This post is definitely going to stir up a hornets nest as no one like to be told they are wrong. But I am always happy to listen to different perspectives and really that is the intention of this post. To offer an alternative perspective. 

When it comes to the design of your Co-living product who knows best? other landlords? a letting agent? Or what about the worlds most successful designers ever? I’d rather ignore the crowd and go to the very best and seek their advice…So here are four of my favourite quotes about design from guys who are at the absolute top of the design game. 

Good Design isn’t about how something looks, it’s mostly how it works that really matters – Steve jobs

If you analyse the function of an object, it’s form usually becomes obvious – Ferdinand Porsche 

Home is the heart of life, Home is where we feel at ease, where we belong – Sir Terence Conran 

Good Design is Honest – Dieter Rams 

I have taken these quotes very much to heart when designing interiors, which has led me to the conclusion that most landlords simply miss the point when it comes to the design of their product. 

Over this past month Co-Living champions ‘The Collective’ called in the receivers after their 500 room co-living behemoth failed to attract enough customers to make the project viable, why? well it boils down to the 4 quotes mentioned above. 1. It looked great, but the design did not work for the users of the product. 2, The designers did not understand the function of the product and followed an incorrect design brief, 3: The development did not feel like Home… it felt more like an institution. and 4: The Collective’s strap line was ‘Live like you have never lived before’. The customer expectations of their product was very high but the product did not deliver on its promise. 

Ask most landlords and letting agents about how you should design an HMO, or Co-living development they will most likely say 1: put in en-suites as you’ll be able to charge the highest rents 2: Its not your home so don’t do anything too adventurous with the decor and 3: Don’t worry too much about the living space as tenants don’t tent to use it. 

Ask the consumer of the product and they will usually say they need 1: Social interaction 2: Good value as they are choosing shared accommodation to save a bit of money 3: It’s got to be a bit funky/different 4: It’s got to look modern yet homely. (these are the words of the consumer, not the landlord or agent)

In most industries, most companies either copy someone else or in a very small number of cases they try to innovate. If you just copy industry norms, there’s obviously no thought involved, it’s the easy route, but you’ll probably find you’ve missed crucial parts of the design that are unseen. As Steve Jobs said, it’s how it works, not how it looks that really matters, so simply copying how something looks can be a big mistake. usually because you end up with a poorly functioning product. 

When companies try to innovate, again, many will simply look at the ‘standard’ make it bigger, cheaper or just spend more money on exactly the same elements, again, going on looks, not function. This is where The Collective went wrong. Basically they made the concept larger, the rooms smaller, but spent more on the visual stuff, completely missing the customer brief. Which is mainly “I want a place I can call home”…Not, I want tiny bedroom but a huge multiplex gym and a games area with a table football machine that I share with 40 other people. 

The problem with the current industry norm is that en-suites cost a fortune, they often compromise budgets so far, that all the other functional elements like comfort, storage that reduces clutter, colour, quality furnishings that allow the user to relax, living rooms with decent TV’s with movies that the residents can relax and enjoy the company of others are missing due to budget constraints. The other new norm of larger commercial to residential project 9+bedrooms, all money out, momentum investing blah blah, is, it’s the furthest thing from a home you can put onto the housing market. It may work on paper, but the customer isn’t interested in your strategy, they just want a nice comfortable place they can call home. 

So when it comes to good interior design take a leaf out of Steve Job’s book, stop looking at what everyone else is doing and think about your customer for a second. Is what you are creating something you yourself would enjoy using. Is the bed you are choosing comfortable enough for you to sleep in, is the living room you are creating somewhere you would like to spend time in. How will the design make you feel if you were to live in it. If you are thinking of putting in en-suites, how will that effect your budget for all the other important elements that the customer really needs. 

