Investing in healthy homes

A healthy home is a must, providing a superior living environment to ensure good health and wellbeing for those residing in it, throughout the life of the building.

New Zealand has healthy home standards that relate to all rental properties, and since 2020, many older homes (private and rental) have been retrofitted to align them with those standards. Now, there’s also a strong movement to start planning for healthier homes right from the design stage, incorporating principles that lead to a future-proof home with aesthetic excellence, superior liveability, and performance.

Many architecture and building companies are specialising in building superior living residences from scratch, and you will find some of them on the following pages. Their purpose is clear: to design and build energy-efficient healthy homes, that balance functionality and the aesthetic aspects of quality architecture. Good design requires a balancing act of the various important attributes which influence overall liveability.

Each site has individual requirements in the same way that each homeowner has an individual design brief. Well-thought-out designs take all of these aspects into account and can be roughly broken down into the areas of site and location, size and footprint, and universal design.