Home makeover during lockdown? Here's how Londoners have reorganised their homes
Home makeover during lockdown? Here's how Londoners have reorganised their homes
It’s not too late to improve your lot though, just take inspiration from the smug ones who got it right first time around and are heading into Lockdown 2 with a new flat, a well-designed study or a smart home-workout hack to get them to the end of the year, sanity more or less intact.
Moving house in lockdown
If there was anything less than ideal about our homes, the first lockdown certainly made it nigh on impossible to ignore.
So it was little surprise that within hours of the housing market reopening after an enforced seven-week lockdown the house hunters were out in force, with 2020 the summer of the great housing musical chairs.
Disaffected renters have been moving out of unsuitable house shares to find a home of their own, tempted by rent falls of up to 12 per cent, while working from home has boosted the savings of some lucky first-time buyers, helping them make it on to the first rung of the property ladder.
For university lecturer Bill, 37, an autoimmune condition meant he needed to shield so he temporarily moved out of the flat he was sharing in Hackney into a friend’s empty property.
“It was the first time I’ve lived alone and I really enjoyed having the space and freedom to cook, work and exercise when I wanted,” he says. “However, London prices are well out of my reach on a single salary so I’d never really thought about buying.
“When the first lockdown ended I realised I needed to make a permanent move into my own place as the coronavirus showed no sign of going away, so I looked into shared ownership and realised I could just about meet the requirements. Even better, it works out a little cheaper than renting alone.”
Bill says he is lucky that his parents were able to help with the deposit, which he estimates would have taken two years to save from scratch, and has bought a new two-bedroom flat in The Pomeroy in New Cross.
“I wish I’d thought of it sooner because for a long time I thought everything was so far beyond my reach there was no point,” he says.
The good news for people who hadn’t got their act together in time to move before Lockdown 2 is that this time around the housing market remains open, so there’s still scope for renters to make a quick exit if it all becomes too much. Buyers can also take advantage of the stamp duty holiday before it ends if they get an offer in soon.
Refresh your interiors
A “super-bold” refresh of the room her two daughters share was just the project Hampstead-based interior designer Anjoli Rakhit (@anj_with_roses on Instagram) needed to stop her entire household from going stir-crazy in Lockdown 2.
“One of the biggest things that got to me during the last lockdown was seeing the same old things in my house every day,” she says.
“My girls also share a room and things were starting to feel pretty cramped so I decided we needed a quick change.”
Anjoli's daughter Sienna, aged 8, in her new bedroom with Divine Savages wallpaper and Dowsing and Reynolds light
Anjoli changed the layout of the bedroom and added new light fixtures. She then found the statement touch that has transformed the room completely – Divine Savages Geometric Aviary wallpaper (£140 per roll).
“In the face of another lockdown I wanted to create a space that felt like an escape and considering it’s a kids’ room it was a good excuse to go wild. It satisfies my need for visual stimulation and I know it will certainly stick out in my girls memories when they think back to their childhood. We just want to hang out in there and get lost in the walls.”
Simple jobs such as wallpapering are fairly easy but if your DIY skills aren’t up to it, tradespeople are permitted to work in your home during this lockdown, so it’s not too late for an interior switch-up to brighten at least the end of our next at-home adventure.
Working from home
Illustrator Holly McCulloch, 36, was on maternity leave with her second child when the first lockdown began but she knew that even once she went back to work it was likely to be from home. “After the first lockdown it seemed like a no-brainer to build a studio and sooner rather than later,” says Holly.
She and her husband, Colin, a nurse, had initially considered building an extension on the house in Winchester they moved to from London but with the economic uncertainty of the pandemic they plumped for a smaller financial outlay.
They spent £7,000 turning a rotting garage in the garden into a stylish studio (pictured above) with the help of Paul Orlandi at Copperwood & Stone Ltd.
“I’m very happy I won’t have to work through Lockdown 2 with children running around and surrounded by mess. I have a dedicated workspace where I can really focus when I’m in there. It might be the best decision I made in the first lockdown.”
With less money at her disposal and living in a rental house share, marketing executive Natasha, 26, is planning to splash out on a Philips Hue colour-changing bulb (£49.99).
“They’re Bluetooth-enabled and you can set a timetable so that at 6pm a light change will signal the end of the working day and the start of the evening.”
Up your home workout game
Anyone who’s secured both space and privacy for their at-home workouts is the clear fitness winner as we head into Lockdown 2.
“The nicest room in our house to do yoga is our family bathroom,” says environmental consultant Harriet Parker, 36, who lives with her husband and two children in Finsbury Park. “It gets really nice morning light, it’s clean and uncluttered and it has underfloor heating so it’s quite like a yoga studio in a way.
“It’s got a lock on the door so no one can barge in to fetch their fairy princess crown while I’m in savasana,” she says.
Calming: yoga in the bathroom offers privacy — and underfloor heating
Without the luxury of a second bathroom to colonise, Juliet, a 28-year-old artist who lives in a warehouse conversion with five other people in north London, sets her alarm to ensure she’s up to exercise an hour before her housemates wake up.
“I’m not really an early bird but in the first lockdown I found getting some kind of exercise in before I started work was so essential for my mental health. There was no other time of day I could be sure that no one would walk in to the view of me doing embarrassing squats so I’ve started to love my early starts.
Buying a £65 yoga mat was the best investment of the first lockdown for some Londoners (@carolineinspired)
“I did splash out on a posh yoga mat from Sweaty Betty (the only place I could find one in stock) at the start of Lockdown 1. I thought £65 was wanton extravagance at the time but it turns out to have been the best purchase I made,” says Juliet.
“Unrolling it each morning and then putting it away again gives clear parameters to my workout and stops it feeling like I’m just sweating on to my living room carpet.”
