Have you just bought a new home?
Are you working on a renovation, building an extension, or just rearranging? Planning the layout of your home more effectively can save you a lot of time. There are lots of factors to consider, from the measurements of the rooms and the size of your furniture, to how the layout will suit your lifestyle.
Mismatching Your Floor Plan And Lifestyle
Your lifestyle should be the biggest factor that influences the layout of your home. For example, if you love to host guests on a regular basis, then don’t put the guest bathroom on a different floor to the dining room.
If you have outside space, make sure you can reach it from a communal area, not only through the master bedroom. Take a look at professional floor plans, like these townhouse floor plans, for inspiration and to understand how rooms can flow together.
Form Vs Function
A plan might look fantastic on paper, but not work in real life. Mistakes can become obvious only when you move in. For example, maybe you put your kitchen too far from the entrance you use most, so now you have to carry groceries through the whole house.
Maybe you designed a grand master suite, and now your small double bed looks lost. To ensure your layout functions well, try to picture yourself going about your daily routines in the space, and spot any potential functional challenges.
Not Thinking About How You Use Your Space
Even if your layout is functional if you don’t think enough about the way you use your space, you can still have a bad experience. For example, if you put the walkway from your living room to the kitchen in a place that means people have to walk between the sofa and the television, you’re going to create an annoying obstacle for anyone trying to watch TV.
Poor Space Allocation
Even in a larger home, just a small amount of space wasted in one area can make a big difference elsewhere. Corridors are a great example of this problem. Corridors can be attractive as well as practical, but for functional reasons and for fire safety, keep them to a minimum. The space you save by dropping corridors will be much better used in your family room or bedrooms.
Missing Storage
Forgetting to put in enough storage or the right kind of storage is a common problem in home design and one that is expensive to put right. No architect or home planner will know your storage needs better than you do, and the best storage will depend on your lifestyle.
For example, do you need space for bikes? Do you need space in the family room for lots of toys? Does your bedroom need a lot of wardrobe space for your collection of limited edition trainers? You being involved in the storage planning process is essential so you get what you need.
Proper storage will help you to avoid clutter, giving you a more organized and much calmer space.
