What does the future of housing design look like? Much like with homes today, trends will be tied to how people live. To predict where design is headed, we need to consider how lifestyles are changing, identify which needs have staying power, and anticipate how homes might evolve to meet them.
DAHLIN Group assembled the top trends for the next 50 years to mark the firm’s 50th anniversary, reflecting on decades of design work to determine what the future looks like. According to DAHLIN, these will be key trends:
- Wellness transitions from feature-based to built-in.
- Design will balance open and private space.
- AI becomes a collaborative design partner.
- Social connection created through site and community planning.
- Flexible homes that evolve for longevity.
BUILDER spoke with DAHLIN’s Darian Wagner, managing principal and senior architect, and Justin Julian, senior principal and senior architect, for their insight on why these trends will endure.
Fifty years is a long time to forecast residential design trends. How did you decide on these five trends, and what’s behind their staying power?
Wagner: A responsible 50-year view should not claim to know the exact layout, style, or construction method people will use. It should identify what future design must be able to do.
We chose these five (trends) because they all address an enduring human need: the ability to adapt as life changes, the need to make informed choices, physical and emotional wellbeing, belonging, and control over privacy and connection.
The common principle is agency: giving people more useful choices without requiring them to rebuild their lives or surroundings every time circumstances change.
The solutions to these needs will manifest in dramatically different ways over the next 50 years, but the needs themselves are unlikely to disappear.
How will wellness become more integrated?
Julian: Wellness will move deeper into the core decisions that shape everyday performance.
Daylight, window placement and performance, shading, material choices, air filtration, thermal zoning, and access to outdoor space will be considered together, rather than added as isolated features.
We also expect the idea of restorative space to become more distributed. A home does not need one wellness room if daylight, nature, movement, quiet, and thermal comfort are part of the daily path through the house. That makes wellness more relevant across housing types and price points.
The larger shift is from visible elements to a measurable and felt experience: cleaner air, better control, more useful daylight, a stronger relationship to the outdoors, and spaces that support both activity and retreat.
Design is already leaning away from fully open concept. How might this evolve?
Wagner: People want connection without constant exposure. The open plan still serves cooking, gathering, and shared family life extremely well, but a home now has to absorb more simultaneous activities. A call, homework, quiet conversation, and meal preparation may all happen at once.
People do not necessarily want more rooms; they want more control over how rooms relate.
We expect a broader shift from open plans to more nuanced plans with thresholds that create varying levels of connection and privacy, such as translucent screens, offset openings, large sliding panels, built-ins, and furniture-defined zones.
These allow a space to borrow light and belong to the larger home when open, then become visually or acoustically distinct when needed.
Over time, this can make floor plans less defined. A room may shift between office, study, guest space, care space, or retreat because its boundaries and connections were designed to change.
The goal is not maximum openness at every moment. It is to give the homeowner control over when spaces participate in the life of the home and when they recede.
How will the design partnership with AI evolve?
Wagner: AI can already help teams generate and compare more early visual directions, translate abstract language into discussable imagery, and communicate a concept before investing in a complete visualization package. It can also help align a client and design team when they’re using the same word to mean different things.
The important limitation is that human expertise remains vital in framing the challenge, recognizing what is plausible, selecting the direction that serves the client best, and turning an evocative image into architecture that functions.
AI can quickly generate ideas and multiply options, but the designer must still decide which options deserve to move forward and turn them into a workable, real plan.
The near-term model is therefore collaborative. AI broadens the field of possibilities, while human experts frame the question, curate the outputs, and carry the selected idea into a coherent, buildable design.
Homeowners are placing greater importance on opportunities for social connection. How will future site and community planning support this?
Julian: Instead of relying only on a large destination facility such as a clubhouse or pool area, communities can offer a network of smaller lawns, gardens, play and sport areas, outdoor work settings, cafes or neighborhood retail, and places to sit along daily routes.
Smaller scale can also make participation easier and more approachable. It’s easier to join one of a few seats than to become the only person in a room designed for dozens. The same amount of common area can create more opportunities for connection when it’s placed closer to where people live and is shaped for different levels of participation.
When social space is woven into day-to-day patterns, community becomes a series of low-pressure encounters that can grow into familiarity and belonging.
Why will flexibility be the key to longevity in design?
Julian: Flexibility supports longevity when it reduces the cost and disruption of change. A room that has no assigned use may be flexible on paper, but true adaptability comes from practical decisions: useful daylight, appropriate openings, accessible routes, service relationships, and connections to indoor and outdoor space.
Those decisions determine whether a garage bay can credibly become an office or gym, or whether an ADU can serve a renter, a returning child, or an aging parent at different points in time.
The benefit is not that one design and layout lasts forever. It’s designing change into the bones of the home so that the home can adapt for a wide variety of family configurations without becoming obsolete.
