What you need to know to future proof your home

It’s fair to say that the world has gone through a period of accelerated change in recent years. Aside from the significant impacts of COVID, the effects of climate change are becoming more evident and, as countries around the world look for alternatives to fossil fuels, many homeowners are beginning to understand the implications at home, in the form of rising energy prices and greater weather extremes.

For those contemplating renovating or completely rebuilding from scratch, the idea of future proofing your home is beginning to take hold. But what does it mean to create a home for the future?

In general terms, a future-proofed home is one that is designed for longevity, with enough flexibility and sustainability built into it to provide residents with a comfortable lifestyle for decades to come. This means creating spaces that are not only comfortable to live in but have low running costs without the need to dramatically upgrade or alter aspects over time.

For some, that can entail embracing new technologies, which may come with substantial upfront costs, while for others, the focus is very much on design.

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Architect Caroline Pidcock says the beauty of future proofing through design is that anyone building or renovating can take steps to make it part of the construction process. Whether you plan to stay put or you have one eye on resale, she says the principles of a sustainable lifestyle still apply.

“There are three things anyone can do, whether or not you’re embarking on a major building project,” she says.

“Firstly, make sure the external building envelope is as well sealed and insulated as possible. Secondly, we need to understand and work with the sun – where we want it and don’t want it – and work with it to capture its energy for our own use.”

The third measure, she says, is to step away from fossil fuels such as coal-fired power and gas, towards renewable sources of electricity.

“You should totally electrify your home,” she says. “Having a gas cooktop is like having a smoker in your home. If we totally electrify and make the building envelope as efficient as possible, we’re on the way to future proofing.”

In terms of design, Pidcock says it’s time to rethink the open plan living model in favour of more flexible spaces that can be opened up and closed down to allow for more efficient heating and cooling as well as better thermal and acoustic comfort for everyone.

“We need to rethink how much space we need,” she says.

“That might mean the end of the open plan living dream. Adding doors is good from a thermal and acoustic point of view and the ability to close or open the spaces as you need them.

“That flexibility of space is useful and important.”

This house designed by CarterWilliamson Architects is designed for flexibility and thermal comfort. Picture: Anson Smart

For Dr Trivess Moore, senior lecturer in RMIT’s School of Property, Construction and Project Management in Melbourne, the focus is very much on the ability of current housing stock to cope with the climate extremes many Australians are already experiencing.

“The majority of existing and new housing in Australia is not suitable for performing in our current climate,” he says. “This means we have a high reliance on mechanical heating and cooling to stay thermally comfortable, resulting in high energy consumption and bills.

“The majority of the housing stock performs between 1.5 to 3 stars on a scale of zero (worst) to 10 (best). In some cases, households will find their housing unliveable for periods of time if we see climate change much further.”

Government regulation, such as the Building Sustainability Index (Basix) legislation introduced in NSW in 2004, has gone some way to make new housing stock more future proofed, says Moore, as have rebates to encourage Australians to take up renewable energies such as solar panels. The result is that one in three Australian households have installed solar panels, according to figures from the Clean Energy Regulator, the highest domestic uptake rate in the world.

While battery storage systems are still prohibitively expensive for many, all indicators are that they will be a necessary part of any future proofed home, thanks to their ability to store energy from renewables to be used on demand.

Managing diretor of Qcells Australia, Jin Han says the sooner you can install a storage battery, the sooner you can make the most from solar energy supplies generated on your own property. He says there are options for those who would like to avoid the initial outlay.

“This can be addressed with green loans and financing,” Han says.

The future of car use is electric, with home battery storage a given.

Qcells has partnered with Arcstream financing, allowing homeowners to bundle monthly payments with their energy plan.

“For example, before solar your bill is $200 per month, add solar and battery and energy plan with no upfront payment, and pay $180 per month consistently, and be paying off an asset that you then own.”

Even some volume home builders are now offering battery storage packages and EV charging points.

Managing director of Volkswagen Group, Paul Sansom says once drivers move past concerns about ‘range anxiety’ for their cars, homes and residences equipped with EV charging stations will quickly become more desirable.

“Neither new houses nor new apartment buildings will be feasible without easy access to renewable EV charging; no more so than a home without internet access,” he says.

Further proof that the future of living is already here.

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!!!”

What you need to know to future proof your home

Spoiler alert: flying cars or vacuum sealed meals are not on the menu

Chinese users of Xiaohongshu, or Little Red Book, welcome Americans fleeing a feared TikTok ban