Our Homes Are Going to Look Very Different Post-Pandemic

Get ready for ‘Zoom rooms’ and decontamination zones in entryways

Illustration: Matt Williams

For many years, I happily worked from home in a kitchen counter setup that was ergonomically horrific but entirely my own. In March, my workspace was invaded; suddenly, people expected the kitchen to function as an actual kitchen — all day long. I could see (and hear) my husband’s office — formerly the dining room — from mine, and no one cared if I was on a call when they wanted to run the garbage disposal.

I’m far from alone in this new normal, and for many people, it won’t be temporary. A recent Gallup poll found that three in five workers who have been doing their jobs from home during the pandemic would prefer to continue to work remotely as much as possible, even when the economy reopens. If that’s the case, some things are going to have to change in the average American home: for instance, more flex rooms for offices or gyms, more outdoor space, and more storage for stocking up pantries and freezers.

“After this is over, we will all reflect on what we really, truly, need to live and be healthy and happy, and everything else will become extraneous real fast,” says Joe Allen, a professor of exposure science at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of the school’s Healthy Buildings program, who spent the first month of isolation working and teaching from his car because it was the quietest place he could find. (He’s now reluctantly transitioning one room to a home office.)

Finding more space in our homes need not, however, require more square footage. Not everyone wants to, or can, bust out of the city or town to flee to the countryside, despite what the rash of amateur live chicken hoarders would have us believe. Instead, says Boston real estate agent Ricardo Rodriguez, “real estate post-Covid is going to be all about flex space.” Two months ago, he says, agents would market a property very straightforwardly: two bedrooms, two bathrooms, that sort of thing. “Now,” he says, “we’re being asked to articulate even more clearly the options for the space. Could it be a study? Space for an office or a gym?” Outdoor access, previously a bonus amenity for urban dwellers, in particular, will become critical. “People who…