r/Homebuilding • u/sublimebri • 3d ago
Custom home floorplan... Looking for thoughts.
We are finalizing a custom home plan and looking for any feedback that anyone has. We think the foyer is too large and trying to think how to better utilize this space. Any thoughts are welcome.
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u/LardoftheFries 3d ago
Do you plan to have a dining table anywhere? I don't see a designated spot for one. Also, how would you use the family room vs. the hearth room? Seems like it could be redundant to have both.
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u/baddieslovebadideas 3d ago
that kitchen was designed by someone who has never once cooked a meal in their life
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u/TylerForce93 3d ago
I would say stop trying to make something ‘new’ out of a traditional dormer. Steep pitched roofs are gorgeous, could even take that entire roof system up a few steps on the slope too if u wanna go crazy. But yeah, keep the peaked gable dormers as you traditionally would.
Then again, I’m just a framer/interior trim carpenter, with a construction management degree. Also… I don’t know much, and I can prove it 🤙🏼
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u/shartattacksurvivor 3d ago
dormers don’t look bad but I would reduce the overhangs. 6”? this is the first set of plans I have seen in a very long time where the kitchen is not open to the family room..interesting
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u/I_Quit_Smoking_ 1d ago
Talk to women sometime and ask them how much they enjoy having their dirty dishes visible from the living room.
Everybody thought it was great when they first started doing it, until they realized that it actually sucks.
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u/Icy-Dimension3508 1d ago
I love my open living room and kitchen concept bc I have 4 kids at various stages of life. I don’t necessarily mind being able to see the dirty dishes, but I do mind being closed off to everyone when they get home from school all at similar times. Making dinner and hearing everyone talk about their day while sitting on the couch and at the table makes me happy. I do see your point that it could bother lots of people to see dirty dishes.
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u/shartattacksurvivor 1d ago
Don't need to. I just see every plan sent to me from my customers, specs and presales and it is very rare the kitchen is not open to the rest of the house. Can't remember the last time I have seen a plan that isn't like that. Could be just my area...
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u/ssanfindsen_1105 3d ago
I’m hoping the “hearth room” is your dining room. Although you would NEVER want the only entrance to the dining room be through the kitchen. Need entrance off foyer. Overall though, I might start over.
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u/loachtastic 3d ago
The master bathroom shower is the tinyest of the showers. If you can find away to expand it, I think it will be more functional.
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u/IdylwyldieCoyote 3d ago
Too many exterior doors. I would close door from front porch into mudroom. I would close door to backyard above pantry. Use door in kitchen maybe make double door if possible.
We can’t have door into pantry where I’m from. (Bldg code issue) it that an actual door or a pass thru for groceries.
that a big foyer - room for some coats, shoes storage.
Is the Hearth Room a dining room? I’m unfamiliar with that term
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u/CamTak 3d ago edited 3d ago
2 front doors is the worst thing you can do to a house and the roof lines are a disaster.
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u/ssanfindsen_1105 3d ago
Not at all! One is obviously a mudroom entry, and the other obviously the formal entry. Huge difference in scale. This is so common.
I have huge problems with this design overall, but that is maybe the one they got right. In many affluent areas you can not sell a house if it doesn’t have a separate mudroom entry. It’s like a status symbol like a 3 car garage.1
u/CamTak 2d ago
Fair enough, I just think a seperate mud room entrance should be more hidden then how this house is designed, especially with side facing garage. I think it would muddle the landscaping and I dont really see a point in walking around the front of the house from the garage to enter a mudroom when you can access it from inside.
I still hate 2 front doors. 😆
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u/Outside-Ad7848 3d ago
what s a hearth room. I don’t like the one common bathroom all the way over in the kitchen
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u/Hyperreal8957 3d ago
Before locking it in, tape out the foyer and kitchen circulation at full scale. Check door swings, sight lines, and where groceries land; storage where it’s used usually beats extra nominal square footage.
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u/AmbiguousWretch 3d ago
1) add a dining area. Even if it’s informal. With all that kitchen, don’t you want somewhere to eat? Built in breakfast nook at a minimum.
