What you can expect from turning live/work

SEPARATE LIVE AND WORK SPACES

The single most essential thing is living and working areas that are completely separate – this is a live/work space, after all. This makes it far easier to avoid without guilt pangs unwanted interruptions from partners, pets or children. It also helps get you into your mental ‘work’ mode and therefore less likely to think ‘I’ll just see what’s happening on the news/Trisha/Teletubbies’.

It’s even more important if you have staff – whether full-time or freelancers doing the odd shift – or clients visiting you. You don’t want them to feel they’re having a meeting in your spare room.

Julian Hakes is co-director of architectural practice Hakes Associates and a live/worker based in the Jam Factory in Borough, south-east London. The Jam Factory units, designed by architect Alan Camp, were sold as shells, but with the space for living accommodation on the floor immediately above the floor allocated as work space.

‘It’s not like home working where you have a little study and you just go inside and close the door,’ Hakes says. ‘Ours is very much an office, and we’ve made a very conscious decision to separate the two. There’s nothing to do with our domestic life in the office, and vice versa. There are no files in the flat, for instance. I can check my emails in there if I want to, but that’s just about it. If I was working on a laptop in my living room I’d be constantly tempted to put the TV on, but in here I just can’t do that.’

Some live/workers prefer a more open plan approach. Some developers have chosen to go for this to blur the difference between living and workspace - to avoid headaches with VAT and business rates. But these types of unit are perhaps more likely to revert to residential use. Planners are therefore increasingly wary of them.

However, the biggest mistake a planning authority can make is to impose borough-wide rules that there should be a minimum percentage of workspace - especially if this is over 40%. This is because mortgage lenders will very rarely lend on a live/work unit with much more than a third of the space designated as workspace. Read more.

Specialist mortgage brokers like John Charcol can however sometimes get mortgages on live/work units with 40-50% workspace.

SEPARATE LOCKABLE ACCESS

So the space has separate living and working areas. But if you’re going to have clients visiting you, or staff working with you, you’ll want completely separate access to each. This means clients can come to a meeting without having to walk past three days’ worth of washing up or wine bottles, sparing you the need to blame the ‘recycling people not having been this week’...

It’s also important that any staff working there when you’re not around do not feel they’re in your private space and, of course, for you to feel comfortable having them there when you’re not around.

It goes without saying that access to both areas should be lockable, although security tends to be less of a worry for live/workers than most people. ‘You tend to be very close to the people you work with because it’s such a small scale, close-knit thing,’ says Hakes.

‘It’s not like you don’t know the people who are coming in and out. Live/work is a community,’ he continues, ‘and so security is generally very high. We have people living above so when we’re away we have that peace of mind – the way things used to be before the planning departments decided everything should be zoned.’

FLEXIBLE SPACE

So you’ve got separate working and living areas, with separate access. But will you be able to adapt the spaces if your circumstances – either professional or personal – change?

If you take on staff, or have children, you should be able to make the necessary adjustments without having to move. ‘What you want is a robust, flexible workspace with ground level access and its own facilities, like toilet and kitchenette,’ says Piers Taylor, a partner at Bath-based architectural practice the Mitchell Taylor Workshop.

It’s desirable, but not always possible, to have your living and working areas on separate levels. ‘Separate levels is ideal, if you can manage it’ says sculptor and live/work developer Jeff Lowe. ‘The best combination is to work on the ground floor – so you have street level access – and live above it.’

‘If you’re just starting out it may be tempting to sacrifice space in your living area to maximise your working space,’ says Julian Hakes, ‘but this is something you may soon come to regret. Make sure you have enough space for your flat if you start employing people. If our flat was smaller then I just wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing.’

WILL IT IMPRESS YOUR CLIENTS?

‘The critical thing is that your unit should have the appearance of a commercial enterprise,’ says Piers Taylor. ‘You’re representing your business here so it’s important that people don’t just feel like they’re coming to your house or sitting in your spare room, and this should be clear in the design of the unit.’

