![]() ![]() Rather than having to carry them dripping through the entire house to the dryer, you get up from the mudroom bench, cross the tile floor to the dryer, and drop them in. You enter through the garage – or rear – entrance, slip out of your shoes and slosh out of your wet clothes. Speaking of laundry rooms, if it’s on the main floor, why not double it up as a mudroom? Think of it as the ideal combination: you finally get out of the downpour and are excited to get in some warm clothes. With the laundry room here, climbing up and downstairs is reduced to a minimum, and space on the main level is available for other purposes ( Plan #163-1001). ![]() This 2-story, 4-bedroom, 2.5-bath traditional Country style home (top) has the laundry room on the upper level (bottom) in the bedrooms vicinity, where dirty clothes are generated. Relocating the laundry room to the second floor has more appeal than simply reducing the work – it also leaves more space downstairs, which means you now have more room to enjoy company, stick in a side table and/or chairs, or create an alcove office (more on that later). It sounds exhausting just talking about it! A great way to cut out that back and forth is to put the laundry room upstairs. With most of the bedrooms upstairs, you spend your days hauling baskets overflowing with clothes up and down the stairs. Laundry is never fun, but especially not in a two-story house. But how many bathtubs do you need? Think of all the space you can save using a combination shower/bath, or better yet, a stall shower? Designers have thought of that. Sinking into a nice luxurious bath at the end of the day is really the best way to leave all of your daily stresses behind. In this 4-bedroom, 3-bath Craftsman style home, the space could be used as a 5th bedroom, office, crafts room, exercise room, playroom, or any of these uses or more alternatively as the need arises, eliminating the need to dedicate space for limited use ( Plan #142-1102). The designer of this floor plan uses flex space at the front of the house, which can be used for multiple purposes. And homeowners love the difference!Ī couple of additional examples of multi-purpose rooms are offices also used as spare bedrooms and bedrooms doubling as game rooms. Rather than have the food prep area and food consumption area be kept separate, many home designers create space-efficient floor plans by eliminating the rarely-used formal dining room. One example of this is doubling up the kitchen and dining room. Known as flex space, using one room for multiple purposes really frees up the rest of the house. In situations where space is limited or designers simply want to free up more room for other things, they often create multi-purpose rooms. Pocket doors and barn doors allow spaces to change from concealed to available quickly, while french doors still give the space that open feel and provide the privacy and peace while you take that quick phone call – or nap! The living, dining, and kitchen areas share one large space, and the only walls separate private bedroom areas.įor example, if there needs to be a divider for a home office or bedroom, consider a sliding pocket door, french doors, or even a barn door. ( Wheelchair accessibility – Universal Design – calls for wider hallways).Ī great example of minimizing walls and sharing space between rooms this floor plan of a 3-bedroom, 2-bath Country Farmhouse style Ranch home ( Plan #141-1243). ![]() Sure, it may only be a few inches here and there, but those are inches that can be devoted to a larger vanity – or more closet space.Īnother tactic designers use is to widen hallways that are necessary, allowing room for a nice bench to store your shoes and bags, a bookcase, or even handicap access. Reducing hallway space creates more room for bathrooms or bedrooms, which often get short-changed in a floor plan, especially one tight on square footage. Some designers minimize – or even eliminate – hallways by having one room run right into another or having multiple rooms, like bedrooms, branching off from a central spot. Who decided that having a long rectangular room that served no purpose other than to get from one room to the next was a thing in home design? It’s time to change it up. They include minimizing hallways, using open floor place, making rooms flexible, making the most of outdoor space, grouping mudrooms and laundry rooms, and more ( Plan #142-1168). ft.) shows off many of the tricks designers use to make house plans more efficient. This average size 3-bedroom, 2.5-bath Country style home (under 2600 sq. ![]()
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