What is zoned living?

Have you heard of ‘zoning’? For those of you who haven’t, zoning is a common term used to describe how we live and arrange our homes according to how we live.

Today, we use our homes for many different purposes all requiring different objects and using different spaces in the home.

Zoning allows you to map your home against these different purposes. Areas such as the kitchen are pretty straightforward while areas such as your living room can be used for multiple purposes and functions therefore need to be designed effectively.

Zoning and Open-plan living

Combining an open plan of living with zoning allows you to have the best of both worlds. For an open plan space to work well, it requires some division, be it visual or physical.

You can create physical zoning through walls, large doors and interconnected rooms. Doors allow you to zone out a room for privacy or open it up when required for maximum space. The floor plan below shows how the open-plan areas are complemented with smaller, more intimate areas which can be opened up or closed off with large doors.

If you are hesitant to create physical zones through the use of walls or rooms, you can achieve zoning through the use of recessed ceilings, floor coverings and the careful placement of furniture.

Benefits of zoned living

• Highly functional – Zoning allows you to create designated work or place spaces. If you run a business from home you can shut off from the rest of the house for privacy. Alternatively, if you have a young family, you can close your children’s playroom off at the end of the day leaving you with a clean, organised living area. When your children grow up they will have the space to entertain friends away from the family.
• Increased privacy – zoned living offers more privacy which is great for families with older children
• Easy to heat/ cool – You can heat or cool areas of the home that are being used as opposed to the whole room
• Easy to keep clean – You can close off rooms which means that rooms that aren’t being used frequently won’t require cleaning as often.