If your normal visitors are people who do exercise sessions with you, then having the equipment there seems like a great place to have it.
We had a formal living room - and no one ever used it. Never. Not even when we had company over. During the pandemic, I started using it for online workouts. We officially turned it into a yoga room last winter. There are pocket doors on one entrance and we bought a great wooden, screen to cover the other entrance. It’s full of plants and it has great light. My high school junior now uses it every day for her own yoga practice. Best thing we did during COVID.
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We must not be exercising hard enough, I’ve never noticed any odor from our basement gym which has been used by both my husband and I pretty regularly since Covid started. We never open the windows, but it is in one portion of an open basement.
Lots of people seem to have formal living rooms they almost never use. Ours is more of a family room, and it has the TV because we don’t actually have a family room.
I have a friend whose formal dining room only has a grand piano in it.
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Can you put up a screen? I think exercise equipment in the living room is less weird than many other things. It’s your house, enjoy it. And presumably it’s only friends visiting.
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This is a great post and a testament to one thing we learned during Covid - leave not room unused!
Most people who probably visit your house know you and what a great story and honestly, house inspiration to say “ we screwed house norms and now we use this room all the time!”
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A couple dentists have told me when asked about the best toothpaste for young kids, its whatever they will use. If there was a best toothpaste from a clinical perspective, it won’t matter if your kids won’t use it.
To me, same applies to exercise equipment. Put it wherever you will actually use it. And that will work. If you will use it to hang clothes on it or create a dust farm (like a lot of exercise equipment) then you want to put it where it will be out of way.
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I have a similar issue. Houses are typically designed with traditional families in mind, so they have a living room, kitchen, several bedrooms, etc. This works well for traditional families, but not as well for others, Being a single persons, I instead want fewer bedrooms and a larger area for a gym, a good sized area for a theater, … not the traditional family setup.
I guess the idea of a formal living room is you have the family room for kids and watching TV, then have the formal living room with nice furniture for adult time without kids and/or hosting adult company? I certainly don’t need the equivalent of 2 living rooms – one formal and one informal. However, the space would work well as a gym. The room has good sized area, is carpeted, on the first floor, and is away from the areas that I typically use.
I filled the formal living room with a good amount of gym equipment – machines, free weights, weigh racks, etc. This setup has been working well for years. I use the dividers at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0014ZWKDK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 (bought when price was $30, better option at current price) to separate the formal living room gym from the neighboring room, which makes it less visible. The gym equipment can be nearly invisible to persons 6’ or less, depending on how I place the dividers.
The formal living room is my largest gym area, but I also use 2 of the bedrooms as gyms The different gym areas target specific body group areas. For example, one of the gyms focuses on “push”, so on a push day, I stay in that room. If I am instead focusing on lower body, then I’d work out in a different room. This home setup has been especially useful in recent years, with gyms being closed due to COVID. It’s not traditional, which doesn’t really matter to me. My focus is on how to make the home most enjoyable to me others using the home – not worrying about what other people will think if it looks untraditional.
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I’d totally agree with this sentiment.
Unfortunately, having gym equipment in my house doesn’t work for me, but I totally get using any room in your house for it.
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@1214mom , if I walked in your house and saw that you did this to your living room I would think you are a bad_ss for bucking tradition and doing what you want with your space! If the living room is an inviting place to exercise (windows or whatever) then I think you can set it up so that it is ALSO desirable looking and cool!
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I don’t think it is about what other people will think, but rather how you feel when you walk I to your home.
I personally like an orderly, calming and beautiful place. I wouldn’t want to see exercising equipment, washer/dryer, computers, etc. in open space because they wouldn’t be very calming to me, no matter how convenient they would be. At the same time, if that’s what you like/want then why not.
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Actually, since we’ve put our exercise bike in our living room, the only comments we’ve gotten from the few people we’ve had over, are appreciative comments about what a nice bike it was. Makes me think we likely only ask people over that we really like, who know us, and understand who we are. I really like living in Seattle! No judgement for our dusty house, construction, athletic clothes, no makeup or formalities. It’s awesome!
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In our last house, we had a dedicated small gym. The sweat smell was an issue for me, even with the window. We live in Texas, so there are many months where opening a window is not an option.
If I had your set up, I might consider closing off that room by building a wall with double frosted glass doors. But the expense might make it really not practical if you are considering selling in a the near future. On the other hand, apparently homes with dedicated office space are in high demand, and when selling, you could market that space as a great private office area.
Having a gym in an open room at the front of a house would seem really weird to me in general, but not so weird if moving soon.
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Geez, the gym that I go to doesn’t even have that “gym smell.”
If you’re concerned about smells, open a door or window, run an air purifier before, during and after exercise and/or wipe down the equipment and floor with a cleaner periodically.
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We have our rower in our great room, near our printers. We also have a sewing machine, work/crafts table, a computer and 2 monitors in the great room. It works fine for us as it is. We can open the patio doors when exercising, NO gym smell, lots of ventilation.
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Our treadmill is in our living room!
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We went to a party the other day. There were 2 paddle boards in the middle of their living room. I was the only one who even asked about it as we left the great party we had attended. They said they were enjoying paddle boarding in their retirement.
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The house we have now is the first house I’ve ever owned that didn’t have a formal living room. We never ever used those formal living rooms. We even built two of the homes in question. I have no idea why we built a house with a room we never ever used. I guess we figured it was expected for re-sale. We do not miss the formal room at all in the new house.
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We have a colonial with 4 bedrooms. There is a formal living room and formal dining room we rarely use. But above them are 2 of the bedrooms. Not sure what we would use the space for on the first floor where the dining/living rooms are. Kitchen has an eat-in-area with a table that is bigger than the dining room table. Already have a den/office. Family room is about twice the size of the living room. Not sure how we would configure the house without the formal living/dining rooms and still have the 4 bedrooms. Master could be on the ground floor but I am not a fan of first floor masters.
I’m not sure why the location of the bedroom is an issue. I’ve had friends who used their formal dining rooms for music, for art studios, or for sewing or other hobbies.
You may not need a ground floor master bedroom now, but if you’d like to age in place, it’s something you may want to consider. My parents moved when they were in their 70s to a Cape where they repurposed the original dining room into a master bedroom and added a ground floor bathroom with a no curb shower. There were two bedrooms upstairs that got used as guest rooms and my mother had her sewing stuff in the larger one as well.
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I have never slept on the ground floor. Something of a stair climber. Walk stairs at work in 10 story building. Have climbed multiple high rises (45 floor max) for charity events. Often take stairs in hotels.
We have a piano in our living room. Kids played it and had music stands set up for other instruments when they lived at home. Art is definitely not a thing in our family. No sewing either. Or other hobbies that need a room. Basement comes closest thing to that (its where exercise equipment is as well).
Not saying other people don’t have need/use for rooms other than dining/living rooms. Just not me.
I totally get one floor living when stairs are a problem. About 20 years younger than my mom when she had that issue and almost 30 younger than my dad had issues with stairs. Chance I retire in the house I currently live in is pretty much 0%. Not even likely it will be in the same state but that location hasn’t been determined yet. Plan is to age in place (as long as possible) but at this point that place isn’t known yet much less a particular house.
Have friends my age (some younger) moving into single floor homes. Fine for them. Just not for me at this point.
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