And finally let’s look at the supreme design Guru Dieter Rams and his quote Good Design is Honest. here is what he meant: Good design is honest. It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept. So, if you are going to brand your property product as Co-living, do you really understand what that entails, are you simply branding your product and blindly following an industry norm or have you taken the time to think about your design, its impact on those using it and how it will make your customers feel when they use it.

Just an extra half a day’s work could add £1,000’s to the value of your rental property 

While this may seem like common sense to some, if you take a look at Spareroom, even in 2021, many landlords fail to see the advantage of staging their product in order to make it more appealing to customers. 

Truth is, buying a property is a very expensive and time consuming project, it seems ludicrous that only an extra few hours work at the very end of the refurbishment process and you can be adding huge value to your project. (Ok there’s travel time there and back)

Many investors are so focussed on getting their first tenants into the property that they rush to get things finished, let lots of the small details slide and fail to take good photos at the very end, meaning that in future all they have are some pretty poor photos to upload onto Spareroom and when you are selling product digitally, image is everything.  

So what do you need to add to a room or property to make it stand out and add all this value? 

Well assuming you have completed your refurbishments, everything should be clean and tidy, no tools left lying around etc. If  light fittings should have lamp shades and bulbs & windows should have blinds. If there is a garden, this should be tidy too, remember 1st impressions count.

If you are furnishing a property then simply putting a landlord furniture pack into the property will make it look bland and lifeless. You are selling a home, a lifestyle, the buying decision very much depends on how you make someone feel, and your photos will greatly help your chances of securing a good tenant, so making the effort on dressing your property and making it look like a home is a big factor in attracting customers to your accommodation and fetching a good price. 

How to dress a room:

Detail of bedside table with books and plant

There are some basic elements that are required to make a room feel like home, the first is a place to put things, like ornaments, books, plants etc, so shelves in any space are an essential ingredient. 

If you are putting up shelves on a stud wall (a frame of timber or metal studs secured to the floor, ceiling and walls, which is then covered with plasterboard) then be mindful of choosing s shelf that has good support (a floating shelf may not stay fixed for long) and be sure to use the correct fixings (raw plugs) that are designed specially for this type of wall. A brick or solid wall is obviously the best choice to fit shelving. If you are fitting shelves in a basement, be careful as you may have a damp proof membrane, and piercing the membrane may cause the membrane to fail. 

Dressing items needn’t be expensive, in fact we all usually have all the items needed to dress a room for photography in our own homes. A clean bedding set (preferably white, or neutral coloured), scatter cushions of varying colour, vases, books, plants, magazines, lamps and a laptop. In furnished accommodation you will need mirrors and some artwork that will remain in situ. 

You really only need to stage rooms for photography, once the photos have been taken, you should leave a bedroom and the living room staged until the property has been let, after that, take the items back home. 

Taking photos: 

In the past you may have needed an expensive digital camera, but today our mobile phones have incredibly powerful cameras that are more than up for the job. You may want to invest in a subtle, but quality wide-angle lens, but be careful as these lenses can also distort an image, so avoid cheap ones. I use an app called Pro-Camera on my iPhone, it does the job of cleaning up and enhancing an image automatically. 

When taking a photo, be mindful of composition and light. Avoid using a flash and turn on all lights and lamps. Always try to take photos during the day, as daylight is the best light source. Taking photo where the window is in frame, will make the rest of the photo darker, so again be mindful of your composition. If you want to take a couple of ‘lifestyle’ shots (close ups with a blurred background) the iphone has a great native camera feature called ‘Portrait Mode’, this does all the work for you and creates amazing close up shots. 

Note about HMO’s/Co-Living accommodation and Serviced accommodation: Shared spaced in HMO’s/Co-living developments should remain staged, so use fake plants. Cushions and ornaments should be left on site. Serviced Accommodation won’t need tons of staging, but it is supposed to be a home away from home, so depending on your customer demographic (families, contractors, business travellers), you should take some time to think about what you customer would like. A 5-star rating is very important as customers will look for your rating when choosing their accommodation. 

