Atlanta Home Show reveals millennium home trends

The mantra for the millennium home might be "less is more, and there's more of it." The trend toward simplifying one's life and home has been building for the last decade. You don't need to keep every antique that was handed down to you. You've been admonished to cull out the unnecessary, clean the closets, strip down the comfort level, choose quality products and the style that befits your model of living.

And guess what? There's a whole lot more to choose from. Overchoice has come of age. Retro is in. Prarie style has made a comeback. Warm craftsman or cool minimalist? Classic colonial or country French? Tara or townhouse? In other words, the decisions you make for remodeling, redecorating or building a new home are tougher and more challenging. And rewarding with a little help from the experts at the Atlanta Home Show,which runs from March 25-28 at the Georgia World Congress Center.

The millennium home on display at the show is set up for attendees to walk around and observe the most modern features.

From streetside, the defining characteristics are color and form. The components of form are the roof, the walls, and the windows and these come in many colors and combinations of colors. Today, more quality roofing materials are available, because of synthetic shake, slate, cedar, and tile from vinyl, fiberglass, concrete and recycled steel (cars to studs) products. In addition to solving typical roof problems, steel roofing is lightweight, energy efficient, fireproof and insectproof and again recyclable. Walls have similar man-made material options for clapboard, beadboard, Victorian trimmings, board and batten siding as well as brick and stone veneers, and a higher grade stucco and stucco coatings.

An assortment of windows and doors provides a broad design choice combined with state-of-the-art insulation, energy efficiency and easy installation. Some have engineered wood, polyurethane or extended vinyl cores, some are aluminum or copper clad. And some are sheer art, like the Andersen art glass collection of designs by Frank Lloyd Wright on display in the feature house of the Atlanta Home Show.

Underneath the visible components another change has taken place. Houses are no longer only of stick construction, but also steel, polystyrene, concrete and other space-age products.

In today's home, the kitchen is where the action is. Today's kitchen is really a double or triple room, with living and dining built into the space as cabinets and counters. It's also a "Power Kitchen," outfitted with gleaming stainless steel commercial-type appliances imposing ranges wih six burners, super-quiet, anti-bacterial dishwashers, macho venting hoods, and four first-ever additions this year from Viking a revolutionary self-cleaning gas oven, the pot-filler faucet, a built-in wok and a wine cooler.

Color is in. Formerly all-white, the kitchen is taking on the characteristics of the great room. It has color, pattern, wood cabinetry, art, furniture, rugs, soft lighting, and sensuous texture. Granite is becoming the surface of choice for counters, along with limestone, slate and other stone as well as wood and laminates for the floor. Today's kitchen is an open invitation to a culinary adventure in an alluring social setting.

Today's bathroom is turning into a home spa. Square footage has increased each year and amenities abound from heated floors to 10-jet hydro-massage showers, from hand-painted and blown-glass basins to interior rock waterfalls, from private cedar saunas to whirlpools and tubs of every shape, size and color.

The merging of the outside environment and the interior homespace continues, thanks to better insulated windows and glass doors. Thus the increasing significance of the view the home garden. Gardening is said to be the biggest hobby in the world. Flowers, trees, plants, vines, buterflies, birds, stone walls, and paths, ponds and water fountains, herbs, fragrance, these are all parts of the natural world to incorporate into one's life.

The deck/patio has become our outdoor transition room, totally integrating the garden and the home. Today, we treat the the deck and patio in the same fashion we furnish and decorate it. Weather resistant materials let us keep cushions and furniture outside all year. We buy gourmet grills, market umbrellas, designer pots, trellises, arbors, and gazebos. We use exterior lighting for our trees and indirect lantern lights for the deck. The deck is no longer an add-on, plain stick structure.