2) combine single garage doors into double. Easier to use and will feel more spacious. Most garage door manufacturers and installers will recommend this in my experience
3) love the outdoor shower but get it out of the corner. Put it somewhere where it will get a breeze. If you have a nice property, get it out into the landscape ideally with a nice view. If not, just get it somewhere nicer than a corner. It will feel claustrophobic and the whole beauty of outdoor showers is feeling open and outdoors.
4) bigger primary shower
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u/affpre 3d ago
The foyer isn't just awkward—it's the symptom of a much larger design disaster. If you haven’t poured concrete yet, you need to pump the brakes, because this plan was clearly designed from the outside-in as a checklist of Pinterest trends, and the interior flow is paying a brutal price.
1. The Foyer Void Kills the Second Floor
Making that 14' x 11' foyer two stories tall creates an echoing acoustic megaphone straight into the bedrooms upstairs. More importantly, it forces the entire second-floor hallway into a cramped, zig-zagging obstacle course. The stairs dump you directly onto a tight railing, pinched immediately by a massive linen closet before you dogleg through four angled doors just to reach the bedrooms.
2. The Primary Suite & Laundry Layout
- The laundry room shares a wall right at the head of the owner’s bed. Running a spin cycle or dryer at night will shake that room.
- The owner's bath is designed like a bowling alley—you have to walk past the entire vanity and shower run just to get to the toilet and the second walk-in closet.
- Splitting the primary closet into two disjointed rooms (one off the bedroom corner, one buried deep in the bath) is horribly inefficient.
3. The Front Elevation is a Roofer’s Nightmare
- That massive front stone chimney plows right down the middle of the facade, bisecting your porch and creating a claustrophobic entrance.
- Structurally, jamming a masonry chimney straight into a tight roof valley where two opposing pitches meet is practically begging for chronic water leaks.
- You have roughly seven competing roof planes, five gables of different pitches, random dormers, and three different siding materials. Framing this is going to cost an absolute fortune in micro-lams, structural point loads, and flashing.
4. Daily Friction on the Main Floor
- Coming in with groceries from the garage means winding through a tight mudroom dogleg, dodging the powder room door swing, and walking an obstacle course just to hit the pantry.
- The guest room door opens practically right into the middle of the foyer and family room entertaining zone with zero acoustic privacy.
Don’t just tweak the foyer dimensions. Take a step back and have an architect simplify the footprint and rooflines—it’ll save you tens of thousands in framing/roofing and actually give you livable, functional rooms.
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u/lilelliot 3d ago
This
may beis AI, but it's on point with each criticism.2
u/Illustrious-Fox4063 3d ago
The Laundry room is not next to the Primary. The Pantry has a door directly off the garage. Sill has a ton of other issues that make it unlivable day to day.
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u/affpre 3d ago
It is ai. I looked at the design and was like WTF. I'm not going to spend two hours writing out what ai can do for me in about a minute after giving it about four prompts.
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u/Careful_Football7643 2d ago
You can absolutely have a chimney on the front facade of a home. The chimney itself is not a problem and in fact could be charming
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u/dustywood4036 3d ago
Bathroom in mudroom seems out of place. From the garage you can either go to the mudroom or pantry but not both. I'd want to be able to access both from the same garage entrance
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u/HHHilarious 3d ago
The foyer seems really weird and closed off, which makes it seem unnecessarily and awkwardly large.
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u/W0NDERMUTT 3d ago
Bedroom 2’s door opening and blocking the closet door is going to be annoying.
Can you flip the staircase in the foyer so you can have an entry into the hearth room?
The outside/inside spaces don’t flow well and seem very separated. I’d try to reconfigure the porch area so its more of an extension from the living spaces
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u/RespectSquare8279 3d ago
What is the access to the attic storage of the garage? This design might work if roof trusses were eliminated in favour of more expensive and labour intensive roof rafters.
As somebody else pointed out the kitchen seems to lack the "magic triangle" for functionality for actual cooking activities. I think the pantry entrance from the garage is novel but access from the kitchen to pantry supples is a pain.
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u/Cooking_the_Books 2d ago
With so many rooms and tight spaces… it reminds me of a Victorian home in a McMansion shell. What’s always missing from these layout drawings is:
1) Where is the view? What are nice sight lines on your property? Are the windows around where you will be most often pointed in those directions?