If you are looking to sharpen your Interior Design Pencil, who not book your place on my upcoming Interior Design & Refurbishment Masterclass, where you will learn new skills that will make your property stand out from the competition and attract better tenants. 

Investing in property is no cheap outing, and errors in design or business approach can seriously effect the profitability of your business.

We live in a time where capital growth can no longer be relied upon, so ensuring you get your strategy right and your product correctly positioned is vital to the long-term success of your business. I have worked with property investors for over 20-years and I see so many  making such terrible mistakes when it comes to creating their property ‘product’ that I thought I’d share a couple of the biggest ones with you, in the hope it will prevent you from making those same serious errors.

So here they are ladies and gents, the huge mistakes I see investors make and how to avoid them…

BIG MISTAKE NO1: Thinking like an investor, not a Small Business Startup. 

Unless you are investing your hard earned money in a simple single let property and handing it to an agent, any other strategy, be it HMO’s Serviced Accommodation or Commercial to Residential conversion, be under no illusion, it’s a BUSINESS! Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s anything like investing in FOREX or Digital Currency, Gold, Stocks and Shares blah blah blah… it’s totally and utterly different. You are going into business, you will have paying customers and if you don’t create a product that is fit for purpose, i.e it caters for your customer demands… or the demands put upon the product through its use, your business will not last, well, it certainly won’t make the kind of returns you were hoping for. Not understanding the customer or their demands is the cause of so many property business failures.

There are certain keys to success when it comes to creating a successful business and having an ‘Investors Mindset’ will damage the long term success of any business. 

It’s been my experience that most property investors want to distance themselves from their customers and they do not want to spend any time thinking about the design of their product. That’s not how businesses work, especially if you are planning on operating in a competitive market environment. 

Maintaining a competitive edge is vital to the long-term success of any small business. While there are a wide range of factors that determine the success or failure of any company, there are number of key components to competitive success in business all entrepreneurs should heed. 

1. Customer Service – Effective customer service is the largest determining factor of customer loyalty and repeat purchases. This single factor often can give small businesses an edge over their larger competitors. Focus your  efforts on delivering the most satisfying customer experience in your industry or area of influence and your product will sell itself though thick and thin. 
2. Market Research – Know your competition both today and tomorrow, what are their strengths and weaknesses and what will they be like in 5/10-years time. In property there is no point trying to play catch-up as it’s too expensive and time consuming. 
3. Financial management – How many times do I hear people at property meets say “At some point you’ll run out of money”? Seriously??? That’s how businesses go bust very quickly. Any business requires investment and houses require maintenance, so running out of money when you have 10’s maybe 100’s of tenants to look after? Be realistic! Always have funds put aside just in case a roof needs fixing etc etc and one day you will have to replace kitchens and bathrooms. Don’t just rely on capital appreciation to fund future renovations, you want to be paying down mortgages, not stripping assets of all equity. (Just a matter of opinion obvs). And then there is the amount you are borrowing. A few years back some property experts were saying Max out your credit cards! Even today many are saying Max out your leveraging, borrow as much as you can! Ok, call me old fashioned, but what will happen to your business if interest rates rise? Borrow wisely and don’t bury your head in the sand hoping for the best. If rates rise, it won’t only effect your profits, it will also hit the value of your assets. Banks also have a nasty knack of asking for their money back when the fire is right at your door and is about to burn the lot down. 

And huge mistake no 2: Leaving the design of your product to the last minute or leaving it to others who have absolutely no interest in the long term success of your business. 

I’ve lost count at how many times have I been approached by investors who say “Hi Julian, I’ve got my builders starting tomorrow, can you help me?”  In most cases luckily I can, but not everyone has the sense to use a Designer. 

