We all lead busy lives and home should be the place where you can sit back, relax and unwind. However long maintenance lists can get in the way of this, so what if there was a way to reduce that list and spend more time enjoying your home. When building a new home you have the unique opportunity to choose, from the overall layout of the home, to catering for your aesthetic preferences. Many people pay close attention to the functionality and feel of their home, planning the layout to suit their lifestyle needs, but don’t always consider the longer term liveability and maintenance of the home.

Your home should be a place you can relax and enjoy, however many of us don’t have the luxury of employing maintenance, cleaners and gardeners to maintain our homes while we relax. Therefore it is important to consider your lifestyle and whether simplifying or decreasing your home’s maintenance is something which appeals to you.

By considering low maintenance design and materials it is possible to reduce the time and cost associated with upkeep, giving you the freedom to do more of what you love. Therefore, it’s extremely important when planning your new home to think long term, the right choices during design may reap significant cost and time saving benefits.

What is meant by low maintenance:

All homes require maintenance to ensure they perform correctly, low maintenance design and materials are about limiting the time and expense required by these activities to a level that is suitable to you and your lifestyle.

The design of your home will play an important role in the reduction of maintenance. Simplifying design elements, ensuring adequate storage space, and reducing elements that require frequent cleaning, wiping, or dusting can all aid in reducing the required maintenance. Therefore it is important to consider your lifestyle during your design, ensuring you are maximising functionality and using intelligent design.

When it comes to construction materials, it’s important to ensure that the annual maintenance required, and overall life expectancy of the product aligns with your lifestyle. A higher maintenance dark cedar weatherboard may lose its appeal with its expensive staining process being required every few years, versus a fibre cement weatherboard that usually requires repainting between ten to fifteen years.

Talk to the GJ’s team about how you can make your new home low maintenance, allowing time to be spent enjoying your special place rather than on upkeep.