Home Classrooms Went From Covid Necessity To Selling Point
Parents are keeping the learning areas they built during the pandemic intact
6 min
Emily Porche swears by one holdover from her family’s life under lockdown: her children’s learning space.
Ms. Porche initially designed the room as a virtual classroom for her young daughters, but now it is a favorite hangout. With both girls back in school, the hanging chair is a spot for reading and the hand-built desks are used for cursive-writing practice. Having a kid-approved study area has made school assignments less of a chore for Avery, 8, and Hadley, 5, she says.
“Looking past Covid, this is now a space for homework and projects,” says Ms. Porche, owner of an online interior-design company who purchased and renovated a Marietta, Ga., five-bedroom home four years ago for $680,000, according to public records. The classroom-turned-homework space fits the home’s overall modern-classic farmhouse vibe, she adds. It cost her about $3,000.
Georgia Lessons
“The family’s priorities have changed,” says Fredrik Eklund, an agent with Douglas Elliman in New York. “People want these learning centres.”
In her New York condo, Lauren Steinberg added three built-in computer monitors, chairs and desks near an open staircase at a cost of about $35,000 to help her middle-school-age children stay focused on doing their work. “I can always walk by and see them from upstairs; they aren’t locked away in their room,” says Ms. Steinberg, whose 5,108-square-foot Tribeca home is situated across three floors. It is on the market for $12 million.
When her children—a 14-year-old girl and 12-year-old twins, a boy and a girl—started back at school in the spring, Ms. Steinberg, an interior designer, found that the homework area created boundaries for using electronics. The desktop computers can’t be easily moved from room to room and so screen time is kept mostly to one area.
Doing homework in their bedrooms is now out of the question, she says. “I know they’d be slouching and laying down.”
The kid-approved office is around the corner from the ninja-warrior room and climbing wall, which makes it easier for the children to take breaks, she adds.
Real-estate agent Jim St. André says he is staging more lower-level floors to combine play and work areas for children. For older children, buyers are asking for spaces that are sealed off from the main living areas, for online work or even for musical-instrument practice, he adds.
“People now look at those spaces as being less recreational,” says Mr. St. André, who works with Compass in New York.
He is selling a 7,058-square-foot, renovated US$25 million Greek Revival townhouse complete with a kids’ floor that includes bedrooms, a lounge area with a couch and a learning space. “Buyers want a usefulness to some of these spaces that we are repurposing,” he adds.
In Los Angeles, a newly constructed 1765sqm home on sale for US$70 million includes a second-floor children’s wing complete with a study portal with a central library-style desk, built-in lighting and shelving. A kids’ television lounge borders the space, with the children’s bedrooms directly behind the recreation areas, says real-estate agent Blair Chang from The Agency.
Mr. Eklund, the Douglas Elliman agent, worked with a staging company to create a learning centre complete with Zoom art backgrounds, custom shelving and educational games for a five-bedroom, eight-bathroom Los Angeles home that recently sold for US$13.8 million.
“It’s kind of like a library but for kids,” he says. The rooms are on lower floors in areas that used to be reserved for family entertainment or exercise.
In other luxury listings, clients are forgoing traditional libraries, man caves and multiple offices in favour of dedicated areas for young students, he adds.
Developers are anticipating an uptick in demand for the organised learning areas. In Sudbury, Mass., three newly developed homes will have learning areas off the kitchen when completed later this year, in an effort to appeal to young families.
Another learning space on the second floor is aimed at older children or adults who need a more secluded work area, with built-in seating and an outdoor area. “The design and inspiration was Covid,” he says.
The homes are on sale for about US$3.5 million.
In New York’s Chelsea area, Maverick, a building that offers a mix of condo and apartment units, offers a Children’s Imagination Learning Center, with learning workshops and interactive play-based areas, says developer Eran Polack. Condo units in the building, minus the penthouses, range from US$1.4 million to US$6 million. It is set to be completed this fall.
