Home life has changed a great deal for all of us since March 2020; we went from spending less than half our time at home, to spending all our time there. But which rooms saw the biggest increase in use and therefore warrant a place at the top of the nation’s refurbishment list?
Hammonds Furniture and Kitchens has analysed and compared room usage data from before the pandemic and during the pandemic to see how our patterns of behaviour changed around the home.
According to pre-pandemic data we were spending an average of 13 hours, 54 minutes in the house whereas since March 2020 this has increased by 56% to an average of 21 hours and 37 minutes.
Rooms that saw the biggest increase of time spent in them were the kitchen (92% increase) and the living room (135% increase)2. Pre pandemic we only spent an average of 1 hour 47 minutes in the kitchen but this increased to 3 hours 25 minutes when we had to prepare almost every meal home.
With very little to do outside of the home, our time in the living room escalated from 2 hours 56 minutes to 6 hours 53 minutes too, with a 26% average increase in time watching TV.
We also spent more time in the bedroom, going from 8 hours 21 minutes to 10 hours 33 minutes. This correlates with an increase in time spent sleeping and resting; pre pandemic we spent an average of 7 hours 59 minutes sleeping and resting, whereas during lockdown this increased to 8 hours 34 minutes. If lockdown was one thing, it sure was tiring!
Of course, one of the biggest lifestyle changes was working from home, with the average person spending 6 hours 22 minutes doing this daily compared to just 13 minutes pre pandemic. However, where we’ve been working from has varied by household; some used the living room, some the kitchen, others the spare room. Data indicates that the favoured location for most home-workers was the living room.
The only location where time spent was roughly the same was the bathroom – we spent 1 minute less here during the year of COVID19.
Kirsty Oakes, Head of Product and Marketing from Hammonds said, “The COVID19 pandemic has thrown everyone’s house buying and renovation plans up in the air, with priorities changing in line with how home life has completely altered.
“We have spent a lot more time in our homes, so the focus needs to be on those shared living spaces that have played such a huge part of our daily lives.
“Kitchen and living spaces have never been so important and for those looking to renovate or redecorate these spaces the design needs to be carefully considered, in order to deliver the best possible results.”
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