Truth is, most investors wait until completion before they begin to take the design of their product seriously and by then its too late. Everything is then rushed or left to the builder slash architect to put all the pieces together, and they really don’t have the time ether… Nor are they being paid to do any design work. As a result, most properties are bland and offer a very poor customer experience. That is not good business folks… Imagine if every business operated that way? The restaurant, car dealership, Coffee shop, fashion outlet. Poorly designed interior, poorly maintained shop floor and some agent who really doesn’t have the time to serve you properly… Nice… 

So if you are entering into the ‘Property Business, for God’s sake, think like someone who is starting a business and creating a product that needs to survive in a competitive environment for many many years… And not like someone who is investing in Stocks and Shares who wants to get rich quick from the comfort of their armchair. Property can be rewarding, but it doesn’t come without a lot of hard work…. just like any other business. 

My Nan (Bless) had a bathroom in her flat that dated back to the 1930’s and had she not passed away, I recon her bathroom would still be in use today.. 90 years after it was installed!. And yet many bathrooms today last less than 10-years before things start going wrong and replacement is needed. 

With more and more landlords upping their interior design game, I am seeing some really big mistakes being made when it comes to bathroom and en-suite design that will inevitably mean costly maintenance and a very short lifespan. 

For rental properties it is especially important that a bathroom or en-suite lasts the test of time, so here are the big design mistakes I see people make when it comes to bathroom design and how to avoid them:

1: Using back taps and accessories – Ok so who doesn’t like black bathroom taps? they look so cool right? yea, for about 10-minutes!

Black bath taps and shower screens require more sensitive cleaning as they become marked and stained from soap scum and limescale. And boy do they show the dirt! Avoid at all costs if you want your rental property bathrooms to look good for longer.

2: Vanity units – For someone who advocates storage as much as possible, most vanity units and water just don’t mix. Unfortunately the rise of cheap furniture means that the build quality of these items is generally not up to scratch. Most have MDF cores and a laminate outer layer. Any star edges become traps for water, which, after a few months, will seep into the MDF core. Once damp the MDF core starts to swell and the unit degrades. Not advisable for rental properties at all. If you want a vanity unit in your home, make sure its not made with an MDF core. 

3: Hidden pipework toilets: Some modern close coupled toilets hide the pipework at the back of the cistern. Big problem if you need to change a toilet seat or if you need to disconnect the water supply when parts fail (which they invariably do). This is a mistake I made a few years back… trust me, total nightmare. 

4: Tiling in the bath: Ok, so not many people do this, but please don’t. Bath taps often get loose over time, and mechanical bath plugs also break over time, so at some point you are going to need to get under the bath to make repairs. If you have tiled in your bath, you will need to do damage to gain access. Also water tends to pool on flat surfaces, this quickly leaves hard to remove darl mould patches on the grout and sealant.

5: Cheap shower screens & enclosures: Shower enclosures come in all shapes and sizes, however do not scrimp on these items. Choose designs that are uncomplicated (wheeled doors are a no-no as the wheels degrade over time) 6mm glass panels and doors are a no no as they are less sturdy and leak far more easily than the tougher 9mm variants. 

6: Not planning on damages or missing parts. When a bathroom arrives on a building site, it can very easily get damaged and while it’s vital that your tradesmen get the materials on -time, it’s also important that things don’t just sit lying around, as damages will occur. By the time someone realises a cistern has a crack in it, your plumber may not be able to return for weeks after a replacement arrives. Same goes for missing parts. Everyone is in such a hurry nowadays that small details get overlooked. Like the connector grommet for the sink waste. One tiny piece of rubber that costs less than 1p can hold up an entire bathroom install. 

7: Switching things unnecessarily: One of the most annoying thing someone can do to a contractor is say: ‘Oh, it’s only a small job but can you just move the toilet from there to there?’ Moving soil pipes and waste pipes can be a right pain as you need to be careful when channelling though floor joists. it’s also very time consuming. Even architects (bless em) seem to have no concept of the absolute pain in the backside moving a bathroom or adding an en-suite from one side of a house to another so that it’s miles away from the soil stack (and the property has concrete floors). 

