Picking a floor plan for your home
When picking a floor plan it’s important to consider how you want to live your life. Where things are placed will drastically effect what makes your life easier or more difficult.
Typically, each builder has a set of floor plans they will allow you to choose from when building with them. So this decision will also affect which builder you will choose.
Bedrooms
Bedrooms for the home comes to how many and where they are. How long are you planning to live in the home and how many bedrooms will you need to be comfortable?
For us, we’ve settled on 4 bedrooms with the option to expand to 5 or 6 depending on the need down the road. Currently, we have one child, use one-bedroom for her, one bedroom for myself and husband, one bedroom as an office, and another as a guest room and bedroom for a future child.
Our home will grow with us. Try to make sure that your home will grow with you and/or your family for however long you want to live in the home.
As for the where of bedrooms, visualize if the placement is how you could live your life. All the bedrooms may be on the second floor, or you might want them on separate floors. Maybe they are all together, or you want the master to be separate from the others.
If you plan to use a bedroom as an office, you might want this room to be separated from the main living area. If you have a young child who needs a nursery to be close to the master see if any floor plan provides that.
Bathrooms
Bathrooms is also about where they are and how many there are. Generally there are a few types of baths. Master, full, and half. Again, think of how you want to live your life in a home.
For many people it’s important to have a bath off of the main living space. This bathroom doesn’t necessarily need to be a full bath, but could be a half bath.
One full bath is important in the home so you can bathe. Often if theres more than one full bath you can use one for a guest bath.
Finally, the master bath. This is often deemed the sanctuary bathroom for the home owner. Also, this bathroom could have upgrades you can attach to it. We’ve added a walk in shower with a separate bath tub.
Kitchen
The kitchen is where you’ll spend a lot of time, so make it how you want! The placement of appliances and counter space is super important here. How close do you need your sink to be to the dishwasher? Likewise, how close do you need the fridge to the cook top?
For me, it was really important to have counter space on each side of the cook top to easily chop and prepare food. I also wanted the kitchen to have sight to a major lounging or playing space. It’s important to me to see kiddos while I’m making a meal.
Another plus that I wanted but wasn’t a need was an island with space to place chairs. When baby J is a little older she can eat breakfast there while I’m doing something else. It also acts as a table while we work on finding the right dining room table for our space.
Laundry Room
The laundry room placement is super important if you have kids, but if you don’t it doesn’t matter too much. There usually three common places to have a laundry room in any given floor plan.
The first is right off of the main living space, maybe off the kitchen or off of the living room. It can be pretty convenient if you plan to spend most of your time here and don’t mind having clean laundry in that space.
The second common space is in the basement. If your basement is finished and you have another living space there it can be a really great place for laundry and you’re able to keep it out of the formal living room. Although, you’ll likely have to carry laundry up and down stairs a lot and that can be a hassle.
The third most common place is having it near or off of the bedrooms. This is my personal favorite place to have the laundry. You don’t have to worry about moving it all around the house and you can keep it in one general place. Downsides to this is you might have to run around to swap it or it could be difficult to find time to fold if littles are in the main living space.
If you don’t have children you’ll likely want to have it off of a main living space or off of an office. Either of these will help you do laundry when working or lounging.
Dining Room
Dining Rooms are super important. I believe that meal times give you the best quality time with a spouse or your family. Super big proponent of having a dining room and eating without distractions.
If entertaining is important to you or you have a large family, let your dining room reflect this. You also may want your floor plan to have a formal dining room as well as an informal dining room.
For me, it’s important to have the kitchen near the dining room to easily and quickly move meals.
Living Rooms
Living rooms are one of the most essential places in a floor plan. This is where you live your life. A lot of homes will have a main living area. So it’s important that this main living area is where you want it.
If you have littles an open living area is fantastic for multi tasking. An open living area is also great if you don’t have children and you want to be entertaining.
Other living areas might include a loft, a play area, or a basement. Are any of these super important in your life? If so let that reflect your floor plan.
For us, it was important to have a play area to keep the majority of the toys and be able to keep a formal living room generally clean.
Basements
Basements are fantastic! These are extremely moldable to how you want to live your life. Some common uses of a basement are, a playroom, game room or a casual living area.
Some basements are unfinished and could be an extra cost. to you in the building process. Other homes will not have basements depending on how the area and what the ground allows you to dig for.
One of my personal favorite uses is house hacking. If you haven’t heard of house hacking it’s essentially where you create more than one unit in the home, live in one unit and rent the other. Some places will not allow for the zoning, but you can have a basement entrance to the home and create a small apartment to rent out. Another option would to live in the basement and rent out the top, if space allows for it. Again, some places don’t allow it so check with your builder and floor plan.
Mudrooms
Mudrooms area great for any home. These are places for you to come into the home and take off your shoes or take off wet or dirty clothes so you don’t bring the outside in.
Two common places for these are the main entrance to the home or right off of the garage. Both are great places and you may want to have them both places. Also fantastic for littles who may play in the rain or snow to get them clean and not bring the outside dirt in.
Garage
A garage is another great space in the house. Some floor plans have this and others don’t. Generally, you have two uses for a garage. A storage place or a home for your car or both! A lot of floor plans will allow you to add on a third car garage so make sure it is how you want it to be for your lifestyle!
Outdoor Space
Outdoor space on a floor plan is the final thing I will touch on. A lot of new construction homes have a front porch and a back porch. You can also have a landscaped front and back yard for entertaining, relaxing, or playing. A great use to build in could be an in ground trampoline and a fenced in back yard. So make this space how you want it for your life.
Final Thoughts
Floor plans are essential to the home building process. You will have to make exceptions somewhere in this process and have things maybe a little out of place to how you’d want it.
If you can, tour the model homes and take a minute to visualize your life in that floor plan and it will greatly reduce the stress of picking the right one for you!
Did I miss anything? Let me know down below!