7th LAHR: how homebound has shifted in an extraordinary year

This year, life as we know it has changed in ways we never could have imagined. All over the world, we’ve all spent more time at home, with 96 percent of people saying they stayed in their main home during lockdown or restrictive measures. For some, this has been difficult, but for many, home has proved to be the haven they needed – for relaxing, rebooting and feeling both safe and comfortable.

This is what the IKEA Life at Home Report 2020, launching on 17 September, reveals, as it shares its findings from extensive surveys and interviews with people from 37 different countries. The result it shows is clear: 78 percent of those surveyed who stayed in their main home during the restrictive period say that home during the pandemic has been a sanctuary.

New priorities for life at home
From all this time spent at home, new priorities have emerged. The desire to be closer to nature was already on the rise, but now it has a different urgency. We’re also making key priorities of time spent with family and friends, time for ourselves and spaces that support many different activities.

“The layout of homes today prevents any flexibility, with spaces dedicated to specific functions. Walls need to be broken down – our homes need to be more adaptive. The future will see fewer dedicated rooms, but they will cater for a wider range of activities,” Robert Thiemann, Founder of Frame.

Making space for life at home 
Also important for how people have experienced their homes, has been space. Only 43 percent living in a studio apartment or flat agreed that their home is designed in a way that suits how they want to live, compared with 76 percent of those living with four or more bedrooms. What’s more, almost half of people globally (47 percent) say that they would consider moving further from work to have a better home.

The Big Home Reboot  
The IKEA Life at Home Report 2020 focuses not only on what the events of this year have brought us, but on how they will inform the future – in terms of the way we live, and around our relationships with our homes.

Informed by its findings, IKEA sees us collectively reassessing how our emotional needs are being met by our homes, and has found evidence that people are already energetically making necessary changes to their spaces – whether big or small, practical or wellbeing-driven – in order to better get those needs met.

“2020 marks a reboot in our relationship with home. But this is just the beginning – in the future, we can also expect heavy scrutiny and investment in the way our homes are created. The homes of the future won’t simply be about functionality, they’ll also be designed as a vital tonic for our mental and physical wellbeing,” says Jenny Lee, Life at Home Communication Leader at Ingka Group (IKEA).

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Find out more about the effects of this year on our relationship with the spaces where we live; the shift in perspective 2020 has brought; and the ways we can reassess and reboot our relationships with home, in the IKEA Life at Home Report 2020 – The Big Home Reboot.

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• A Life at Home Report been released by IKEA every year since 2014 – and each has a different theme.
• In addition to its planned research for the Life at Home Report, IKEA carried out reactive research in response to the outbreak of COVID-19, virtually connecting with 20 households in Sweden, Italy, China & Hong Kong, Australia and the USA from April to July. This resulted in two Life at Home Pulse Reports to share the findings.
  • Report 1: In the messy middle
  • Report 2: Redefining a better life at home
• For the Life at Home Report 2020, IKEA conducted a global quantitative survey in 37 countries with 38,210 people, running online tasks, conducting in-depth desk research and connecting with experts.
• The Life at Home research continues to tell us that most people experience the feeling of home when their home meets five fundamental emotional needs: Privacy, Security, Comfort, Ownership and Belonging.