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Forward-Looking Homeowners Want Rooms That Do Double Duty

Sometimes, the upstairs suite in Mike Stolarski’s home in North Augusta, S.C., is an office. Sometimes it’s a TV room, or an entertaining space for friends. Once a year, it’s a bedroom rented to golf fans in town for the nearby Masters Tournament. And in the future, it might become a game room, so there’s space for a pool table.

When building their 4,200-square-foot, three-bedroom home, Mr. Stolarski, and his wife, Tracy, kept their options open. The design drew inspiration from a charming, 1892 bed-and-breakfast in Charleston, S.C. But their home had to accommodate 21st-century lifestyles, so they asked the architect to include undesignated flex space equipped with ample square footage, electrical and plumbing for multiple uses now and in the future.

The Stolarskis—she’s 56 years old and he’s 47—own a medical-services company, Premier Shockwave, and moved into their $1.4 million home in January.

Home builders and designers are seeing a resurgence in demand for flexible-living spaces, also called bonus rooms or multipurpose rooms. In ultracompetitive real-estate markets, flex rooms that serve multiple purposes appeal to buyers looking to trade up for more space but unable to afford the extra square footage.

At the same time, younger home buyers see flex rooms as a way to customize their homes. And baby boomers, hoping to age in place, are asking for flex rooms that could someday be a main-floor master bedroom or a suite for a live-in health aide.

Forward-looking home designers now plan for all those stages.

“I ask clients how long they see themselves living in the house,” says Dan Sater, whose Bonita Springs, Fla., firm designed the Stolarskis’ home. “I talk to them about spaces that may have a changing purpose over time and create the provisions so they can easily be changed.” If a future function requires a wall to be removed, for instance, Mr. Sater ensures it isn’t a structural wall to begin with. Mr. Sater’s own home includes a multipurpose room that the family uses as a music room. Just in case, Mr. Sater installed enough wiring to turn it into a second home office or guest room if needed by aging parents.

Of the 20 top-selling floor plans on houseplans.com, 13 include bonus rooms, even though only 14% of all the plans on the overall site have designated bonus or flex rooms. Flex rooms are typically located off the entry hall, near the main living space and a bathroom, so they can easily morph into bedrooms down the road. Sometimes, a flex space is located above the garage to be used as a home theater, in-law suite or bunk room for grandchildren—or all of them in succession.

Leaving the label off the space helps with sales and resale, they say, because it lets buyers assign their own.

“When you name it ‘dining room,’ they will always see it as a dining room; they will never get it out of their mind,” says Mark Mathis, co-owner of House Plan Gallery, a home-design firm in Hattiesburg, Miss. “We have found that labeling this type of area as flex space on our floor plans best allows homeowners to decide how a particular space can be used to fit their specific family’s needs.

”In their Libertyville, Ill., home, Lisa Steinke and Matt Dannenfeldt wanted a dining room—just not all the time. When they bought their four-bedroom, 2,500-square-foot house for $750,000 in 2012, they were drawn to a library alcove off the main living area that could fit all of Ms. Steinke’s books but become a dining space if there were too many guests to fit in the eat-in kitchen.

Ms. Steinke, a 44-year-old novelist, and Mr. Dannenfeldt, 43, who owns a logistics company, also like another space in their home that the architect, Sarah Susanka, calls the “away room.” It’s a 9-by-12-foot ground-floor retreat off the main living area where the couple’s three children go to do homework. For occasional guests, the room has a built-in wall bed and small closet. In the powder room across the hall, a pocket door hides a shower.

“We all have spaces in our homes that are rarely used, such as a guest bedroom or formal dining room,” says Ms. Susanka, architect and author of a book series called “The Not So Big House.” “I love spaces that do double duty.”

The couple is planning to move back to California, Ms. Steinke’s home state, where their daughter wants to attend college. The family has listed their Libertyville home for $950,000, and marketing materials tout the home’s main-floor flex room and its potential for “maximizing room space through flexible options.”

Daryl Weil, 67, persuaded her husband, a 76-year-old former newspaper executive, to change their lifestyle and surroundings before they were too old to enjoy them. They chose to remain in Paradise Valley, Ariz., but traded their traditional-style home of 25 years for a light-filled, contemporary house—with rooms that are ready to change functions in the future.

Constructed by Scottsdale, Ariz.-based builder Cullum Homes, the Weil house is configured so that if either spouse became ill one day, he or she could move from the first-floor master bedroom to an upstairs guest room. A live-in caregiver would then move into what is currently Ms. Weil’s home office, which has a full bathroom. For now, the Weils live only with their two cats, Bobby and Pearl, but they made additional arrangements for aging at home, including an elevator and extra-wide doorways to accommodate a wheelchair. Including modifications, which added $400,000 to the cost, the couple paid $3 million to build the 4,400-square-foot, five-bedroom house and moved in late last year.

“I was thinking about getting older and the maladies one looks toward,” says Ms. Weil, a retired interior designer. “I have been forward-looking with the design.”

Cullum Homes project architect Lindsay Cullum Colwell says the firm is incorporating flex spaces in homes throughout the luxury development, called the Village at Mountain Shadows. An optional daylight basement, its website says, gives homeowners the flexibility “to add a game room, wine cellar, children’s play area, additional bedrooms, home gym or extra storage.”

Flexibility helps young homeowners who are unsure of a growing family’s needs. When Jacob and Rita Barker from Greenville, S.C., started looking at house plans in 2014, Ms. Barker was pregnant with their third child, James, and the couple didn’t know how the kids would want to room. Would sisters Madeline and Eliza share a bedroom? Would the children want a play room or play in their own rooms? Would their preferences change as they grew up?

The Barkers chose a floor plan by Home Patterns, a home-design firm in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. The owner, Brooks Ballard, says he includes a flex room in 80% of the plans he sells online. “A few years ago, people started to not want to pay for a formal living room, but builders still wanted to build the square footage,” he says. “The flex room is the room that has replaced the formal living room.” In the Barkers’ 3,100-square-foot, five-bedroom home, an upper-level playroom might someday turn into a bedroom if the girls want more privacy. Mr. Barker, a marketing strategist at Clemson University, and Ms. Barker, a 38-year-old environmental lawyer, use the ground-floor flex room as their master bedroom to be near their 15-year-old dog, Marley, who has trouble climbing the stairs. The original master bedroom upstairs is currently used as the girls’ dance studio in their $350,000 house, says Mr. Barker, 43.

“Especially for us as a young family, building a house for the first time, not really knowing where life was going to take us, flexibility was huge,” he says.

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