For parents designing study rooms on their own, Naomi Coe, an interior designer of children’s spaces in Irvine, Calif., says it is important to create spaces that adjust to the changing needs of the students.
For example, she recommends opting for good-quality desks and chairs while adding small décor pieces that are easy to swap out as the kids grow and their tastes change. Separate areas for lounging with bean bags or hanging chairs can add a fun factor.
“Flexibility is always going to be the most important,” she says.
Repurposing virtual classrooms can take some unexpected adjustments, says Shahla Sandoval, who, with her husband, Rob Sandoval, turned the playroom at the front of her four-bedroom, 2,800-square-foot home in Danville, Calif., into a learning area last summer. The couple bought the home for US$825,000 in 2011.
With desks at a premium, Ms. Sandoval, who runs a lifestyle blog, built her own against one wall, hung up a white board and put school supplies in a shared utility cart. She tasked her 9-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son with adding their own plants and creating a gallery wall with their artwork. She spent US$2,000 on the setup.
Having the children share space for study sessions tends to lead to arguments. Ms. Sandoval prefers a staggered approach to who uses the space and when. “My kids couldn’t last side-by-side,” she says.
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Chinese users of Xiaohongshu, or Little Red Book, welcome Americans fleeing a feared TikTok ban
5 min
They call themselves TikTok refugees—and the app they are fleeing to is a lot more Chinese than the video-sharing app whose U.S. fate now hangs in the balance.
After Supreme Court justices Friday seemed inclined to let stand a law that would shut down TikTok in the U.S., the Chinese social-media platform Xiaohongshu , translated in English as Little Red Book, has received a flood of American TikTok users. They are looking for a sanctuary or a way to protest the potentially imminent TikTok ban—never mind that they don’t speak Chinese.
Charlotte Silverstein, a 32-year-old publicist in Los Angeles, downloaded Xiaohongshu on Sunday night after seeing videos on TikTok about migrating to the app, which Americans dubbed “RedNote.” She described the move as a “last act of defiance” in her frustration about the potential TikTok ban.
“Everyone has been super welcoming and sweet,” said Silverstein, who has made three posts so far. “I love the sense of community that I’m seeing already.”
By Monday, TikTok refugees had pushed Xiaohongshu to the top of the free-app chart on Apple ’s App Store.
“I’m really nervous to be on this app, but I also find it to be really exciting and thrilling that we’re all doing this,” one new Xiaohongshu user said in a video clip on Sunday. “I’m sad that TikTok might actually go, but if this is where we’re gonna be hanging out, welcome to my page!” Within a day, the video had more than 3,000 comments and 6,000 likes. And the user had amassed 24,000 followers.
Neither Xiaohongshu nor TikTok responded to requests for comment.
The flow of refugees, while serving as a symbolic dissent against TikTok’s possible shutdown, doesn’t mean Xiaohongshu can easily serve as a replacement for Americans. TikTok says it has 170 million users in the U.S., and it has drawn many creators who take advantage of the app’s features to advertise and sell their products.
Most of the content on Xiaohongshu is in Chinese and the app doesn’t have a simple way to auto-translate the posts into English.
At a time of a strained U.S.-China relationship, some new Chinese-American friendships are budding on an app that until now has had few international users.
“I like that two countries are coming together,” said Sarah Grathwohl, a 32-year-old marketing manager in Seattle, who made a Xiaohongshu account on Sunday night. “We’re bonding over this experience.”
Granthwohl doesn’t speak Chinese, so she has been using Google Translate for help. She said she isn’t concerned about data privacy and would rather try a new Chinese app than shift her screentime to Instagram Reels.
Another opportunity for bonding was a photo of English practice questions from a Chinese textbook, with the caption, “American please.” American Xiaohongshu users helped answer the questions in the comments, receiving a “thank u Honey,” from the person who posted the questions.
By Monday evening, there have been more than 72,000 posts with the hashtag #tiktokrefugee on Xiaohongshu, racking up some 34 million views.
