Homebuilding trends in 2022 emphasize the occupants' well-being, comfort, and safety. These trends also strive to improve the environment through sustainable and energy-efficient construction methods.

1. Redesigned Spaces for Working from Home

When the global pandemic hit, many employees left the office to work remotely, planning to return to the office at the end of the pandemic. However, almost two years later, many of us still work from home, a trend predicted to continue even after the pandemic subsides.

Consequently, a significant home building trend of 2022 includes creating aesthetically pleasing workspaces or offices within a home. A home office space should accommodate the essential functions and needs of the user, and enhance their productivity and comfort.

Six tips for optimizing your home office space include,

• Clear Separation from Personal Space: Designating a quiet work area separate from your personal space will ensure privacy as well as visual and physical separation, vital for your home’s tranquility.

• Functioning Windows: Windows provide natural lighting and ventilation, to energize and improve your productivity and well-being.

• Biophilic design: Plants can increase productivity by enhancing concentration, reducing stress levels, and improving indoor air quality.

• Office Colors: Warm, neutral closure will create a comfortable and soothing feel while soft whites can make the area appear more expansive.

• Strong Internet Connection: The design of the space must include a strong internet connection with the right light balance to ensure clear (unskewed) computer-based meetings.

• Convert to Conference Room: To accommodate in-person gatherings, install a modular flip-top conference table that can instantly convert your home office into a home conference room.

2. Stately Staircases

Homeowners today want staircases with size, shape, and detail that create a stunning first impression when guests enter their homes.

Today’s open-plan home designs provide the ideal opportunity to feature a stately staircase that can enhance the room’s openness and add architectural character around the room’s entrances and exits, whether modern, traditional, industrial, techy, or cozy.

Cantilever Floating Staircase

The design of a floating staircase minimizes or hides the supporting structure of the staircase, giving the impression of floating stairs by removing visual obstructions - a popular addition to open concept spaces.

3. Expanding Storage Solutions

Nearly two years of working, studying, and exercising at home have pushed the storage capacity of our homes to their limits, creating a home building trend in 2022 of expanding a home’s storage capacity. Three ideas for expanding storage in your home include:

Using Stair Wall for Storage

Storage space under stairs that can accommodate a closet with built-in shelves. The sturdy underside of a staircase provides an ideal place for hooks to hold garden supplies, sports equipment, and other bulky items.

Utilize Vertical Space

You can utilize any blank wall space in your home for storage, which will also tidy up and organize the area. However, homeowners shouldn't limit themselves to obvious rooms, like the kitchen and playrooms. Vertical storage lurks everywhere, from the side wall of the laundry room to the pegboard-clad interior wall of a backyard shed.

Small Backyard Storage Shed

Well-maintained storage sheds can provide extra space to store tools, garden equipment, bikes, and other items typically stored in a garage. Building a shed that matches your home’s exterior can add value to your property. Sometimes, however, storage space at home is simply not enough. The solution to this problem is to rent a self storage unit located close to your home, where you can keep those belongings that you don’t use on daily basis.

4. Green Roofs

Green roofs represent a current home building trend, with a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 1681 percent between 2021-2027.

Energy-efficient green roofs include a layer of vegetation planted over a waterproofing system installed on a flat or slightly–sloped rooftop. The plant material insulates the house, reducing energy needs for heating and cooling. Green roofs can limit heat transfer from a home's exterior to its interior by up to 72 percent. In the summer, a typical 2-3 story house with a green roof can lessen energy costs by 15-25 percent. Durable green roofs last longer (40 years) than conventional roofs (17 years) and improve overall air quality.

5. Using ICF Blocks as Lumber Prices Soar

In 2022, there will be a trend towards insulated concrete block (ICF) construction in response to soaring lumber prices due to massive wildfires, beetle infestations, Canadian tariffs, and consumer demand. In addition, ICFs meet many homeowner’s requirements for more energy-efficient, disaster-resistant, and durable structures than a similar wood-framed home.

Fox Blocks ICF - A Must-Have Building Trend for 2022

Increasing lumber prices and shortages significantly affect builders’ ability to meet schedules, and lead to longer completion times and cost overruns. Fortunately, Fox Blocks ICFs are the ideal method and material to sidestep the problem. Quick and easy to install, Fox Blocks meet today’s demands for energy-efficient, disaster-resistant, durable, quiet, and healthy homes — features that add to long-term savings and improved resale value.

Fox Blocks ICF high thermal mass walls (R-value of 23) with continuous insulation stop thermal bridges creating energy-efficient, moisture-resistant and healthy above and below-grade wall systems. The double layer of continuous insulation also contributes to excellent sound attenuation, substantially reducing outside noise infiltration.

Disaster-resistant Fox Blocks ICF protects a house from severe winds, destructive floods, and dangerous fires.

• Can withstand winds exceeding 200 mph and projectile debris flying over 100 mph.

• Ensures that moisture within a wall framing assembly will quickly dry out, stopping the growth of unhealthy and damaging mold.

• Won’t degrade when wet, and will maintain its initial shape and integrity during and after a flood.

• 6-inch Fox Blocks achieve an ASTM E119 fire rating of four hours (two times the two-hour requirement), and ASTM E84 reported values for flame speed below 25, and smoke development of less than 450.

• Significantly lessens moisture and termite damage.

• Ensures superior indoor environmental quality since they lack toxic VOCs, control moisture infiltration (limiting mold growth), and provide superior soundproofing.

6. Black Remains as Strong a Color Choice as Ever

Chic, elegant, always-in-style black looks excellent accented around your exterior windows or as a significant focal point, like the roofing tile. Versatile black also looks good in the interior of a home, and will open up a space, making it feel airier, larger, and more inviting.

You can also break up a monochromatic room with an unexpected pop of black, like a large piece of furniture or artwork. Framing a large picture window with black window treatments will elegantly draw the outside view into the space's interior.

7. 3D Printing a House

3D printing a house is a perfect solution to quickly constructing affordable and durable homes, which is vital in these times of housing shortages. Building a house by this method involves feeding data into a massive 3D printer. The printer then sprays ink (made of recycled construction materials) out of a nozzle and along a contour path in the shape of the home’s walls. Next, the printer’s nozzles and arms make multiple passes to reinforce the materials and smooth out the walls and structural components. Finally, the machine automatically assembles the home in layers along a grid - one part moves horizontally while another part moves vertically. The robotic arms can also install siding, windows, and fixtures onto the disposable house.

Printing of the home can occur in a matter of hours, either on location or in modular components inside a large factory.

2022 Home Building Trends

Three of the main driving forces affecting home building trends in 2022 are the COVID-19 pandemic, sustainability, and housing shortages. Fox Blocks ICFs can help you with all these challenges. Whether you need a quiet, safe, and healthy workspace in your home, a long-lasting shed that doubles as a safe room, or quick and easy construction that avoids the high cost of lumber. Contact Fox Blocks today to help you meet many of the trends and demands of home building in 2022.