Common Home Design Mistakes to Avoid

Building a home is an expensive task that requires a lot of hard work and planning, but it has countless benefits when it’s done right. You get to decide your floor plan, where your patios and porches will be, plan out where to put your garage, your doors, your big bay window in the front, and make sure that everything is just the way you envisioned it. But there are some common home design mistakes that you should be aware of first, just to make sure that everything comes out perfect for you.

Bedroom Location 101: The Master Bedroom

The master bedroom in your home’s design plan should be big enough to not cramp your space, and essentially have a degree of privacy to it. Designing your master bedroom too close to the living room or dining room is a common design mistake that people make when designing their home. A good tip is to picture your family activities going on at different times of the day, (i.e., when you are just waking up, trying to go to sleep, etc.) to see where they will fit into your daily life when your family and busy lives get added to the picture.

Other Bedrooms: About Diagonal Flow

Another one of the most common home design mistakes to avoid is setting up your floor plan for your bedrooms without considering the way traffic will flow from room to room and from your rooms into living areas.

A general rule to follow when designing your home is to keep in mind that if you leave rooms adjacent to each other, or better yet if you have to get into another room diagonally, then you will inevitably struggle to get furniture into the room.

The Kitchen and the Garage: Avoid the Frustration

Another common design mistake to avoid while designing your home is not having the garage easily accessible from the kitchen. This can be annoying when you have to take out the trash, and it makes it way harder on you if you end up adding an extra refrigerator or deep freezer in your garage at some point to get food out for company or family dinners.

Having your kitchen and garage designed as close to each other as possible also makes it easier to bring in groceries and other items from shopping trips. Not to mention the fact that homes built with too much space between these two rooms tend to scare off most homebuyers, who may be aware of this problem.

Adding Too Many Rooms

While every member of the house needs their room, and it’s a given that rooms with specific functions such as your laundry room have to be thought out, you should be careful not to add too many rooms to your design, making your house unappealing.

Adding larger rooms instead of smaller rooms makes your home look more organized and leaves room to multipurpose later on down the road if you end up moving everything around. (i.e., making a den into a study or a bedroom into a home office.)

Additionally, houses designed with larger rooms in them have been found to have higher resale values and attract more prospective buyers than ones with smaller rooms, so looking out for yourself when designing your home will only end up helping out if you ever decide to resell your home.

Foyer Size

When people first enter your home, the first thing that they see is the foyer. Houses with a foyer that is too small may give people a cramped, uncomfortable feeling. Just as a rule of thumb, try to design all staircases to be at least 5 feet from the front entrance of your home just to give your foyer enough space.

Plan Your Design Before You Buy Your Land!

It’s easy to get excited when you’re planning out your dream home. But failing to design your home before purchasing your land could end up being a problem. For example, your lot size and your view from the home could end up not working out the way you had planned, forcing you to have to redesign at the last minute.

You should always design your home first and then look for a piece of land that can accommodate your masterpiece.

Keep Your Home’s “Flow” in Mind

Architects will tell you that well-thought-out homes have “flow.” Flow, quite simply, refers to how easily you can move through the house from room to room. You want to think out hallways and bathrooms well in advance so that your guests don’t end up having to have to walk downstairs if they get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.

Planning Your Kitchen

If there are toddlers or young children in your home, it’s a good idea to design your home to compliment that. So it makes perfect sense that making the kid’s playroom visible from the living area and the kitchen is an easy way to kill a lot of potential frustration.

In fact, since the garden, the living area, and the playroom are some of the children’s most visited areas, so having the kitchen in plain sight of all three is an excellent idea if you can pull it off.

Island Kitchens – What You Should Know in Advance

Kitchens with islands are a popular choice of styles, but you should be careful to choose the correct dimensions and style to accommodate the amount of bench space available. Ideally, you will want to have enough room for the family when they need to gather around the work area for snacks, projects, or when everyone is just hanging around.

Common House Design Mistakes to Avoid – Final Thoughts

We hope that these tips help you to avoid any common house design mistakes when you are planning and contracting your dream home. With a little bit of pre-planning, you should be able to design your home without any complications, so that everything comes out just the way you envisioned it.