Working from home, without living at work

Working from home has changed what we need from a house. If home working is a regular part of the week, having somewhere properly separate makes a big difference.

The three-storey design of the homes at Fruit Market lends itself particularly well to this. With three bedrooms arranged over two floors, there is the flexibility to dedicate a room to work without sacrificing the main living spaces. High ceilings, generous windows and plenty of natural light also mean a home office can feel like a good place to spend the day, rather than somewhere improvised out of necessity.

More importantly, having different floors creates separation. Work can happen upstairs while cooking, eating and relaxing remain downstairs. At the end of the day, you can close the door and leave work behind rather than having your desk permanently occupying the living room. Also with a generous courtyard garden, working outside in the summer months becomes a reality.

Sometimes it's good to get out

One of the advantages of Fruit Market is the number of places nearby where you can change your surroundings for an hour or two.

Blend at Sneinton Market is practically on the doorstep and has become a well-established local meeting place as well as a speciality coffee shop. It's somewhere to take a laptop, meet a colleague or simply get out of the house for a coffee and a change of scene.

A few minutes further into the city is Broadway Cinema. As well as being one of Nottingham's best-known independent cinemas, Broadway has café-bar spaces, making it another useful place to meet or work away from home. And because Hockley and the city centre are also within walking distance, there are plenty of other places to meet clients, have lunch or simply break up the working day.

The commute becomes a walk

Perhaps the biggest advantage is what happens to the time previously spent commuting. Instead of travelling across the city each morning, you can start work at home, walk out for coffee, have lunch around Sneinton Market, or take a short walk into town for a meeting.

It's a different version of working from home: a proper workspace when you need to concentrate, and a neighbourhood full of places to go when you don't want to work alone.

For hybrid working, that combination of space, separation and city-centre location makes a three-storey Fruit Market house particularly well suited to the way many of us now work.