If you love entertaining, you’ve probably thought about how well equipped — or not — your home is for hosting guests. Here are 10 home renovation ideas for entertaining to get your brain cells percolating about how you can renovate your home or include in your custom home design if you love to entertain!
1. Multiple Seating Areas and Furniture Pieces
The name of the game for an engaging party atmosphere is options. Options for guests to gather, sit, relax and chat. We recommend creating multiple seating areas that allow for all different types of conversations. Think about creating spaces for larger groups of people as well as smaller areas for intimate conversations. Make sure to create these both inside and outside of your home.
Also, think about mixing up the seating pieces. Create a variety with furniture pieces like love seats, couches, loungers and ottomans. Another necessity is including multiple small side tables for guests to place their drinks and snacks on.
Get extra fancy with tall top tables without seating so that guests can gather while standing.
2. Fire Pit or Fire Feature
Fire features are guaranteed to elevate a party atmosphere. If you really want to entertain guests outside – a fire feature is great to have regardless of the season. They’re perfect for warming guests on cold nights, providing ambiance, and of course for family marshmallow roasts.
There are many different ways to add a fire feature and it all depends on where you live. If you live in the city where open firepits are not allowed, you can add a propane firepit. If you’re lucky enough to live somewhere that you can have a wood-burning fire in your yard – just make sure you follow regulations and build it adequate space surrounding the perimeter of your firepit as well as plenty of clearance above it.
3. Indoor-Outdoor Connection
One of the most popular features we get asked about – and is recommended by the design pros – is a seamless connection between indoor and outdoor spaces. Since living in Canada around the holidays typically equates to low temperatures, you can create an indoor-outdoor feel with a protected area like a glassed-in or screened-in porch.
When the weather is warmer, the best way to achieve the indoor-outdoor connection is with walls of large retractable glass doors that open like an accordion. If entire walls aren’t available in your home, you can achieve a similar feel with windows of the same style. This is one of the most crowd-please home renovation ideas for entertaining!
4. Outdoor Gathering Areas
Outdoor grand room anybody? Your outdoor living space doesn’t have to stop at just a seating area – you can go all out and add in some countertops, a sink, BBQ grill, bar, fridge and dining area to create the full outdoor living space feel.
If you don’t want to create an extensive outdoor living area, comfortable outdoor furniture is guaranteed to draw guests outside. We recommend investing in high-quality outdoor furniture because guests will be far more inclined to hang out outdoors if the furniture is comfortable!
5. Home Bar
Whether it’s inside or outside, a home bar is a top feature to have. It’s a good idea to keep the home bar away from the kitchen to allow the chef space – a better spot for the bar is next to the large seating area you’ve provided for guests to gather.
6. Prep Sink on an Island End
The kitchen is often the busiest room in the house, especially when entertaining guests. A pro-design tip is to include a secondary sink on the island. If you really love to entertain, having two sinks will increase the efficiency of both food prep and clean up. It can allow multiple cooks to have their own sinks, and it can even give the kids their own sink for projects without crossing paths with the chef. You know kids – always surprising us with their projects.
7. Large Island With Seating
Have you ever noticed how people gravitate to the kitchen during parties? It’s no wonder why, it’s close to the food and drinks! It’s for this reason that the pros recommend a large kitchen island with lots of seating away from the cooking. A large island allows to adequate space to work as well as space for the buffet plates and fixings.
In some home designs – two kitchen islands are included. One can be used for prep and the second for the buffet.
8. Layered Lighting With Dimmers
Now that we’ve covered the seating and kitchen necessities, it’s time for an often overlooked aspect of home design – lighting. Lighting plays a big part in setting the mood for entertaining, we recommend layering your lighting by creating a mixing of ambient lighting, project lighting and accent lighting. Include dimmers so you can create the right ambiance.
9. Butler’s Pantry
The butler’s pantry has been getting a lot of attention from design pros lately because it helps keep clutter and messes out of the main kitchen. We recommend equipping your butler’s pantry with a sink, small appliances, dishwasher, work surfaces and storage like in the above photo.
We completed this butler’s pantry during a full home renovation in Peachland, BC.
10. Party Room
If space and budget aren’t a concern, then we recommend going for the ultimate host room – a dedicated space just for entertaining. The options are endless when it comes to designing and furnishing this room – you can include games like shuffleboard and air hockey, virtual reality baseball and golf… the only thing you must make sure of is that there is plenty of seating and small side tables, a bar and a large surface to serve food. The rest can be truly everything your heart desires. You’ll certainly have fun working with a builder on this room!
Want to see more of our projects? There are so many home renovation ideas for entertaining out there, and each homeowner is unique! Take a look at our portfolio and see what ideas begin to bubble! Make sure you follow us on Pinterest too!
If you want to learn more about Renovations, check out our guide
