The Indian Home in 2035: What Might Actually Change?
Predicting the future home is easy to get wrong. Start with what can be measured, and design for change.
A hallway that works at any age: level, bright and easy to hold onto.
Two pictures in this article are AI-generated concept illustrations of fictional rooms. Neither shows a completed Team Design Architects project. The diagram was drawn for this article.
Predictions about the future home tend to age badly. Floating staircases, robot kitchens, a screen on every wall. Most of it never arrives, and what does arrive turns out to be duller than the forecast: a thermostat, a solar panel, a handrail.
A house built today will stand in 2035 and well beyond it, so the useful question is not what the home of the future looks like. It is what is already changing, and what a house should do about it. This guide takes five forces that can be measured. For each it separates the numbers, which come from sources, from our view of what follows, which does not.
The numbers are projections and targets. Read them as the direction of travel, not as promises.
Heat
Cooling is the biggest number on the list. The draft India Cooling Action Plan projects that the nation's cooling requirement will grow about eight times between 2017-18 and 2037-38. Cooling in buildings grows nearly eleven times, and the energy supplied for cooling rises from about 135 TWh to about 600 TWh. [1] That is a projection, not a certainty, and it comes from the draft, so check the final plan.
Our view is that this makes passive design more valuable, not less. Shade, orientation, thick walls, cross-ventilation and a verandah cut the load before any machine is switched on, and the machines that remain can be smaller. We covered the ideas in our guide to designing for the monsoon, in the piece on making a modern home feel Indian, and in The Jaali, Reconsidered.
Ask your architect
- Which walls and windows take the afternoon sun, and how are they shaded?
- Which rooms can be kept comfortable by moving air before they need a machine?
- If the air conditioning fails on the hottest day, how does the house cope?
Ageing
By 2050, people over 60 are projected to be more than 20 percent of India's population, and by 2046 there are expected to be more older people than children. The number of people over 80 is projected to grow by about 279 percent between 2022 and 2050. [2] The UNFPA report favours older people ageing at home, in multigenerational households. [2]
Our view is that a house for a young family today will soon be a house for an older one, and often for both at once. That argues for a few quiet decisions at the start, when they cost little: a step-free route into the house and through it, doors wide enough to turn in, a bedroom and bathroom that could work on the ground floor, good daylight, and floors that grip when wet. None of it needs to look like a care home. The hallway at the top of this page has a level floor, a continuous timber handrail and a window seat, and it reads as a home.
This sits awkwardly with something we praised in our piece on making a modern home feel Indian. A raised threshold with a seat, the otla, is a lovely place to pause, and a barrier to a wheelchair. The answer is not to flatten every threshold. It is to design a level route beside it from the start.
Ask your architect
- Is there a step-free route from the street to the main living spaces?
- Could a bedroom and bathroom work on the ground floor if they had to?
- Are the doors, corridors and bathrooms wide enough to use with a walking aid?
- Where could a handrail go, and is the wall strong enough to take one?
Cities
The UN-Habitat World Cities Report 2022 projects that India's urban population will reach about 675 million in 2035, a 43.2 percent urban share. [3] More people in cities means more flats, smaller plots and more homes that have to do several jobs in the same area.
Our view is that the flat will keep borrowing the ideas of the house: a balcony that works as a verandah, a screen that lets a room change use, a window that opens onto moving air. The room in the picture is a study by day and a guest room at night. A sliding timber screen, a fold-away desk and a daybed share a few square metres. It is the cheapest kind of flexibility, because it needs furniture and a screen, not a rebuild.
Ask your architect
- Which rooms could change use over the next ten years, and what would it take?
- Where does each room get light and moving air?
- What does the balcony do, and could it work as a verandah?
Energy
The government's PM Surya Ghar scheme aims to put rooftop solar on 1 crore households by 2026-27. As of 10 March 2025 it had facilitated over 3 GW of rooftop capacity, with a further 27 GW targeted by March 2027. [4] Those are scheme figures, and dated ones, so check current progress. Separately, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency's Eco Niwas Samhita sets minimum performance for the building envelope of homes, including natural ventilation and daylight. [5]
Our view is that the roof is becoming a working surface, and it should be designed as one. That means thinking about which way it faces, whether its structure can carry panels, where the inverter and any battery will sit, and how someone gets onto it safely to clean and maintain it. Our Mist View Bungalows in Lonavala were designed with south-facing roofs for solar panels. The idea works better in the first drawings than when it is added to a finished roof.
Ask your architect
- Which way does the roof face, and how much of it is free of shade?
- Can the roof structure carry panels, and how are they fixed without compromising the waterproofing?
- Where do the inverter and any battery go, and how is the roof reached safely?
Rain
In Ratnagiri, a 30-year IMD study found more very heavy to exceptionally heavy rainfall events even as total rainfall showed no significant change. [6] It is one district, but it is the kind of signal a house on the coast should plan for. A house has to cope with the worst afternoon, not the average one. Our guide to designing for the monsoon covers the plot, the roof, the entrance and the upkeep in detail.
What probably will not matter
This part is our opinion, not a forecast. We would not hang a house on a feature that depends on one gadget or one platform, because the gadget will be out of date long before the walls are. Choose wiring and conduit that can be re-run, and space for equipment that can be replaced. Trends in colour and finish come and go. The things that last are daylight, air, shade, a good plan and honest materials.
Designing for change
If there is one idea in this guide, it is that a house should be easy to change. Structure lasts longest, so get it right and keep it generous. Services need replacing, so keep them reachable. Walls that can move, rooms that can change use and an entrance that works for everyone cost little at the start and a great deal later.
Ask your architect
- What in this house will be hardest to change, and have we accepted that on purpose?
- Can the pipes, wires and ducts be reached without breaking finished walls?
- Which rooms are designed to change use, and how?
- What would it take to add a ramp, a lift or solar panels later?
What stays the same
Underneath all of this, the old ideas keep their value. A courtyard still lets heat out and light in. A verandah still gives you a place to sit between the street and the house. A screen still manages sun and sight. A deep roof still keeps off the rain. The forces above do not replace those ideas. They are good reasons to use them well.
To see how we take a project from first conversation to handover, read about our process. Most of these changes land inside the home, so see our home interiors in Mumbai. The bungalows we have designed show them at house scale, and what an architect costs explains the budget.
Terms used in this guide
- Ageing in place: growing older at home instead of moving to a care setting. The UNFPA report calls it in situ ageing.
- Cooling demand: the amount of cooling a building or a country needs to stay comfortable.
- Passive design: using orientation, shade, materials and airflow to keep a building comfortable without machines.
- Rooftop solar: panels fixed to a roof to generate electricity for the building.
- TWh: a terawatt-hour, a billion kilowatt-hours.
- Universal design: design that works for people of all ages and abilities without special adaptation.
Sources
[2] UNFPA India. India Ageing Report 2023, released 27 September 2023.
[3] UN-Habitat World Cities Report 2022, as reported by Republic World.
[4] Press Information Bureau. PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana, March 2025.
[5] Bureau of Energy Efficiency. Eco Niwas Samhita, residential building envelope.
Research accessed 1 October 2026. Several figures are projections or targets and may have been revised. The passages marked as our view are opinion. The pictures illustrate ideas, not completed work.