Three home design trends builders and homeowners are talking about dominate current conversations in builder offices and remodel consultations: wet room bathrooms, connected smart home technology, and flexible living spaces that change use through the day. Each answers a different homeowner pressure, from aging in place to energy control to shrinking lot sizes, and each changes how a house gets framed, plumbed, and wired. The projects that handle these trends well plan for them early, because deciding late means expensive retrofits.
The three trends share one driver: homeowners are spending more time in their houses and expecting the spaces to do more. A bathroom that works as a daily spa and a fall-proof shower, a home that adjusts its own temperature and lighting, and a spare room that becomes an office by nine and a guest room by nine at night all answer the same demand for houses that work harder per square foot.
Smart Home Tech: From Thermostats to Voice Control
Smart home products keep expanding beyond the familiar connected thermostat. Ultra-customizable coffee makers, lighting scenes, motorized shades, locks, cameras, and speakers now connect to the internet and answer to a smartphone, tablet, or voice command. The common thread is control: homeowners want to adjust the house from anywhere and let automation run the routine parts of the day.
What Homeowners Actually Buy
The most popular category is still climate control, because it pays for itself. Smart thermostats learn occupancy schedules, cut runtime when nobody is home, and report energy use back to the owner. Security follows close behind, with door locks and cameras outselling every other connected device class in most markets.
- Smart thermostats and zone controllers
- Lighting controls and scenes
- Door locks, cameras, and video doorbells
- Kitchen appliances with app control
- Air quality and humidity sensors
Energy attitudes drive adoption. Survey data on what homeowners really think about clean energy shows buyers expect efficiency features as a baseline rather than a luxury, which is why even modest new homes ship with smart thermostats and connected panels.
Wiring is where smart homes succeed or fail. A handful of devices can run on Wi-Fi, but a whole-house system wants a structured network: ethernet drops to each room, a central equipment closet, and power at every planned device location. Builders who run the backbone during rough-in avoid the mesh repeaters and dead zones that plague retrofits, and the incremental cost is mostly labor, not hardware.
Interoperability is the second decision point. Homeowners who pick one ecosystem early avoid the frustration of apps that do not talk to each other, and builders who standardize on a single platform cut their own training and support time. Privacy matters too: buyers are asking where camera footage and voice recordings live, and local-first devices that do not require cloud accounts are a growing preference.
Wiring is where smart homes succeed or fail. A handful of devices can run on Wi-Fi, but a whole-house system wants a structured network: ethernet drops to each room, a central equipment closet, and power at every planned device location. Builders who run the backbone during rough-in avoid the mesh repeaters and dead zones that plague retrofits, and the incremental cost is mostly labor, not hardware.
A wet room integrates the shower and tub into one waterproofed space where everything is designed to get wet. The concept is old, but it is resurging because it sits at the intersection of accessibility and luxury: a curbless entry works for aging homeowners and still photographs like a spa.
Weighing the Trade-Offs
The upsides are real. Wet rooms make the most of small or awkward floor plans, create a spa-like feel with floor-to-ceiling tile, convert an existing bathroom when plumbing and waterproofing are done properly, and clean easily because every surface sheds water. The trade-offs are equally concrete:
| Factor | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| Small spaces | Makes the most of awkward layouts | Storage options shrink, everything must get wet |
| Spa feel | Floor-to-ceiling materials, open layout | Material quality drives the look and the cost |
| Cost | Upgrades an existing bathroom | Waterproofing and drainage drive up cost |
| Mold risk | Uniform surfaces clean easily | Small humid spaces are high risk without ventilation |
| Accessibility | Curbless entry suits aging in place | Needs slope and drainage planned from the start |
| Resale | Luxe appeal for many buyers | Can be a turnoff for buyers who prefer a traditional bath |
The Minimum Requirements
Three things are non-negotiable: proper drainage, complete waterproofing, and ventilation sized for the humidity load. Without all three, a wet room becomes a mold machine. Surface material should be practical, beautiful, and slip-resistant, because a wet floor is the one thing no design can excuse. Lighting circuits and fixture placement need a licensed professional, since water and electricity share the same room.
