Home offices make way for hobby rooms

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the most in-demand amenity was a stylish home office.

- SARAH RAPPAPORT

MANY homeowners are turning their home offices into multipurpose rooms.

Headlines proclaimed that commuting was a thing of the past and working from home was the future, while homeowners were building sheds in their yards as makeshift office spaces.

That future proved to be temporary. Five years later, major employers from the U.S. government to Wall Street banks have required their staff back at their desks, with some companies such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. even requiring employees to return to the office five days a week.

In the wake of these return-to-office | mandates, homeowners are finding new uses for their offices, converting spare rooms and outdoor additions into Pilates studios, golf simulator rooms, cigar lounges and even hangout spaces for their children.

“We built a garden room as an office during lockdown and have repurposed it as a teenage party room,” says Mark Lawson, partner at Buying Solution, a property-buying consulting firm in London and the English countryside.