, Mary Cook & Associates, decorated a woman’s retreat at a model house in Hawthorn Woods Country Club, a Toll Bros. Development in that northern suburb.

The space is a bonus room on the second floor over the garage. “On one side is her craft center, and on the other side is her personal valet, with a washer/dryer for her lingerie, a fridge and a cappuccino machine,” said Cook.

“It definitely is off limits to the rest of the family.”

There is a need for a woman-centric approach in residential design because “women make 80 percent of the decisions in the home,” said Linda Reimer, president of Design Basics, a home plan design service in Omaha and publisher of Her Home magazine.

“Women are concerned with how a house lives. The four major keys are entertaining, storage, de-stressing and flexibility,” she said.

“Flexible living spaces are especially important for blended families,” Reimer continued. “No one is designing for them. A flex room can be used for an in-law suite, a home school room, a music room or a den.

“One hot idea for de-stressing is the ‘drop zone,’ a place in the rear entry where you can leave your cell phone, your keys, your coat.”

For families with pets, she said, pet showers in mud rooms are becoming popular.

A focus group of three women made suggestions for redesigning one of Design Basic’s ranch houses into a more woman-friendly plan, Reimer said.

The changes included:

Though the footprint of the house remains basically the same, the changes increased the square footage from 1,996 to 2,598. Reimer said the proof the plan’s appeal lies in its increased sales.

Though a house’s floor plan is important to women, its outside appearance is as well, Olson said. “Women want to feel special. That doesn’t happen when all the houses on the block look the same,” she said.

“There are a million ways to provide uniqueness in elevations. Change brick to stone, switch a gable with a hip. Reconfigure the garage, play with a porch, change the detailing. You’ll get a totally different look.”

Despite the new emphasis on what women want, men aren’t being left out of residential design trends. Men apparently want niche spaces, too.

“Special rooms for him is another big trend and an untapped opportunity,” interior decorator Cook said. “These male rooms might include furnished garages, or maybe smoking rooms in the basement.

“Manufacturers are going after the male, including cupholders in vibrating chairs.”

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Houses should be designed:

- To reduce stress

- To facilitate entertaining

- To be flexible

- To promote family togetherness

- With “command centers”

- With unique exteriors

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Predicted trends: flex rooms, larger garages

Hot buttons and trends for housing construction this year and in the future emerged from the International Builders’ Show in Orlando.

Among them, according to Danielian Associates, an architectural and planning firm from Irvine, Calif.:

- An increased interest in master planned communities because of their greater product diversification and more lifestyle amenities. Infrastructure in master planned communities—including open space, parks, trails, activity director and community intranet—will assume greater importance.

- Neo-traditional design concepts, such as front porches, that will be integrated with conventional planning concepts.

- Varied lot widths for one-story plans to create variations in building heights and allow greater flexibility for garage positioning.

- Flex rooms to take the place of some third garage spaces. They will be used for a bedroom, den, home office, hobby room or family room.

- Teen rooms located on the second floor. Teen retreats are being built on second floors because teens don’t want to use the same family room as their parents.

- Larger garages to accommodate SUVs and storage needs.

- Media walls to accommodate big-screen TVs. Fireplaces are losing popularity as the focal point in family rooms.

- A growing popularity of “green” principles that incorporate energy-saving technologies and recyclable materials.

-- John Handley
(Copyright 2005 by the Chicago Tribune)