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Focus on the home, and feeling content in our homes, has never been more pronounced. An impressive 96 percent of homeowners say it’s important to feel happy in their homes and that their homes enable them to feel comfortable and relaxed, according to a survey conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of Marvin. This sheds light on another important focus at the forefront: well-being. Creative solutions are emerging where the home and well-being converge—in everything from lifestyle to home design to the structure of living environments.
Well-being manifests itself in many ways within the home, from thoughtfully designed spaces for accessibility to residences meant to be forever homes for multiple generations. The following projects highlight creative solutions being embraced by homeowners to support well-being—whatever that means for them.
A Home for Aging in Place
This modern home in Minnesota balances an aging-in-place agenda with beautiful design. It’s built with maintenance-free materials, including brick, stone, and stucco, with Marvin Modern windows that promise low maintenance and high performance. The homeowners opted for double-pane glass to further improve thermal efficiency in the Minnesota climate.
The home’s living room, dining room, and kitchen comprise an expansive and open floor plan, with views of the lake the home resides on. And a stainless-steel elevator, with a style to match the modern aesthetic, enables easy access between floors if stairs ever become a challenge. The beauty of the lake and the verdant scenery deeply resonated with the homeowners. As they thought about aging in place and creating a home that would enable happier, healthier living over the coming years, an inspiring view of nature was a big part of their plan. The home faces west and offers a front-row seat to gorgeous lakefront sunsets every night.
The Multigenerational Home
The vision for this home in Denver was to encourage multigenerational families to reconnect with the natural world and to foster an environmentally friendly lifestyle. Features of the home include a large airy living room intended for multiple uses for all family members, openness between indoors and out to maximize natural light and fresh air, and a thoughtfully designed kitchen with warm decor.
In addition to these multigenerational elements, this house also comes complete with a boomer suite, which has its own bedroom, living space, kitchen, and private outdoor space accessible by a Marvin Ultimate Swinging French Door. The suite provides privacy while still encouraging a family to remain close and connected.
The Accessible Home
When envisioning the perfect home for their family, this home’s couple agreed that accessibility was paramount—access to the outdoors, and access for their daughters who have special needs and rely on wheelchairs to get around. Working with their architect, they designed a home adapted to fit their family’s lifestyle over the years, providing lifelong health and happiness.
The floor plan includes many long corridors with expansive windows that line three internal courtyards. These corridors were designed to be wheelchair accessible and, with ample views out the windows, intended to create what the architect calls “a contemplative experience, rather than just a distance to be traversed.”
Given that the home is so permeable to the outdoors, choice of windows was key. Equally important was placement of windows, such that the couple’s daughters, who spend a lot of time on their backs because they can’t sit up naturally, always have a view of nature when they look up.
A Home Designed for Self Care
This home in Atlanta was meticulously designed to inspire healthy living, a happy outlook, and a respite from the chaos of life. Physical, mental, and social well-being take a front seat and are realized in creative ways, from a kitchen engineered to inspire healthy eating and a no-excuses fitness space, to open areas that inspire conversation and family gatherings.
The living room offers opportunities to take in the view and connect with nature, thanks to floor-to-ceiling windows and an expansive Marvin Ultimate Bi-Fold door. Meanwhile, the office lets light fuel productivity with a unique configuration of floor-to-ceiling Modern Direct Glaze windows.
All of these homes reveal one evolving universal truth: well-being in the home is here to stay. There are countless ways that well-being can be interpreted, though patterns emerge across homes, with attention to ample light, fresh air, and inspiring views of nature. With more time spent in the home than ever before, we can’t wait to see how well-being continues to manifest in the home in creative ways.
This article originally appeared on the Inspired by Marvin blog.