Being stuck at home during the pandemic has not been easy. With repeated lockdowns, it is unsurprising that Britons have looked for opportunities to transform their homes and maximise their living space.
Although some businesses and industries have been hit hard by covid-19, a large portion of Britons have disposable income to pay for renovations and refurbishments given their savings on travel, holidays, dining-out and birthdays. In fact, studies show the average family saved around £7,100 last year, which could easily be put towards a new kitchen or bathroom. The most popular renovations were as follows:
Home Offices
For the first few weeks of lockdown, breadwinners dealt with working on the kitchen table or dressing tables in their bedrooms. But after several months and repeat lockdowns, action needed to be taken and it wasn’t long before people started thinking about home offices.
A home office can be any room of course, whether it is a garage, living room or spare bedroom, but a dedicated office can be useful if you have the space - especially to separate the interference between home and work life. Garden office pods have become popular additions, around the £10,000 mark, with no planning permission required.
Elsewhere, you may look at sprucing up the basic laptop to get additional monitors, cabinets, headsets or an office wall unit to legitimise your home working.
Kitchens
Modernising the kitchen is always something we have wanted to do, and with disposable income and nowhere to go, the last year has been a perfect time to do this.
During covid-19, you may have found households completely starting from fresh or upgrading things like cabinets, white goods, hot and cold taps or kitchen islands. The breakfast bar has become a popular addition for many kitchens, especially if the kitchen or dining room table was being taken over by work or children doing homework.
Gyms
We all have a desire to stay fit and with awful British weather and gyms closed for months on end, investing in gym equipment became a no-brainer.
If you had a small room available it made sense to turn this into a gym during covid-19 lockdowns. At a basic level, you might want to invest in a large gym mat (around £25), a large gym mirror (around £150) and some free weights and bands to get you going (up to £250).
Will the gym still survive post-lockdown? This will be a survival of the fittest.
Either way, lockdown made a lot of households realise the potential in their homes and in doing so they may have added a lot of value - with a kitchen adding up to 8% to the overall value and a garden pod and gym adding an extra 5% together.