DELIVERIES AND VISITORS

If you’re likely to be taking deliveries of materials or stock, there needs to be space for loading and unloading and it should be sited and designed to keep noise and other disruptions to neighbours to a minimum. Many live/workers have few clients but those who do call should find there is parking space when they need to visit.

HOW GREEN IS MY UNIT?

As a live/worker you’re already at the vanguard of eco-friendly working – you’re not sitting in traffic jams for two hours a day on your way to and from a huge office block that pumps out heating or air conditioning and where hundreds of lights are left on all night. So presumably you’ll want your live/work unit as energy efficient as possible – especially as it will also save you money on fuel bills.

‘We try to make our developments as green as possible in all aspects,’ says Piers Taylor, ‘whether that’s heating, lighting, power, ventilation or waste management, with recycling on site. Some of our bigger developments even have their own allotments.’

You can also expect exceptional standards of insulation, in part to protect against noise transference but it should also offer a buffer against extremes of temperature.

‘Because we’re in a very dense, mixed use development we’ve never had the heating on in our office, ever’ says Julian Hakes. ‘People, lights, computers – every person produces 100 watts of electricity everyday anyway. The office absorbs heat during the day when everyone’s here and then feeds it back in the evening, and it’s lovely and cool when you walk in here in the summer.’

HEAVY BURDEN

Your floors should be specially constructed to support heavier goods and/or commercial equipment.

COMMUNAL FACILITIES

There are a million and one reasons why being a live/worker is fabulous (our sister site, www.liveworknet.com is dedicated to them), like not having to commute, not having to sit in endless meetings about nothing and not being forced to take sides in the latest round of sociopathic office ‘politics’.

But most of us will admit to missing a bit of banter to break up the day. Many but not all developers have factored this into their developments, with some variously offering use of shared facilities such as meeting rooms and reception services, offices with basic business equipment or even a café. Others meanwhile may offer state of the art ICT services such as virtual offices and video conferencing.

So, if your business is a lone operation it might be worth investigating premises offering communal spaces. The costs are typically shared between the occupiers, with further reductions secured by letting outsiders share your facilities. And you may find that, along with the social benefits, you’re picking up business tips and the odd new client.

‘I guess the ideal design is workshops around a shared courtyard,’ says Piers Taylor. ‘Ideally you’d have separate workspaces and living spaces but with shared hub facilities like a photocopier, a meeting room or secretarial service.’

GETTING WIRED

Information and communications technology is the one thing that’s dating faster than anything else right now so you’ll almost certainly want premises with the capacity to adapt and expand to support ever more powerful and complex technology. ‘It should be wired with data provision that’s ‘future proof’ as these things have a habit of becoming out of date very quickly,’ says Piers Taylor. See more on the possibilities here.

‘It depends on the kind of business you’re running but a lot of things you can do wirelessly now,’ says Julian Hakes. ‘That is unless you’re going to be sending really massive files, for example, in which case you need to be hard-wired. We have a raised floor, like in a commercial office, and all our wires are under the floor.’

NEW BUILD OR CONVERTED SPACE, SHELL OR ALL KITTED OUT?

This may be your main dilemma – converted warehouse or industrial space or something designed and built as a live/work unit from scratch? And how much work am I willing or able to put in before it’s up and running as business premises?

‘The first and most important thing is to make sure it really is a live/work unit, and not just something where the developers have tried to bend planning regulations,’ says Jeff Lowe. ‘Some of the new developments really have no character and often you only get the same amount of space as you’d get with domestic accommodation, so be careful.

‘My personal preference is for the kind of converted industrial units that are tucked away and really suit that change of use – that’s when you get the really high ceilings and larger spaces.’

‘Shells are the way to go,’ says Julian Hakes. ‘Obviously it depends on the kind of business you’ve got, but if you’ve got the energy and a little bit of construction know-how then they’re ideal.'