Before You Fall In Love With A Floor Plan
One of the first things people do when they start thinking about building a custom home is look at floor plans. And I understand why. It's exciting to imagine what your new home might look like. You start looking at kitchens, primary suites, outdoor living spaces, and all the things you've always wanted in a house.
Before long, you've collected a dozen plans, and there's usually one or two that you keep coming back to. Maybe you've even found one that seems just about perfect.
There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I encourage people to bring those plans to our first meeting. They tell me quite a bit about what someone likes and what they're hoping to accomplish.
But there's something I always want people to understand.
Just because you love a floor plan doesn't necessarily mean it's the right floor plan for you.
And if you're going to invest the time and money to build a truly custom home, that's an important distinction.
A Floor Plan Is Only Part of the Story
I've been designing homes for more than three decades, and one thing I've learned is that two families can come to me with almost identical lists of rooms and end up with two completely different houses.
Both might want four bedrooms, a home office, a large kitchen, and plenty of space for entertaining. On paper, their requirements look nearly identical.
But once we start talking about how they live, the differences become apparent.
One family might entertain every weekend, with friends and relatives moving between the kitchen, living areas, and outdoor spaces. Another might entertain only occasionally and prefer a home that feels more private and intimate.
One person might want a kitchen that's the center of everything happening in the house. Someone else might love to cook but prefer to keep the preparation and cleanup out of sight when guests are visiting.
Neither approach is better than the other. They're simply different ways of living, and the design should reflect that.
That's what makes a home custom.
It isn't the number of bedrooms, the square footage, or how expensive the finishes are. It's whether the house was designed around the people who are going to live there.
How Do You Actually Use Your Home?
When I'm getting to know a new client, I'm interested in much more than their room list.
I want to know what happens in their house on an ordinary Tuesday.
Where does everyone end up at the end of the day? Does the family spend most of its time together, or does everyone tend to retreat to their own space? Do you work from home? Do you entertain formally, casually, or both?
I also want to know what frustrates you about the house you're living in now.
Maybe the kitchen is too far from the garage, so bringing in groceries is a chore. Maybe the living room looks beautiful but nobody ever uses it. Maybe you have a home office, but it's in the middle of the house and you can't get any privacy when you're working.
These things matter.
When you're looking at a floor plan online, it's easy to focus on the individual rooms. What's harder to see is how those rooms are going to work together once you're actually living in the house.
A room can be beautifully proportioned and still be in the wrong place. A large kitchen can have an impressive island and plenty of cabinetry but still not function well for the person doing the cooking.
Good residential design takes all of that into consideration. It's about understanding the relationships between spaces and making sure those relationships work for the people who use them.
The Property Changes Everything
Here's another thing I wish more people understood before they become attached to a floor plan.
The land should have a say in what gets built on it.
I've worked with some extraordinary properties over the years, and I've also worked with properties that presented some pretty significant challenges. Steep hillsides, unusual lot configurations, setbacks, rock outcroppings, protected trees, and limited building areas.
Those conditions aren't necessarily problems. In fact, some of our most interesting designs have come from figuring out how to work with them.
But they do influence the design.
You might find a plan with a beautiful rear terrace and a wall of windows overlooking the backyard. It looks wonderful in the photographs. But what if the best view from your property is off to one side? What if that wall of glass faces directly into your neighbor's house? What if the slope of the land makes the arrangement impractical or unnecessarily expensive to build?
You can certainly modify an existing plan, and sometimes that's a perfectly reasonable approach. But once you start moving rooms, changing rooflines, adjusting the foundation, and reworking the relationship between indoor and outdoor spaces, you may discover that you're changing the very things that attracted you to the plan in the first place.
I've always believed we should design with the land, not against it.
When you start with the property and the people who will live there, you have an opportunity to create something that belongs in that particular setting.
Think Beyond the House You Need Today
Another conversation I like to have early in the process is about the future.
Not because I expect anyone to predict exactly what their life will look like twenty years from now, but because a custom home is a substantial investment. It makes sense to think about how your needs might change.
Maybe your children are young now, but eventually they'll be teenagers who want their own space. Perhaps you're approaching retirement and expect to spend more time at home. You may have parents who could eventually need to live with you, or adult children who will come back to visit with families of their own.
Sometimes it's as simple as thinking about whether you'll still want to climb stairs every day when you're older.
We don't need to design a house around every possible scenario. That would be impractical. But there are often things we can do during the initial design that make a home more adaptable without compromising how you want to live today.
And those decisions are usually much easier to make on paper than after the house has been built.
Don't Throw Away Those Floor Plans
After everything I've said, you might think I'm going to tell you to stop looking at floor plans.
Quite the opposite.
Keep collecting them. Save the photographs. Make notes about the things you like and the things you don't. All of that information can be useful.
But I would encourage you to look at those plans a little differently.
Instead of asking yourself whether a particular house has all the rooms you want, start asking why certain arrangements appeal to you.
Maybe you keep coming back to plans with a courtyard. Is it because you like the appearance of a courtyard, or because you want a private outdoor space where you can relax without feeling exposed to the neighbors?
Perhaps you're drawn to large, open living areas. Is it because you love entertaining, or because you want to be able to see and interact with your family throughout the day?
Maybe you like the idea of a separate guest wing. Is that about privacy for your guests, privacy for yourself, or both?
Those answers tell me much more than the floor plan itself.
They help us understand what you're really looking for, and that's where the design process starts to become interesting.
A Custom Home Should Fit You
There's a difference between building a custom home and personalizing a house that someone else designed.
You can take an existing plan, change the finishes, move a few walls, enlarge the kitchen, and add features that make it feel more like yours. You may end up with a very beautiful house.
But you're still starting with someone else's idea of how you should live.
When we design a custom home, we have the opportunity to approach that question from the other direction.
We start by understanding how you want to live, what matters to you, and what you expect from your home. Then we consider the property, the budget, and the practical requirements of construction. The floor plan develops from those conversations.
That's the part of residential design I've always found most rewarding. Taking the things people tell me about their lives, sometimes things they hadn't even thought were important, and translating them into a home that feels natural to them.
So if you've already found a floor plan you love, bring it with you. We'll look at it together. We'll talk about what you like, what you would change, and why those things matter.
It may turn out to be an excellent starting point.
But I wouldn't want you to settle for a house that almost fits your life when you have the opportunity to design one that truly does.
Anthony Rueden is the Principal Designer of Rueden Group, an Atlanta-based residential design firm specializing in distinctive custom homes.
Part life. Part style. All you.