Planning out your dream home is an exciting and exhaustive undertaking. When the possibilities are just about endless, it can seem impossible for the average consumer to decide on a coherent home design scheme. Your home should be a reflection of your style, so don’t worry about following every trend that has bombarded you with more ideas than you know what to do with. Just pick something you like and go with it! But if you still need some help deciding where to start your focus, here are some of the more popular choices that people in your position have been making lately when it comes to choosing the perfect house plan.
This one-story house plan features an open living space accented by light flooring, gray countertops, brown cabinets, white walls and a stone fireplace. View the floor plans and additional photographs of House Plan 3245.
Open It Up
It’s been going this way for a while, but especially now, open floorplans are the way to make the rest of your house’s design fall into place. Gone are the days of rigidly divided rooms and Victorian formality—being able to transition seamlessly between spaces is much more in line with our more relaxed attitudes. This means checking out contemporary architecture for ideas, because this has been a hallmark of that style since its inception, but don’t worry if you have a home that isn’t modern in the least. Open floor plans are finding their ways into the most unlikely of houses nowadays. Ask a builder for advice if you want to try to expose closed-off rooms to create the kind of flow that modern home plans love to show off.
What does this mean for your design, though? If you have a heavily partitioned main floor that includes a living room, dining room, and a kitchen, then imagine merging these areas into a single living space. Being able to watch television from the kitchen means more family time while cooking, and reducing the formality of dinner at the table means freer flowing conversation and a relaxed eating atmosphere. By removing hallways and smaller, seldom-used rooms, you create more usable space and don’t waste any of your square footage!
Make It Great
The trend toward open floor plans has redefined how we look at our space. Without walls and clear boundaries, we can sometimes be at a loss for what to call things. Did you merge your dining and living areas to create a great room—a term that encompasses any number of functional spaces such as those for eating, relaxing, studying, and working—and now you aren’t sure what to do with it? Just remember that this is supposed to be a hassle-free arrangement, and that the key feature is its multifunctional nature.
The whole point of this seamless design is to make every part of your home as useful as possible, as often as possible. Why not incorporate some shelves to make it a bit like a library? Books or DVDs—it doesn’t much matter. The point is to make your great room usable no matter the occasion. You can still watch TV and eat there, but you should also be able to sit down with a favorite novel, or set up a laptop in the corner to get some work done.
Au Naturel
Sometimes natural is the way to go. For a good while, darker, edgy flooring has been the norm, but a natural finish is timeless and will reward you by remaining fashionable for many years. Best of all, if you decide that it just isn’t working for you, it’s just a matter of staining and refinishing if you really do want the dark and mysterious vibe after all.
While shopping around for hardwood flooring, look for selections that look naturally stressed. This gives you plenty of style and ways to personalize the look to make it your own, but it also ensures that your home will age gracefully. A natural distressed look will hide damage readily, and you won’t be driven to exhaustion by trying to maintain a look of perfection.
Now that you’re thinking about this type of flooring, you should probably have some idea of what to ask for when you shop. Lighter woods that come in white are beachy, while a gray-colored floor is truly neutral and goes with anything. Handscraped flooring gives the look of wear that so many people love, but this can also be achieved by lime washing or bleaching to give a different overall feel. Try to stick to matte flooring as well, which really lets you see the wood and won’t advertise any little dings like a well-polished floor would. If all of this is too much to take in, start at the industry standard of red oak flooring and see all the treatments that can be done to it. A wide variety of looks can be achieved depending on how it’s finished.
This crisp gourmet kitchen is one of the many highlights of House Plan 5893, a traditional two-story house plan. View 48 photographs of this best-selling home design to get inspired to build your new home.
Better Baths and Kitchens
Your kitchen and bathrooms are, first and foremost, entirely practical parts of your home. No amount of decorating can take away from that fact, but an exceptionally well-designed example is likely to make people swoon. Of course, with all the fixtures and appliances to consider, kitchens and bathrooms are by far the most expensive parts of your home. That’s why it’s especially important to focus on a timeless design.
Just like with floors, lighter, natural finishes are a good choice. Bathroom cabinets often come in white, so you probably don’t think twice about it, but white kitchen cabinets are also an option that many people don’t consider. Why not take a look in a showroom and decide if this light and bright possibility can do great things for you?
Also think about your countertops. What used to be considered a luxury is so commonplace now that the novelty—and thus much of the desire for it—has worn off. Granite is expensive to quarry and transport, so it’s worth your time to look for a more affordable and personal solution, like engineered stone and concrete. There are many more color options than you might think, and this is in no way settling for an inferior product, because these countertops are gorgeous and durable.
In the same way as granite, the stainless steel finish has started to lose its appeal. Take this opportunity to explore all the color options out there—you wouldn’t know they were available if you never looked!
Ease of Living
You might be asking if there is any coherence between all these elements. Why the focus on hardwood floors? Did somebody actually just say to avoid stainless steel finishes?
Simply put, today’s homes are moving toward being as user friendly as possible. Your great room can be cleaned much more quickly without all those pesky walls and corners to get around. Hardwood is easy to sweep and mop, but stainless steel loves to display grubby fingerprints. You should live comfortably in your home without constantly having to maintain it. There are more important things in life.
So, design a home that will be easy on you. This might mean stepping away from what you already know, but you will surely come to love the extra time it saves!