Home Trends That Last: Five Ideas Worth Building Into a NYC Home

Most home trends are gone in a few years. A few stay because they answer something people want from a home whatever the fashion. When we first wrote this list, five ideas led the magazines: bringing the outdoors in, living outdoors, rooms with more than one use, sustainability, and maximalism. All five have lasted. What follows is each one stripped of its fashion and fitted to a New York City apartment or townhouse, where space, light and the building’s rules shape what you can do.

Daylight and green things

Designers call it biophilic design. In plain terms, people feel better in rooms with natural light and something growing. A long stretch spent indoors taught most of us that. In an apartment you cannot add windows, so the work is to let the light you have travel: fewer walls between the windows and the middle of the apartment, glass in interior doors, pale finishes that bounce light, and window treatments that clear the glass completely. Then give plants a real place, such as a deep sill or a shelf by the brightest window, instead of whatever floor is left.

Changing the windows themselves is a matter for the building, and in a historic district for the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which reviews most exterior changes to the front and rear facades.

An outdoor room

Where there is a garden, a terrace or a roof, treating it as a room pays back every warm month. It does not take an outdoor kitchen. A table, chairs, shade and a light make a small terrace usable; a townhouse garden can take a dining area and planting. The link to the inside matters as much as the furniture: a wide door and a level threshold turn the outside into part of the house. In an apartment building the terrace is governed by the building’s rules, so ask before you plan anything fixed.

Rooms that do two jobs

Kitchens became offices and classrooms, and the need for flexible space has stayed. In a city home there is seldom a spare room to assign, so one room has to change roles during the day. Building it in works better than buying furniture for it:

• A desk fitted inside a wall of cabinetry, with doors that close on it in the evening
• A guest room whose bed folds into built-in storage, leaving a study or a gym the rest of the year
• Pocket or sliding doors that divide one large room into two when needed
• Outlets, lighting and data points planned for both uses before the walls are closed

Using less energy and water

Sustainability lasted because it lowers bills as well as footprints. Solar panels are a decision for the whole building in an apartment house, but a renovation inside one apartment offers smaller, certain gains: efficient lighting throughout, a smart thermostat where the heating can be controlled from the apartment, well-sealed windows where the building permits replacing them, and efficient appliances and fixtures. Water is the easy one to measure. Toilets account for nearly 30 percent of an average home’s indoor water use, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and a model with its WaterSense label uses 1.28 gallons per flush or less against as much as 6 gallons for an old one (EPA).

Collected, not cluttered

Maximalism was the name for it: surrounding yourself with things you love, mixing textures, patterns and colors. Minimalism never goes away, and both have a point. The version that lasts is a home that shows what its owners care about and stores everything else. That is a carpentry question. Shelving sized for the books and objects you own, a wall unit that hides the television’s cables, and enough closed storage that the open shelves hold only what deserves to be seen.

What the five have in common

None of these is a look. Each is a way a home serves the people in it: light, air, flexibility, lower running costs, room for what matters to them. A trend with a real use behind it is safe to build in. A trend that is only a color or a shape belongs in the things you can move, which is the subject of our piece on using decor trends without dating your home.

For the work itself, see apartment renovation in NYC, townhouse renovation in NYC and home renovation in NYC. For built-ins, see custom storage and closets.

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