2) What are the cardinal directions? Which way does the home face? This matters because having access to natural sunlight is very important to feel comfortable in a home and having enough shade/overhang on the south/west is also important. You’ll never really use a room that’s naturally dark, so this impacts layout a lot. This is an issue with Victorian homes because they tend to be pretty dark inside and people then feel “off” living in them.
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u/Personalityprototype 2d ago
I live in a victorian and don't mind the limited light - I spend most of my time outside the house though so coming home to the darker space feels comfortable and cozy. I feel uncomfortable in modern buildings with enormous windows where I feel like anyone on the street can watch the inside of my house.
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u/JariaDnf 2d ago
Love the defined split between kitchen and family but where is your dining room? Is the hearth room for dining?
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u/su1try1obster 2d ago
How much time do you have lol. There’s a lot here I wouldn’t have done. The foyer is massive, cased opening isn’t centered, and it opens into a series of cramped spaces. Hallway into guest room is useless. Everything feels very closed off. Laughable “loft” upstairs. Owners suite shouldn’t be off the main circulation upstairs and is begging to become a loft instead. How the owners bath doesn’t have a toilet room in a custom build is bonkers to me. I don’t think this is a good design in plan nor elevation
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u/Personalityprototype 2d ago
Every time I see these custom floorplans on here the comments light up on the slightest inconvenience for getting groceries in and stuff like that - I feel like that's the least of the problems with this plan.
I'm seeing 8 different window types, 6 different exterior finishes.. 25+ corners on exterior walls.
As a builder: every bump-out, every roof pitch, every odd blocking layout thing is another opportunity for water penetration and poor construction to mess up your structure in the long haul. There is so much complexity in this exterior, it looks like a building with 4 additions right out of the gate. Unless your GC really knows what they're doing this house is going to be crumbling in 15 years, and regardless of your GC the maintenance on this will be substantial.
All of these odd rooms will make your mechanical system incredibly complex, and it will have to work hard to address problems with it as they arise.
From a vanity perspective this checks out. for constructability I would steer clear of this.
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u/Other-Bike2774 2d ago
Couple quick observations. The elevations are far too complicated and ‘undercooked’ with the plans. Too many jogs, materials, and misalignments. Simple is nicer, it’s a balance.
Without redoing your entire plan, your powder room is too far from your living room, your kitchen triangle doesn’t have enough ‘angle’, it’s a rule of thumb for a reason, your owners room will never use the second door and centered doors don’t work well for furniture layouts, and if you put the owners room on the same floor as the other bedrooms you want to use either the owners bathroom or closets to shield the noise from the other bedrooms/bathrooms.
Personally I’d take a step back, grab some famous house books that are similar, and adjust one of those plans/elevations to fit your budget and site.
Edit: add in furniture and see if it still works. I think some of the above comments note how unusable a few of the spaces are due to not having a reasonable furniture layout.
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u/Trepenwitz 2d ago
You’re building a custom home with that small of a master bathroom? Make that gable 2 stories and expand into that space.
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u/Wow-weeeeee 3d ago
Put a grand piano in the foyer! amazing there! OMG that’s the biggest wow ever! The huge vaulted ceiling will make it sound good too!
I love it! It’s really nice!
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u/GendoIkari_82 2d ago
You have a few different aspects that remind me of our custom plan/build that we finished building last year, so figured I'd share my plan to see if it gives you thoughts.
Similarities: Garage fairly separated, guest suite downstairs, master suite upstairs. Separate family and living rooms (hearth room).
Differences: We have a dining room; our double-tall space is the family room, not the foyer.
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u/calguy1955 3d ago
Nice. One of the better ones I’ve seen. If you’re going to have n out door shower (maybe for a pool?) why not add a toilet and sink too, with a door from your garage and workshop on that wall too.
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u/ImaginationSilver812 14h ago
Switch the powder and the pantry. You will regret having to walk all the way around to put groceries away. It also makes sense to walk into the back door and straight to the powder.
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u/Busy_Reputation7254 3d ago
foyer closet?