No time in recent history has our home been the most significant place for all aspects of our life including work, entertainment, health, exercise, meals, safety and our true sanctuary. What renovations and products are trending now?

Kitchen renovations are wildly popular since NYS allowed us to start meeting with people. Incorporating multiple seating areas in an open kitchen / living space is taking center stage. Kitchens are more important than ever since they are replacing much of the restaurant entertainment everyone enjoys so much. Families will entertain more and want open spaces for separate seating - adults, teens, pre-teens. Some business owners who continue to conduct work from home want open areas to meet with clients. Many like the kitchen atmosphere for meeting since it makes a client feel at home.

Meeting Rooms. Family rooms are being remodeled to double as a meeting room for business purposes. Some have entertainment systems and others are using a simple layout for one on one interaction.

Home Office. People want a more inspiring home office since they are spending more time there. Sometimes they can incorporate a meeting room inside their office. Often times it is separate.

Outdoor Kitchens/Entertaining Areas - Extending our homes to the outdoors creates such a wonderful atmosphere for living and entertaining. Outdoor kitchens are being planned as well as outdoor bars, in-ground pools, fire pits and sitting areas.

Master Bath - Always popular, remodeling your master bath is uplifting! When a homeowner has space, they add a piece of furniture and/or private area for meditation.

Healthy / Green Home - When designing Indoor environments, there is more of a focus on clean water and air for a healthy home. More full home water filtration and air purification systems are being purchased as well as sanitizing stations. Solar panels are extremely popular even before we spent more time at home. Smart home systems that control temperature and watering help keep costs and energy use down.

Security: Who does not want to make their home more secure? Well designed home tech systems will include a top level surveillance and/or security system. We will talk about well designed home tech systems later as part of the amenities of a home entertainment/comfort/security system.

Home Theater: With the lock down forcing us to self - entertain, the home theater is inching up to the top 5 desired renovations. Pictured is a home theater in one of Bill Gates eight massive mansions. Imagine the bills and energy use for heating, air conditioning, landscaping, remodeling & furnishing eight mansions... While we all cannot afford multiple mansions, we can create our own entertainment kingdom in our home. Our Manhasset neighbor, Home Theater of Long Island, creates amazing high tech home theaters for homeowners. They also handle entire smart home design, installation and service. We will talk more about smart home tech systems below. Home Theatre of LI Website

Wine Cellars / Home Bars: Missing the restaurant / bar experience is driving the home bar/wine room addition. From small additions under stairs to an entire wine cellar/bar in the basement, we are getting very creative with our clients passions.

Home Tech Solutions: A well designed home tech solution incorporates security, entertainment, green and comfort components. With these goals at the top of a homeowner's list, it is important to have a well designed, easy to use, reliable system. Especially when you are spending more time at home. Setting up a network to include phones and appliances is convenient. The network system can control your inside and outside home security/surveillance, temperature, automatic lighting, music, TV, motorized window treatments, and outdoor functions too. Touchscreen, keypad or voice control options offer control based on your preference. You can preset your preferences for all the above for when you wake up, come home, evening relaxation. Acoustics are becoming more important as we work, study and play at home. You can come home and press one button or announce you are home and the lights in the kitchen turn on, the air conditioning kicks in, the shade can open and your favorite music plays. Keeping temperatures in check also saves energy and money. Check out this article: CYBER MANOR

Food Storage: With the reality that we can be cut off from food supply at a moments notice, families are looking for alternative storage options for emergencies, bad weather and more home entertaining in the future. Dry storage for canned and boxed goods can be stored fairly easily. When it comes to refrigerated and frozen food, walk-in refrigerators/freezers are now being specified in new builds as well as older homes. They can be placed in the basement, outside, pretty much anywhere you have space. Since they operate at a higher level of food safety, they are ideal for storing food long term. Walk-ins also hold large trays for entertaining, unlike the built-ins.

Specialty Appliances - From upgrading our cooking appliances and adding special techniques for great home meals to units like the LG Harvester, customers are looking for more options to improve their lifestyle. In the last several years, there have been many brands of counter top herbal growing units sold. This year, several appliance companies introduced full size indoor gardening units. LG has taken indoor gardening to a new level. - VERTICAL! Indoor vertical farming is gaining traction in urban areas. Great for people with no yards and also attractive for people who want fresh vegetables and herbs in the winter. Similar indoor garden units from Viking and Urban Cultivator are also competing for the indoor garden market. The LG Harvester is an indoor vegetable cultivator that uses light, temperature, and water controls to garden up to 24 seed packages of vegetables and herbs at the same time. The Harvester can even mimic the outdoor temperature changes that occur depending on the time of the day. Read More

Work-Out Rooms/Meditation/Yoga Rooms - With gyms and yoga studios closed and the promise from NYS to continue keeping them from operating, homeowners are installing home gyms as well as sanctuary rooms for yoga and peacefulness. Sometimes the yoga/meditation area is separate, some are built within the home gym and we are working on two to be included within the master bath.