Lifestyle Pianos is a recently deployed term that generally refers to the type of contemporary styled piano that would not look out of place in the lounge of your home or if you are lucky enough - in your music room.
The "lifestyle piano" term was originally used by Roland in reference to a particular range of their home piano models that had been designed in a sleek modern style with a small footprint. Many of their range have piano lids that when are closed almost disguise the fact that it is in fact a musical instrument as the piano takes on the look of a piece of contemporary furniture …
Digitally Created Piano Sounds
Lifestyle pianos are almost exclusively digital pianos, and as such they use sampled piano sounds that are stored in the memory and recalled at will. They have many benefits over traditional pianos not least of which is the cost; aside from this the size and footprint of the instrument is considerably less than an acoustic upright and has the added advantage of both a volume control and a headphone socket for silent practice.
Lifestyle pianos also tend to have integral speakers and amplifiers which mean that they are ready to play as soon as they are switched on …