We Don't Design a Floor Plan for an Imaginary Family

One of the things I do when we’re working on a floor plan is imagine the people who are actually going to live there.

Not just what the house will look like.

How are they going to live in it?

If it’s a home that could work well for a family with younger children, where should the laundry room be? Sometimes it makes more sense to put it closer to the secondary bedrooms because that’s where most of the laundry will come from.

In other floor plans, we love connecting the laundry room to the primary closet when we can.

We also usually prefer an isolated primary bedroom. If the layout requires another bedroom nearby, we’ll try to use a bathroom or closet as separation rather than putting two bedroom walls directly against each other.

And then there’s storage.

I’m always looking for somewhere to sneak in another closet, another cabinet or extra storage in a hallway because I don’t think anyone has ever complained that their house had too much storage.

These aren’t necessarily the features that make someone stop scrolling when they see a picture of a beautiful new home.

They’re the things that make you love living there six months later.

One reason we moved from custom building to thoughtfully designed, move-in-ready homes is that we’ve had years to learn what works. We talked about that in Why We Believe Spec Homes Can Be the Better Choice. We can use what we’ve learned building custom homes without requiring the next homeowner to make every decision from scratch. 

You can see a great example at 504 N 13th Street in Windsor Estates at Preston Manor. It has an isolated primary suite, an extra-large primary closet, laundry conveniently located near the bedrooms, plenty of kitchen storage, and, of course, a flex space. 

A floor plan should look good on paper.

But more importantly, it should work when you’re actually living in it.