When planning your dream home, it’s important to stop and take stock of all the features you’d like to have available to you. Your design can and should be tailored to your needs and concerns, not the other way around. But if your designer doesn’t know what those needs are, he or she cannot take your wants and desires into account.
Here are a few tips to help your designer create exactly the dream house you have in mind:
1. Start with Simple
While many people will start with a fancy drafting or design program to lay out their dream home, sometimes the best place to start is with a pencil and paper. Create lists of things you’d like to have in each room of the house, instead of trying to figure out what to put in a room after the fact. “Custom home” should MEAN “custom.”
2. Plan for the Future
Your needs right now may not be your needs in a year. Think ahead. Are you planning to expand your family with children? Will you need an office? Or are you looking to start a club? Pick up a hobby? Allocating space in your new home in the planning stage will spare you headaches later.
3. Keep your Lot in Mind
Custom homes are built on your land. Keep in mind the existing features of your lot, not just the size of it, and design the footprint of your home to showcase interesting features. If your lot has a view to the north, perhaps positioning your family room – with plenty of windows to take in the view – that way would impact the layout of your home. If you have a brook or a stream, perhaps you would prefer to have a bedroom nearest to it so that the soothing sound of running water could be heard while you sleep.
4. Prioritize your Desired Features
Once you work out a basic layout and plan for your custom home, make a list of the features you want to have – and then put them in a priority order. It’s easy to let your fancies get the better of you, and taking a moment to order things may make it easier to decide what you REALLY do need in your home.
5. Think about Light
Natural light has an incredible effect on human beings, and a lack of light can lead to depression, lethargy, and a host of other symptoms/side effects. To combat this, try to make sure your new home will be well-lit not only with light from windows, but perhaps from skylights as well.
Placement of your windows and lighting fixtures is also important. Since you have already planned out the use for the rooms of your custom home, it should be relatively easy to determine where you will need the most lighting.
6. Function and Flow!
Stop for a moment and consider how you will move around in your new home. Furniture, doors, and even windows all affect traffic patterns. Try to identify potential bottlenecks now, when you can easily make changes if necessary, and you will minimize the chances of bumping into people and furniture once your home is built.