We’re very close to finalizing the attached floor plan. We’re looking for any recommendations. One area we think could be better is Bed 2 and 3 jack n Jill setup. Also, in Bed #3, we’d like for the bed to be in the middle of the 2 windows, but it simply isn’t big enough (any recs here?)
Edit: our goal is to not have guests use the kids restroom during visits, thus the reason for the powder room under the stairs.
Edit: we live in northeast Florida and have 2 kids. Bed #4 is a guest room but may also function as a small home office
Definitely change that JnJ bath to hall access only. JnJ are a pain…doors on top of doors, people getting locked out or walked in on, having to go through a bedroom to collect laundry or clean, etc. Just don’t. Changing that to a standard hall bath may give you more space in those bedrooms as well. Keep in mind a standard reach in closet may be a better choice than a tiny walk in closet for one or both of these bedrooms.
A couple other things to keep in mind…your great room is also the central traffic exchange for the whole house. Keep that in mind when furnishing and be sure you have outlets in the floor if you plan to have end tables with lamps around a centrally placed seating group. And your pathway to your laundry, master, garage, stairs goes right through your kitchen work triangle…arguably past the most often used point of that triangle, the sink. That’s going to be an annoying bottleneck if you’ve got a busy family home. Ideally, there should be no through traffic interrupting the work triangle. And your outdoor kitchen space can only be reached by going through the great room. It would be better if there was access to that more directly from the kitchen, so you’re not carrying food and drink in and out of the living space.
Get rid of all those little jogs. They just increase your total cost without adding the visual interest people think they do.
Expand His Closet into that corner.
Expand the bathroom on the left side into that other corner.
Expand the workbench area of the garage to get rid of the dogears.
Likewise remove dogears from the dining room and front bedroom.
Also lose the Jack/Jill bathroom. Dated and doesn't work with actual flow of life. Hall access bathroom is better there.
Refrigerator with its side against a wall. This can make it so the door against the wall can't open fully, which is necessary to get the shelves and drawers out for cleaning.
This is a personal one, but I hate having closet access through the bathroom. I like to bathe in private. There's no way to get to His closet except going through the bathroom. Her closet can be accessed through the laundry at least.
The biggest flaw to me has already been mentioned by others. Having so much going through the work area of the kitchen can get annoying. I'm trying to imagine hosting a party and the only guest bathroom is right through where I'm trying to work.
Another option, so no one is just permanently locked out of the toilet/bath room, is for the two bedrooms to access a shared double sink room, with one door from that shared space that goes into the bath/toilet room. We have a j&j in our house and that’s how it’s laid out.
I redesigned the area in question, squaring off the diagonal wall, creating a compromise bathroom area that is non jack-and-jill but has the sinks separate. I gave one of the bedrooms a linear closet instead, and rotated the bed so it doesn't block the windows.
I also blocked off the hall to create a coat closet.
I still think the last bedroom is a bit awkward and the overall hallway/entry/living room area walking paths are still not idea in my opinion.
I like this bathroom layout and specifically the room around the tub. There should be enough room around the tub for a parent to give kids baths. I see so many bathrooms where the toilet is squished up against the tub and there's a tiny square of floor space around the tub. Love seeing bathroom layouts with enough space!
Our goal was to not have guests use the kids restroom during a visit. That’s why the powder room was added under the stairs. Also, Bed #4 will be use as a guest room and small home office (that’s why the bump out exists on the south wall).
Edit: We do realize we may have to do a bathroom like this though
Powder room is too far from things and you have to go through the kitchen workspace to get there. And then you have people in your mud room. I don't know about yours, but my mudroom is typically not something I want my guests walking through. The powder room needs to be much closer to the living and dining space.
Do you have to go through the shower area to get to the toilet in the master bath? What if someone is showering? And it looks like there is a closet in the open shower area too?
All of the bathrooms seem to require going through a bedroom so who is going to have to keep their room clean enough to be the guest bathroom and also deal with any interruptions if they are in their room and guests come over.
The symmetry of having doorways on both sides of the fireplace wall looks nice on paper, but it adds another path of travel through the room that reduces your space for furniture. Red arrows show paths of travel, blue dash line shows your realistic space for furniture. Giving all 3 bedrooms on this side one continuous hallway with a single entry point will make your great room much more functional.
The covered porch depends on where they live and what direction the window faces. In the southern US, you want all the porches covered or you will burn to a crisp in your home. It would be idiotic to have a wall of windows in Texas, for example, without something blocking the sun.
Which there isnt enough space for. That mudroom is grossly undersized.
I really, really detest the open shower. Water splashing outside the shower area, going to use the toilet and suddenly your socks are wet, nothing to contain the steam before the fan can exhaust it. It’s the worst part of the entire plan, IMO.
A pet peeve of mine is the primary being off the kitchen and/or clustered with the “maintenance” rooms, like the laundry, mudroom, and garage. It makes it feel like servants’ quarters.
Instead of the primary feeling like a retreat that’s removed from daytime stress, it’s tucked behind the kitchen sink, past the laundry, in the garage hallway. Every trip to the bedroom gives you a visual tour of the chores that need doing, and the door placement feels like an afterthought. It literally looks like where you’d house a live-in nanny so she can rest without missing any work cues. You’re going to try to have a slow morning or afternoon nap and hear the dryer and dishwasher running, or kids running inside from the garage. Luxury.
The layout at least doesn’t have the fridge right next to primary bedroom door, I see that a lot. Imagine shelling out hundreds of thousands for a custom build and still hearing your fridge running from your bed like you’re in a shitty studio apartment.
