Mistakes when designing your house layout floor plan
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When designing your own house layout plan, you come with hopes of it being the perfect home of your dreams. However, in many cases, people end up wishing they had done things differently. In fact, you will never be fully satisfied with every design aspect of your home, especially if you are not an architect and have a lot of experience in home designing. The important thing is minimizing the number of regrettable design flaws when deciding the layout of your house.
The first thing to be conscious about is that each home is different. Each person’s view is different, and what works well for one person may not work well for you. Don’t assume every layout fits your lifestyle, so assess your needs before choosing your floor plan. Do you like a single story or multistory home? Do you prefer an open floor plan or individual rooms with partitions?
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Most house plans are conceived with the broad scope of how most families would live in their home. While it’s important that you feel like your home is your own, certain pitfalls most are avoided when thinking of the resale of your home in the future.
General house layout plan design mistakes to avoid
Rooms designed for specific use
Don’t create too many rooms designed in a specific way for a specific use. This makes bad use of square footage and reduces the flexibility for future use. In case you want to resale, you will attract more potential buyers when they can visualize their own options for these spaces.
Go for great room layouts (kitchen + dining + living)
This will provide flexibility for entertaining. Place the kitchen and the living at opposite ends of the entire space for noise buffering, while keeping the openness of vision.
Placing spaces without considering the orientation.
Many people do not realize the need to optimize a floor plan that is well oriented toward air and sunlight. You should check that your rooms are well ventilated and naturally lit without being overheated.
Building too big or too small
Over-building or under-building are nasty traps. Don’t add rooms that you will never use. Take some time and think about what you really need out of your next home. While building too big can be a costly mistake, building too small presents its own issues: having enough space is crucial to being comfortable and feeling “at home”.
Read more: Small bathroom layouts from architect
Assuming that you will not become old
Planning to have all the bedrooms on the second floor may fit your current lifestyle, but think about the future needs and how life in the house might evolve.
Not considering safety for the kids
Safety should come first. Many floor plan amenities, such as modern stairs without railings or expansive glass shower enclosures, look great for adults but may need to be modified for families with small children.
Not putting in necessary hallways
Hallways are often considered a loss of square footage, but they are an important element in the articulation of any house layout plan. Hallways create a transition from one zone to another, and they are required when zones are not compatible in terms of use. For example, you must use a hallway to separate the master bedroom from the great room. On the other hand, too many hallways eat up an important sum of square footage, and can also give the feeling of a chaotic house, so keep it wise.
A big distance between the kitchen and the garage
You might want to keep these two spaces as close to each other as possible. It allows you to transfer your groceries from the car to the kitchen quickly, without passing through the entire house. However, try not to let the garage entry sit at the front façade of the house; the entry door is a crucial element of every home, not garage doors.
Keep the bedrooms, and especially the master bedroom, away from the main living spaces
If you place your bedroom too close to the kitchen or living room, it will get all the noise from these spaces. Avoid having the entry to the bedroom directly off all those spaces where family and friends gather.
Consider a half bathroom (toilet and sink) as a must have in your house
Putting a half bath near the foyer and living area avoids guests asking to go to private bathrooms (where it’s often difficult to hide stuff to keep them neat and presentable). Make sure to keep the half bath out of the living room or foyer’s eye line! It’s best to keep views into bathrooms out of sight from living spaces, which will also make using the bathroom more comfortable, psychologically, for your guests.
Read more: Looking Beyond Minimalist Design for Your Home
Written by Oriana Gomez-Zerpa. February 26, 2016
Oriana is an accomplished architect with strong skills in creative thinking, conceptualization and design. She attended Architecture schools at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Universidad Central de Venezuela. She later pursued her Master’s degree at the prestigious Politecnico di Milano in Italy. She shares with us her passion for interior design and architecture.
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Your opinion matters, leave a comment
I have just finished drawing out what I want my home to look like from the inside. I never thought about the fact, as this article states, that I will become old and need to think about that. I think I might get help from a designer to help me bring my thoughts to reality. Also I will make changes because of the fact it is smart to plan for the future when I am older!