Four Key Floor Plan Considerations

There is an interesting article at NewHome Source that discusses floor plan trends, and may be useful if you are considering building or remodeling a home in an active adult community. Planning the layout of your new home is half the fun when you are making a move, and this article cites four useful pieces of information you should consider.

Site Lines. Want to make your space look bigger? Then you need to consider how you can open up the views from several different key perspectives in your home. Walling off views makes a space seem smaller. There are many professional and amateur CAD-type programs on the market that will help you visualize what certain interior perspectives will be long before the first nail is pounded.

Traffic Patterns. As the NewHome article states: "The success of a floor plan isn't judged by how it looks when you're standing still or seated. The true measure of a floor plan is how you move through it." This requires not only looking at the floor plan, but really walking it in your mind to understand how the space will function.

Privacy and Togetherness. It is important to plan for both privacy and togetherness in your floor plan. For growing families, these issues will affect the placement of children's rooms in the home. For people who live in active adult communities, these same issues are important when children or grandchildren come to stay for a visit.

Windows. Windows can have a dramatic effect on space, so what type of windows you use and where you place them is critically important to the final design.

As NewHome Source notes, the information for their article came from a well-designed interactive brochure produced by David Weekly Homes. You can download it here.

You will also find some other good tips on floor plan trends at Realtor Magazine Online. In addition, floor plan trends specific to the 55+ age group can be found at HGTVpro.com.