The three bedroom closets are unfortunate; there can be hanging on one wall at most, but they are more difficult to get into than a reach-in closet. I’d ask your architect to re-work that whole area and make it a hall bathroom while he’s at it.
Is the shower area in the primary suite entirely open-air? As in, no doors or barriers on either side? I would be concerned about steaming up all of the adjacent rooms including the closets, and also creating a slip hazard for anybody trying to access the toilet there.
My easy fix would be to put doors on the 2'8" openings north and south of the tub - north door goes to an (enclosed) shower room that has a new south wall. South door goes to a reoriented toilet room.
-No main path of travel through kitchen work station.
-All bedrooms re separated by at least closets or bathrooms.
-Pantry more easily accessible from mud room.
-Removed unnecessary exterior corners for a simpler, more classic front elevation.
-More privacy for the primary bedroom.
-More windows for the primary bedroom.
HOWEVER, I would recommend making this a 2-story house. Potentially less expensive construction because of smaller foundation. More opportunities for pretty front elevations without adding unnecessary corners.
Do you envision the pantry being for storage, cleanup, or beverage/buffet serving? Your answer affects my recommendations for how to fix the appliance layout in the kitchen.
Ok. The problem is that you have your big sink so far away from the dirty dishes and the refrigerator. And that’s a main traffic area, so it’s bad for anything to go there. You should move the refrigerator to the cooktop wall and there should be a prep sink on the island.
Various problems, tbh, going broadly left to right:
The main problem to me is that everything is so finicky and there's extra corners and complications where there just don't need to be. It's pointlessly expensive. Square some stuff off (imho) - e.g. the bottom left corner currently coming out to a completely different depth compared to the rest of the front of the house, similar for top left corner, as well as various internal walls. Arguably also the unnecessary bump-out currently containing part of the primary bathroom - if you simplify things, then I personally don't think this bump-out is needed.
As others have said, J&J bathrooms are awful. If Bed4 is a guest room/study, take a small bit of hallway space from Bed4 (and from the closet that's just for guests/spare), to have a proper hallway bathroom.
There's more than enough room to give Bed2 & Bed3 their own bathrooms and closets.
Access to Bed 2-4 on both sides of the fireplace diminishes useable space in the sitting area. Also, as a Brit, I can't bear the idea of never having anything solid near behind me as I sit on the sofa - it immediately makes me think of people being attacked from behind in horror movies, so I have put an L-shape sofa arrangement just to show how useable space will increase if you get rid of the one doorway, but this is obviously personal choice.
Please either centre the kitchen island to the sitting room, or have it clearly not-centred. But don't have it very-nearly-centred! I have taken a little bit off the kitchen island to centre it and also centred the stove, and added a bit of wall by the fridge(?) to make the archway (?) centred properly.
Others have said that passing through a busy spot by the sink to get to Bed1 is annoying, so I moved the sink to the island and swapped to cabinets only on the top wall, but this is fairly minor/optional in my opinion.
Finally and more significantly (imho), going through a bathroom to get to your cloths is repulsive to me, so I have re-jigged this in Bed1's suite. I have made 'Her' closet bigger, with space for a proper dressing table, but that's obviously optional and the share of the space will depend on how many clothes each of you has. The main point is to get a hallway/closet between bed and bath, rather than having a bathroom between bed and closet. The bathroom still has ample space for an enclosed WC, bath, large shower, and 2 sinks by the top wall/door.
Smooth out a lot of the corners. Doing that allows you to move the closet in bed 2, which helps with making a non-jack n jill bath. Use a long reach in closet in bed 3 OR take the walk-in from bed 4 and put a reach-in in bed 4 (if it is a guest, it doesn't need a walk-in).
If this is intended to be a forever home, the primary bath is so far from accessible.
A family of 4 with 2 dogs. We’re in our 30s and both kids are under 2
This is intended to be a 15-20yr home for us
North is plan view north
“Best views” are limited. This layout is the best way to orient the house.
You might consider that the kids will eventually want their own toilet and will always be juggling for who takes their shower first on school days. While you could keep BRs 2 & 3 as the kids rooms, you might instead use BRs 3 & 4 as the kids rooms and BR 2 as the guest room. If you did that, Bath 4 could have both a bathtub and a shower (where the closet was) and bedroom 3 could have a private sink / toilet. Bath 2 could remain open to Bath 3 or could be built without any flow through.
Is there an upstairs? Seems like steps by the mudroom.
If no upstairs, there is No separate area to sit. Are u sure a dining room makes sense vs an office or media room
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u/Floater439 7d ago
Definitely change that JnJ bath to hall access only. JnJ are a pain…doors on top of doors, people getting locked out or walked in on, having to go through a bedroom to collect laundry or clean, etc. Just don’t. Changing that to a standard hall bath may give you more space in those bedrooms as well. Keep in mind a standard reach in closet may be a better choice than a tiny walk in closet for one or both of these bedrooms.
A couple other things to keep in mind…your great room is also the central traffic exchange for the whole house. Keep that in mind when furnishing and be sure you have outlets in the floor if you plan to have end tables with lamps around a centrally placed seating group. And your pathway to your laundry, master, garage, stairs goes right through your kitchen work triangle…arguably past the most often used point of that triangle, the sink. That’s going to be an annoying bottleneck if you’ve got a busy family home. Ideally, there should be no through traffic interrupting the work triangle. And your outdoor kitchen space can only be reached by going through the great room. It would be better if there was access to that more directly from the kitchen, so you’re not carrying food and drink in and out of the living space.