Categories: Blog

Selecting a floor plan is one of the more important decisions you will make during the design of your new home construction in Denver. Walking through existing homes or models can help you come up with ideas and develop preferences, but it always helps to be able to read a two-dimensional floor plan sketch like a pro.

Here are some of the things that home builders think about when evaluating a floor plan:

Privacy and Togetherness

Even the healthiest, tightest knit families need a reasonable amount of privacy. Placing the children’s bedrooms too close to the master bedroom is a good example of a potentially poor balance of privacy and togetherness.

Each type of room has its own ideal placement relative to the other rooms in the home. To continue the master bedroom example, this area would ideally have its own wing, a comfortable distance from the main media or entertainment space in the home, with few shared walls and nothing above or below it.

At the same time, privacy can be taken too far. Ideally, kitchens shouldn’t isolate cooks from the rest of the family. This is why many people choose to have an open floor plan between the family room or great room and the kitchen. A similar type of open floor plan is becoming more common between living rooms and game/playrooms, allowing kids and parents to feel together while enjoying their own spaces.

Evaluating the balance of privacy and togetherness is definitely a huge key to understanding a floor plan.

Sight Lines

Have you ever felt that, despite having similar square footage, two particular homes felt very different in size? Don’t worry, it’s not you. The answer to this mystery is sight lines.

A home can live small or it can live large compared to its actual square footage. Homes that have walls, closed doors, columns, or anything else blocking sight lines will feel smaller than they really are. Open spaces make a home look and feel larger than it actually is.

Evaluate your floor plan to make sure there is enough openness to give your family and any guests the feeling that your home is spacious and attractive.

Window Placement

Windows have a big impact on a home’s personality. For that impact to be positive, windows will need to be placed properly.

– A bay window can make a small dining room or family room appear bigger
– A breakfast nook window can be placed strategically to allow in morning light
– An improperly placed window could diminish the viewing experience of a TV by overexposing it to light

Windows should be placed where they will have maximum impact and be enjoyed every day. Which direction they face, and what type of light (morning, afternoon, evening) they will catch will determine the ideal placement.

Traffic Flow

Promoting a comfortable flow from room to room is a top priority for every floor plan. With the ease of flow in mind, many builders today are reducing the number of hallways in home designs. According to a flooring and Minneapolis carpeting experts at Galaxie Floor Stores, “horizontal banding is an interesting design technique that has become popular with contractors. It’s a design strategy that allows people to navigate logically and comfortably from room to room.”

Room adjacency, furniture placement, and stairway placement all affect the way people move through your home. The presence, or lack, of flow, will be a big determiner in the overall success of your floor plan.

Contact Division One Construction for Floor Plan Expertise

There are so many factors that go into a properly designed floor plan. For assistance created, evaluating, or executing a floor plan for your new construction home, contact Division One Construction today!