Explanation of the hype

Fireplace/Wood Stove
a lot of work, little benefit.
If I want an open fire, I light one of the fire baskets. There's still a spot for the coffee pot or for the Muurikka or the Dutschoven.

T-solutions in the bathroom
We don’t have any, we find them built in. Depending on lifestyle, it can definitely make sense.

Gallery
It has already bothered me in show homes. Mini gallery that doesn’t work – except to transmit noise. For that, not even a proper wardrobe fits in the bedroom.
I only know one house where the gallery looked really good and that was really large >200 m² rather 300 m² and coherent. The gallery blended into the house and didn’t look like “the client wanted it, somehow it has to fit in.” A beautiful luxurious villa

A square floor plan does not fit our property, so the townhouse is out. I don’t necessarily find townhouses bad either. Honestly, it’s just the term "townhouse" that bothers me, it’s like "Economy First" on a plane. Sounds tacky.

We will have skylights, but only as an addition. Living/dining/kitchen has a lot of glass facing south and west, the skylight brings the morning sun from the east. The east side is at the same time also the side that needs protection from being overlooked (street side), so tall skylights are ideal. Everything else would just be permanently covered. The skylights will go up to the ceiling (no roller shutters) and will be fixed-glass. I find skylights much more sensible than the arrow slit windows, because rooms are simply wide, so the landscape format makes more sense.

Anthracite windows We won’t have those, but probably a shade of gray. Anthracite windows (generally the color anthracite) are too ubiquitous in current new builds for me. The worst are those who try to visually hide poor window symmetry with these wide colored stripes. These Batman masks I find awful. We don’t yet know which gray exactly, definitely a light one. I also want to see DB 703 in reality to see what to make of it.

T-wall solution Yes, it’s in and goes well with walk-in showers. We have a walk-in shower in our current rental and are done with it. It floods everything and is somehow cold because you’re not in a closed cabin where you are enveloped by steam. They then try to compensate with "Raindance" showers and the like by flushing three times as much water over the body as necessary. Not very smart. Our little one panics under it, the amount of water can really take your breath away.

The hypes are sometimes also very regional. Here in the North, with our "city villa" with anthracite windows, we are now rather the exception. I think there’s currently more of a hype towards extremely dark bricks, and that for the entire house. For us, it somehow has something of a mausoleum.

Otherwise, we fulfill quite a lot of the hypes:

- open kitchen: check, we have that now in the apartment and like it. The only problem is the smells and the noise from the hood. Here we have hope to get that under control with [Kontrollierte-Wohnraumlüftung] and Berbel.

- T-masonry: check, my wife wanted that. You have to know which battles you fight.

- floor-to-ceiling windows: check, we have 7 of them in the living-dining area. We would have liked more, but left it at 2 places to hang a TV on the wall. The room now has windows in all four cardinal directions, in 3 of them floor-to-ceiling, and is already nicely bright with the now even darker interior plaster.

- balconies: check, we needed the extension for the single-story design. We both found a simple flat roof on top ugly. Especially when you have a floor-to-ceiling window in the bedroom and then the tar paper in front of it, no. Whether we will really use it, no idea, but it loosens up the otherwise rather linear house a bit.

It will probably not surprise anyone, but we don’t have any of the hypes. Kitchen closed xtra, windows white, nothing floor-to-ceiling except terrace door, only 1 of those, instead back door to utility room. White windows. No balcony. No controlled residential ventilation. No roller shutters, no black clinker, no anthracite roof, but ruby red, no air-water heat pump, but gas, no dressing room. No T-bathroom, but walk-in shower, you’re not getting younger, no bathtub, no second bathroom, only guest WC, showers should be done at home, no window bands or slots. But, if the hype is hip, spotlights in ceilings and roof overhang with LED. Un-hip extras, on the other hand, are: utility sink in the utility room, ideal for water grinding, also for scrubbing potatoes. Really walkable attic with over 2.20 m standing height, fully covered with wood. Lit, illuminated, ventilated with Velux. Barrier-free house entrance, flagpole in the garden, 10 m high. White. Painted. K.

Anthracite windows and dark brickwork: We had it in the plan earlier, but luckily decided against it at the last moment. At the beginning, most people think it's nice, but after a while, it looks like a bunker. I think in a few years, people will look at this combination and think... oh my god, what were they building back then (like the shabby yellow or brown bricks used in the past).

Open kitchen: Hype or standard... many rental apartments have different solutions, we are simply fans of open kitchens. Especially great with kids and friends cooking, chatting, or playing.

Kitchen directly on the terrace: Our house is designed around that. Great in summer, short way to the fridge, parties outside with direct kitchen access, barbecuing is a dream... I would definitely plan it like that again. Our life always revolves around the kitchen-dining area.

Balconies: Is that a hype? I hardly know anyone who builds one, and if they do, it’s not really used.

Extra utility room on the upper floor: One of the best decisions in building the house... no carrying laundry down to the basement or to the ground floor, everything is washed where it originates. It could have been a bit bigger, but unfortunately, the budget was not unlimited.

Skylights: We have one in the hallway on the upper floor, I think it’s great. In retrospect, we regretted not planning more of them.

LED spots: We consciously decided against them. For us, they always create an office or hospital atmosphere (in the bathroom and hallway just about okay, but in the living room... absolutely horrible). I would have liked indirect ceiling lighting via LED strips, but it was too complicated/expensive to implement. My wife simply couldn’t be convinced and prefers normal ceiling lamps.

Floor-to-ceiling windows: Almost exclusively. In our opinion, they make the rooms much nicer. Yes, loss of parking space and visibility... we don’t care, it just looks great! And the kids especially love it.

Maybe one should consider what a hype is and what a trend is.

90% of things, upon closer inspection, are more customary than extraordinary. And some are simply due to technical innovations. Dark windows have existed for a long time, previously made of wood. Open kitchens are also nothing really new; they have surely existed for 30 or more years. Master bathrooms come from the USA and have been standard there for generations. "City villas" are nothing new; "coffee mill houses" have existed for over 100 years, but these usually had an attic converted into living space.

Frankly, I find it totally ridiculous to talk about hype in house construction; there may be trends in one direction or another. Often these are also influenced by legislation. But just as often because they come from other countries and mix with the local style.