Today’s Trends In Home Design and Decorating

Game rooms have replaced kitchens as the center of the home, and the reason is that the family is now engaging in more casual repartee and interactions on a more frequent basis. The game room is the place where family watches television, does homework, hangs out, and plays games — together.

The popularity of the game room is driven by one sweeping tidal wave: sex. The sexual revolution ended with the birth of sexually transmitted diseases, from the debilitating to the fatal. Dating and marital behavior changed because fooling around was no longer consequence-free. Monogamy and marriage became trendier than ever, but the tools for marriage and family life were lacking, so divorce kicked in — and hasn’t stopped kicking since. But marriage and sex in marriage are still at all time highs — and serial marriages have begat blended families and blended extended families of all shapes and sizes.

It’s no wonder that home design has changed to accommodate the inhabitants! The living room was once the formal room for social discourse, and then the kitchen became the focal point of most homes, reflecting the retreat from formal families as we’d known them. One of the adjuncts to kitchens as the center of the home was family rooms and game rooms that extended off of the kitchens, and have now become the shifted focal point of most homes and families.