8: Boxing in pipework using MDF panels. it’s a quick solution that a builder will know won’t last long, but what do they care, they will be long gone before water mashes things up. And more fool you if you don’t specify things properly. MDF and water do not mix… period. 

9: Bath tap positioning. This doesn’t effect rental properties so much, but when you specify a bath, it may be lovely to have taps located at the middle against the back wall, but you wait till you need to tighten taps or you climb out the bath one day, slip and require medical treatment for a tap up the ass, or a back that’s been ripped to shreds because you climbed out the wrong way. Bloody dangerous. 

12: lazy layouts in small spaces: When it comes to a practical space like a bathroom, function has to come before form, especially in a small bathroom. Make sure you allow enough space between sanitary-ware so people can move around and sit or stand comfortably – for example, there should be at least 60cm between the toilet and anything that’s in front of it. Towel rails should be fitted within easy grabbing distance of the bath or shower and cupboard and shower doors need to open without obstruction.

11: Not shopping around and using trade discounts. Ok, so next time you walk into a plumbers merchants don’t look like a tourist. Wear work clothes, act like a developer and ask for a trade discount, you’ll be surprised at how easy it can be to negotiate substantial discounts. 

12: Dismissing privacy: If you place a shower or bath in front of a window, even if its frosted, when its dark outside and you climb out of the bath naked… you neighbours will get a beautiful view… 

13: Ditching the bath: We all know that most people take showers nowadays, but to remove a bath from a residential property is a huge mistake when it comes to re-selling. There are also times when we all love to have a nice soak in a bath or when you have a dog/cat/kid and a shower is not the right solution. 

14: Mis-measuring a bath. Baths come in all shapes and sizes, so make sure you check you get the right size before ordering one. 

15: Forgetting to future-proof. A lot of bathroom appliances nowadays come with parts that need replacing. Shower door seals, toilet flush mechanisms, shower wastes, taps, they can all fail. Extra planning is a must if you want your bathroom to be serviceable as time passes. just buying blind without checking how easy it is to replace parts will significantly reduce the lifespan of your bathroom or en-suite. 

16: Poor ventilation: A bathroom generates a great deal of moisture, which forms as condensation on cold walls in winter… (You know all those tenants who complain about damp behind their beds and wardrobes? it’s usually down to poor bathroom ventilation). Invest in a good extractor, especially if you are fitting internally-suites. 

Brown stain of indoor mould and fungus on the ceiling. Effects of flooding on the wall.

17: Forgetting the finishing touches: is there somewhere to hang your towel, a place to put your shower gel, somewhere for the soap, a place for all the moisturisers and creams ladies seem to like inviting in? is there a waste bin? Don’t scrimp on these items as cheap shower accessories rust… quickly. 

18: Insufficient heating: If you have a large bathroom and have only fitted a small towel rail…oh boy are you going to get some serious condensation problems. 

19: Using small tiles that need tons of grout: let me just say one word to out you off making this big boo boo. LEAK!!!!! … I’ll say it one more time…. L E A K !!!

20: Using incompatible fittings: I’m sure we’d all fancy a lovely rainfall shower in a bathroom, but is your heating system or water flow up to the challenge? With so many investors wanting to put en-suiters in every room, making sure you have enough water pressure or the right bathroom appliances for the job is essential. Always work with your plumber or heating engineer when choosing bathroom stuff. 

21: Choosing porous paint. When painting a bathroom you need to think about a finish that can handle a hot and steamy environment. Look for moisture resistant paint or versions designed specifically for bathrooms.

Thanks for reading. 

Bonus tip from legendary product designer ‘Dieter Rams’ – (1932-2020)

Good design is long-lasting

“It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society.”

The takeaway:

Designing for the sake of fashion is a dangerous and generally unhelpful thing. What is fashionable today will at best be unfashionable tomorrow, and at worst, a piece of comedy in ten years.