‘California Rooms’ are hot trend in region’s homebuilding -

A room with outdoor serenity and indoor comforts has grabbed the imagination of Southern California homebuyers and architects, who predict it could become as widespread in the post-recession housing market as walk-in closets and three-car garages.

The concept was introduced as the “California room” by the Irvine Co. in houses built last year on the Irvine Ranch.

An outdoor space that is furnished as luxuriously as if it were indoors, the California room is connected by sliding glass doors to the “great room,” that combination of kitchen/family/dining area that in newer homes has supplanted formal living rooms and dining rooms.

The name the Irvine Co. chose for the feature alludes to the ability of California homeowners to utilize the outdoors year round when given a space that is shaded.

Architects who designed the houses say the California room has proven hugely popular with buyers and is likely to be copied by many builders in other parts of Southern California.

“We will make it a mainstay of all our new housing,” said Riverside homebuilder Mike Van Daele, who was among the builders the Irvine Co. chose to produce houses with California rooms on the Irvine Ranch.

Van Daele said the California room was so well received that he will offer it as an option with all his future housing developments, including a 103-home neighborhood at Spencer’s Crossing in French Valley, near Temecula.

Also, Brookfield Homes, another builder in Irvine, intends in September to offer an outdoor room as an option in homes it will build at its Edenglen community in Ontario, said Carina Hathaway, Brookfield’s vice president of marketing.

Unlike a run-of-the-mill backyard patio slab, the California room has a ceiling with an attached fan and two or more walls that unite the covered space to the house.

Because the California room is open to the outdoors and not heated or cooled, it technically is not a room and cannot be considered as part of the square footage of a house when it is resold.

But the space “feels like an extra room of the house,” said Brad Englland, Irvine Co. vice president of residential architecture.

He said it is important for the space to be large enough to furnish with comfortable couches, chairs and end-tables or, perhaps, a dining set.

The California room is “truly roofed, with a tile roof and most of the time an open-beam ceiling,” Englland said. California rooms in larger floor plans on the Irvine Ranch also sport built-in fireplaces.

sort of a sun room

The California room’s function of bringing the outdoors inside is not entirely new.

It is reminiscent of summer sleeping porches and sun rooms that were added to American homes decades ago, said Tim Sullivan, a principal with Irvine-based John Burns Real Estate Consulting.

However, the architectural addition plays well in a down economy where builders are looking for ways to give the illusion of volume in houses that are being built smaller to make them more affordable, Sullivan said.

“You are enhancing volume,” Sullivan noted.

“Anytime you add ceiling height or expand your walls, pushing them out, or enhance the light in a room, it makes the space feel bigger. We are increasingly having to be more creative with the use of space.”

The silver lining for builders is that an outdoor room piques dreams of serenity for hassled homebuyers and gives them a reason to buy a new house rather than one of the many foreclosures in their neighborhoods, said Mollie Carmichael, also a principal at John Burns Real Estate.

She called the room a “chill space” where homebuyers hope to unwind and entertain.

a lot like a lanai

At Brookfield’s Ontario development, homebuyers will be able to choose various levels of outdoor rooms, from the most affordable covered by a trellis to the most expensive with stucco ceiling, Hathaway said  

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