Planning the Design

Room Layout and Flow

Sometimes I start with some idea of the layout of the rooms. Other times I work from a structural mass (exterior walls and roof) and fill in the rooms from there. That approach can be challenging, and there may be other variations, but no one method works best for all designs. However, this design began with some basic layout and flow ideas, along with a very general house shape, and proceeded to my figuring out the basic layout of the exterior walls. Of course, the basic house shape was a rectangle (nearly square) with the garage tacked on the side. You can choose a right or left garage, it doesn't matter (except that you might want access from the garage to the house interior). I also wanted a bedroom over the garage, so that was something to keep in mind.

Here is an image that illustrates, in a general way, how I envisioned the layout of the first floor:

I wanted the living and dining to be "joined". When entertaining, guests will use the two areas to congregate (since food would be served in the dining room, and there are places to sit in the living room).

Of course there needs to be a flow between the kitchen and the dining room. In general, closer together is better.

I usually place the kitchen in the back (emphasizing the break between informal and formal spaces). The living and dining are definitely formal, and the kitchen, laundry, and bath(s) are definitely informal. Generally, you want the back door to enter the informal part of the house (because that's the door the kids will use most often). That's not always the case (see this design for a different approach), but that's the rule I usually follow.

I wanted the notion of a centrally located hallway that joins all the rooms on the floor. Naturally, I placed it between the front and the back of the house, and it moves side to side. It also provides access to the garage, but I did also want the garage entrance to be near the kitchen and laundry.

The front entrance is in the front, and I wanted the stairs to be nearby. I often place the stairs near or next to the front entrance. There are ample examples of this. Look here, and here, for a couple. Other designs may have a different layout, such as this one. In the Florida house, I wanted the stairs to be near the informal kitchen area, since the formal part of the house is well separated from the informal part.

Another important design constraint was the grouping of all the plumbed rooms in a cluster. I wanted the kitchen, laundry, and the half bath to be in the same general area, and I also wanted the bathrooms upstairs to be overtop these rooms, to save on plumbing and piping costs.

I envisioned second floor layout somewhat like the following:

I wanted the bathrooms overtop the kitchen/laundry zone, and of course since the stairs are in a known location, the upper hallway needed to basically be in the same location as the hallway on the first floor.

I wanted a bedroom over the garage, with dormers. It just so happens that the hallway is conveniently located to make entering this bedroom no problem. Actually, it was the consideration of placing the bedroom over the garage and needing to ensure access to it that dictated (somewhat) the location of the stairs.

The master suite takes up most of the floor, and I wanted the office (or perhaps a nursery) to be located just off the master bedroom. Since I decided to place the master bedroom over the living room, placing the office/nursery over the front entry seemed a good decision.

The back left corner (over the dining room) wasn't really convenient to the hallway, so I decided it could only be a large walk-in closet for the master suite. Then, it only made sense that the master bath should be next to it, since it did not need hall access, either. Since the second bath needed access from the hallway, it went in front of the master bath, allowing them to share a "wet wall".

The only other space was just big enough for another bedroom, and that completes the layout of our house.

In the next step we will begin to fill in some walls and set some default materials.

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