In an English-language post titled “Welcome TikTok refugees,” posted by a Shanghai-based Xiaohongshu user, an American user responded in Chinese with a cat photo and the words, “Thank you for your warm welcome. Everyone is so cute. My cat says thanks, too.” The user added, “I hope this is the correct translation.”
Some Chinese users are also using the livestreaming function to invite TikTok migrants to chat. One chat room hosted by a Chinese English tutor had more than 179,900 visits with several Americans exchanging cultural views with Chinese users.
ByteDance-owned TikTok isn’t available in China but has a Chinese sister app, Douyin. American users can’t download Douyin, though; unlike Xiaohongshu, it is only accessible from Chinese app stores.
On Xiaohongshu, Chinese users have been sharing tutorials and tips in English for American users on how to use the app. Meanwhile, on TikTok, video clips have also multiplied over the past two days teaching users the correct pronunciation of Xiaohongshu—shau-hong-SHOO—and its culture.
Xiaohongshu may be new to most Americans, but in China, it is one of the most-used social-media apps. Backed by investors like Chinese tech giants Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group , Xiaohongshu is perhaps best described as a Chinese mix of Instagram and Reddit and its users increasingly treat it as a search engine for practical information.
Despite its Little Red Book name, Xiaohongshu has little in common with the compilation of Mao Zedong ’s political writings and speeches. In fact, the app aspires to be a guidebook about anything but politics.
Conceived as a shopping guide for affluent urbanites in 2013, Xiaohongshu has morphed into a one-stop shop for lifestyle and shopping recommendations. Every day, its more than 300 million users, who skew toward educated young women, create, share and search for posts about anything from makeup tutorials to career-development lessons, game strategies or camping skills.
Over the years, Xiaohongshu users have developed a punchy writing style, with posts accompanied by images and videos for an Instagram feel.
Chinese social-media platforms are required to watch political content closely. Xiaohongshu’s focus on lifestyle content, eschewing anything that might seem political, makes it less of a regulatory target than a site like Weibo , which in 2021 was fined at least $2.2 million by China’s cyberspace watchdog for disseminating “illegal information.”
“I don’t expect to read news or discussion of serious issues on Xiaohongshu,” said Lin Ying, a 26-year-old game designer in Beijing.
The American frenzy over a Chinese app is the reverse of a migration in recent years by Chinese social-media users seeking refuge from censorship on Western platforms , such as X, formerly known as Twitter, or, more recently, BlueSky.
Just like TikTok users who turn to the app for fun, Xiaohongshu users also seek entertainment through livestreams and short video clips as well as photos and text-posts on the platform.
Xiaohongshu had roughly 1.3 million U.S. mobile users in December, according to market-intelligence firm Sensor Tower, which estimates that U.S. downloads of the app in the week ending Sunday almost tripled compared with the week before.
Sensor Tower data indicates that Xiaohongshu became the top-ranked social-networking and overall free app on Apple’s App Store and the 8th top-ranked social app on the Google Play Store on Monday, “a feat it has never achieved before,” said Abe Yousef, senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower.
Run by Shanghai-based Xingin Information Technology, Xiaohongshu makes money primarily from advertising, according to a Xiaohongshu spokeswoman. The company was valued at $17 billion after its latest round of private-equity investment in the summer, according to research firm PitchBook Data.
Not everyone is singing kumbaya. Some Chinese Xiaohongshu users are worried about the language barrier. And some American TikTok users are concerned about data safety on the Chinese app.
But many are hoping to build bridges between the two countries.
“Y’all might think Americans are hateful because of how our politicians are, but I promise you not all of us are like that,” one American woman said on a Sunday video she posted on Xiaohongshu with Chinese subtitles.
She went on to show how to make cheese quesadillas using a waffle maker.
The video collected more than 11,000 likes and 3,000 comments within 24 hours. “It’s so kind of you to use Chinese subtitles,” read one popular comment posted by a user from Sichuan province.
Another Guangdong-based user commented with a bilingual “friendly reminder”: “On Chinese social-media platforms please do not mention sensitive topics such as politics, religion and drugs!!!”
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.
