There is nothing more flexible than a loft apartment, giving you the opportunity to turn it into a home office, a dining room and an art studio, and still maintaining the privacy you deserve.
High ceilings in lofts give an endless supply of design options, as well as the potential to showcase architectural features that might have otherwise gone unnoticed within the building.
Lofts offer a variety of layouts
Living in a loft is an experience you step into rather than step into, with an open floor plan, exposed and industrial architectural features, large windows, and mainly, natural lighting. But lofts also present their own set of unique problems that require creative design solutions.
Open loft-type layouts in particular respond well to creative zoning – taking advantage of furniture, area rugs and decorative screens, to define living, dining and sleeping areas.
Another important element of every successful loft renovation is adapting it to reflect a sense of yourself; whether through family pictures, or any particular art collection and/or trophy of various travels and acquaintances, or house plants and souvenirs that tell about yourself, your interests and your past – such private accents shape your very own imaginary and lifestyle, becoming the main keynote of your interior in everything that employs the patterns of your unique life, and making your loft feel like a home.
They’re more affordable than studios
Lofts almost always have large open planning, which makes the living area very spacious and airy, not to mention welcoming. The trade-off, however, is privacy; if left unaddressed, this might become a small nuisance or even a major problem. To deal with any privacy issues, McLeod proposes that designers can use translucent sliding panels and doors to divide the larger space into sections or rooms that can be shut or opened up at will.
Using different textures, styles and colours to add warmth and visual interest, was also a great loft design idea. Large artworks or pieces of sculpture add character and personality to a loft, and are often souvenirs from interesting memories.
Lofts have generous spaces. To make optimum use of your loft’s generous width and height, consider using double-height rooms for kitchen, dining or bedroom zones; this can be achieved with mezzanines or half walls.
They’re more spacious than studios
One of the main advantages of living in a loft are the huge areas, these old warehouses have a lot of natural light that comes through the big windows, allowing you to have lots of space. Plants grow great in lofts because the sunlight will allow them to grow.
Nonetheless, an open floor area makes it difficult to respect other people’s privacy – being on show from all four points of the compass helps nobody to keep their mess out of view. By contrast, room dividers make a loft space much more conducive to private space-allocation.
Moreover, many lofts have a mezzanine, which can double as an office, reading area or storage area, creating a third floor, and making it a little more like your own little single-family home. Just note that every time you add another floor you’ll also be adding additional utility costs due to additional square footage, so yes, you’ll pay higher heating and air-conditioning bills.
They’re more convenient than studios
The ability of lofts to offer more square footage with separate rooms that serve different uses means greater freedom for residents to use space how they want: moving furniture to suit mood or the occasion and making the most of the space however they want. A loft is a clear cut space that is easily used as a home office if ever work needs to be done in peace or as a movie-watching zone without distraction from laundry baskets in the way. Although studio apartments are comparable in terms of overall comfort, given the choice, loft’s higher ceilings hint at the grandeur of the space, and allow more scope to create odd bits like a sculptural staircase or exposed brick wall that give the space character and charm.
One of the key problems with loft design is how to make clear functional demarcations in an open floor plan. You do this by using furniture to separate the areas of interest and by choosing colours for everything that flow one from another in a cohesive scheme.
Lofts could also be preferable to studio apartments if they’re located near to public transport and amenities, so I think they would be suitable for anyone who wants to live near pubs, shops or other shops.