Waterproofing systems fall into two camps, and both work when detailed correctly. Sheet membranes such as bonded PVC liners go down fast and offer a predictable thickness, while liquid-applied membranes brush or trowel onto complex corners and niche details without seams. The critical zones are the same in either system: the floor-to-wall transition, the drain flange, and every pipe penetration, where most failures start.
The same three trends show up across the timber home world, where readers are weighing wet rooms, smart systems, and flexible space in their own projects, and the log home edition of this trends roundup tracks the same conversations.Flexible and Alternative Housing Layouts
The third trend is spatial rather than mechanical: rooms that do more than one job. Flex rooms switch between home office, guest bedroom, and gym in the same week. Accessory dwelling units put rental income or multigenerational housing on the same lot. A growing share of buyers choose smaller, better-planned footprints over square footage they will never use.
From Microapartments to Yurts
The small-space movement extends to the fringes of the market. Microapartments, yurts, and alternative housing are pushing builders to rethink minimum sizes and maximum flexibility, and the shared lesson is structural: movable partitions, generous storage, and efficient mechanical cores matter more than raw area.
Builders tracking microapartments, yurts, and alternative housing see the same pattern in mainstream homes: buyers want spaces that adapt, and the framing plan has to allow for it with wider joist spacing for open rooms and stub walls that can be finished later.
The structural details follow the floor plan. Rooms that change use need wider joist spans to keep columns out of the middle, thicker subfloors to control sound between a daytime office and a nighttime bedroom, and extra outlets at every wall. An accessory dwelling unit adds its own subsystem: a second electric meter or subpanel, a separate entrance, and often its own septic or sewer connection, all of which must be resolved with local zoning before the first shovel.
What These Trends Cost to Build
Every trend above carries a price tag, and the cost structure differs from traditional building. Wet rooms concentrate spending in waterproofing, tile, and drainage; smart homes spend on wiring, devices, and commissioning; flexible layouts spend on partitions and built-in storage rather than floor area.
Where the Budget Goes
Waterproofing a wet room runs well beyond standard bathroom finishes because the whole floor is a shower pan. Smart systems add modest per-device cost but need a solid network backbone and clean power. Flexible rooms save on square footage and spend on joinery and millwork, which trades construction cost for finish quality.
- Confirm drainage capacity and floor slope before demolition
- Apply a continuous waterproofing membrane to walls and floor
- Install slip-resistant surfaces with a consistent fall to the drain
- Run dedicated lighting circuits with GFCI protection
- Commission ventilation and verify the room dries within hours
Material prices set the floor under all of it. Lumber prices hold steady more often than they fall, and material cost trends still shape how builders price trend-driven remodels, so the budget conversation starts with the framing package.
Ballpark numbers help owners prioritize. A wet room conversion typically lands between one and a half and two times the cost of a conventional bath remodel of the same size, because the waterproofing, tile, and drainage work replaces what would have been a tub surround. Smart home packages run from a few hundred dollars for a starter thermostat kit to several percent of the build for whole-house automation. Flexible layouts usually cost less per square foot than fixed plans, since they trade raw area for fixtures and storage.
Where Kitchens Lead, Bathrooms Follow
Bathrooms borrow heavily from kitchen design, and the industry’s annual reports track the direction. The same finishes, cabinet styles, and lighting strategies that define new kitchens show up in wet rooms and primary baths, usually within a year or two.
Trends That Transfer Between Rooms
Large-format tile, integrated storage, warm wood tones, and task lighting all crossed over from kitchen design into bath design. The practical consequence for builders: product research, supplier relationships, and installation skills overlap, so a team that handles kitchens well adapts quickly to trend-forward baths.
The NKBA report reveals kitchen design trends for builders that transfer directly: pull-out storage, appliance garages, and layered lighting all have wet room equivalents.
The report’s data points confirm the direction: large-format tile keeps gaining share, cabinet hardware and pulls are trending toward mixed metals, and appliance integration, think panel-ready refrigerators and drawer microwaves, is a top request in both kitchens and baths. Builders who track these numbers can buy materials in the styles buyers will ask for next season instead of guessing.
The through-line in all three trends is that buyers reward homes that cost less to run and adapt to how they actually live. Green building insights from recent construction data point the same direction: efficiency features and flexible layouts hold value better than extra square footage, and the builders who deliver them stay busy when the market slows.