Factors to Help You Discern Bad House Plans

There are tens of thousands of stock house plans on the market. How do you know which designs are better than others? Considering that some people have trouble understanding a two-dimensional illustration that represents a layout, some clues deliver hints at the designer’s skill and whether that plan suits a successful scheme and will work out for you. Following is a list to help you discern the good from the bad and why these factors matter.

1. Closet Cramps – Walk-in closets that are not correctly dimensioned or laid out give me a specific peeve. In many plans, I see a corner in a closet crossed with a hanging rod in two directions. You cannot use the corner where they meet, and since you need two feet of depth to hang clothes, that 4 square foot area is either inaccessible or very awkward by the time it fills up. The best design for a walk-in closet is 7 feet wide where rods hang on either side and not on the end of the space. This leaves you 3 feet to enter and maneuver through the closet all the while being able to access your rods on either side. You can hang belts and ties on hooks at the end wall, for example. The depth of a closet should be at least 4 feet, but 5 is better to serve the purpose implied by walk-in. Anything up to 8 feet will be a huge closet for one and probably enough for two. Enormous wardrobe rooms that are more like elegant dressing rooms are another topic.
2. Door Dangers – Doors that open the wrong direction are another common mistake. Interior doors almost always open inward toward the room away from the circulation route. It is best if the door folds directly against a wall where a door stop can be placed to keep the doorknob from damaging that wall. This makes a 90º path for the door to open as opposed to having a door swing 180º into a room. Exceptions can be French doors, though these doors usually have an active and passive side so that you use only one of them most of the time. Pocket doors can help in challenging situations, but most people prefer not to install pockets because if they malfunction, they’re a mess to fix.
3. Door Dingers – Doors that open onto other doors, cabinets or windows is another pervasive problem. This takes skill in laying out floor plans. Smaller spaces are slightly more challenging, but it is easy to make this mistake in any layout if not carefully considered. A good design sets doors where they function without interference to traffic patterns and furniture placement, and so that you don’t notice their path of swing being a nuisance.
4. Geometric Definition – I’m seeing more and more amorphous rooms because everyone has adopted the open concept, even in traditional houses. This delivers rooms that don’t have a definition. Living rooms run onto dining rooms that run onto kitchens. The problem usually shows up in the ceilings where heights change at awkward points or in cabinet soffits that stretch up meeting awkward angles. Trim moldings get ludicrous in these spaces as they don’t have a defined beginning and end or a place to transition or relate to the adjacent area. Rooms work best with a particular and visible geometry where you can paint the space one color and the adjoining space a complementary color. In better designs, trim molding or other architectural detail define the spaces allowing a distinct point of beginning and end to the area.
5. Storage, a Universal Desire – It’s not that there isn’t enough storage in today’s more substantial houses, it’s that the stowage is disproportionate in the wrong places. The master bedroom may have two enormous walk-in closets, but then there’s no sensible place to park the vacuum cleaner, brooms and mops, and other cleaning utensils. Today’s houses need utility and supply closets of the size of a small walk-in closet. Kitchens need pantries or plenty of cabinets that serve as pantries. People need space to store seasonal decorations. Of course, most people can pitch things into the attic, but it is much nicer to have it in the interior storage of a controlled climate where the spiders don’t live.
6. Traversing Spaces – Excessive, oversized or awkward circulation routes are easily overlooked when laying out a plan. How close is the garage to the kitchen so that you don’t have to tote the groceries 100 feet from the car? Is there an efficient concentrated central circulation path that serves all areas of the house without being wasteful? If there is a staircase, is it centrally positioned so that you don’t have to traverse the other end of the first floor to get to the other end of the second floor? If circulation is to cross through a room, does it clear where the furniture needs positioning? Do your guests have to travel too close to your most personal spaces? Is the path through the house an exciting experience with artwork and objects to enjoy with abundant natural light?
7. Lighting, Naturally – Having all areas of the house well lit by natural light seems to be quite a challenge to work into a floor plan. It is better for bathrooms to have an operable window that you can quickly open, for example, and not being located up high inside the shower. Concerning circulation again, it is better to have hallways get some natural light so that you don’t have to turn on the lights in the middle of the day. Rooms feel more comfortable with natural light from two directions, however, if the room can only host one window, placing the window right in the center of the wall of a small room causes a lot of glare because the rest of the room is in dark corners. Tip, place the window toward one edge and the room benefits from the natural light coming through the window and reflecting off of that adjacent wall. Setting windows on different walls is the best solution if the layout allows it.
8. Nonlinear Disorientation – Angled walls or angled floor plans can make you feel disoriented, and they create very awkward shapes to apply finishes. If angles are placed without an overall geometric concept, you will end up with tight, pointed corners that are useless and must be enclosed in turn wasting space. This shows up in layouts in floor material as well. For example, if the kitchen is not precisely squared to the dining room, there is an angled change in the tile at the kitchen to the carpet in the dining room. This looks and feels odd. Angling hallways that access the bedroom doors is a sign that the designer really did not know a better solution so opted to the forced twist.
9. Fitting the Bed – Usually, master bedrooms are designed with plenty of space, but secondary bedrooms seem to be given whatever is left over. Any bedroom with either dimension of its square (or rectangle) less than 11 feet makes arranging furniture difficult. A queen size bed and a modestly sized dresser can be arranged opposite each other within an 11-foot dimension. Anything less becomes uncomfortably tight. A guest bedroom or a child’s bedroom that measures 12 feet by 14 feet will feel very comfortably sized. The 10 by 10-foot kiddy cubicle is ok for a nursery, but not much else, even a home office.
10. Arrangement Estrangement – Another common problem is that many designers don’t consider furniture arrangement when laying out floor plans. Bedrooms need a wall to place the headboard that accommodates the bed AND the nightstand(s), without impeding a window or door. Space must remain for dressers and chests, and seating in larger bedrooms. Living areas need a spot to group the seating. Dining rooms need plenty of space around the table and chairs so that you can quickly get in and out when everyone else is seated.
11. Focal Point by Fire – Strangely positioned fireplaces is another common item. Fire is often a focal point of a room so centering them is usually the goal, but they need to be focused on the arrangement of furniture, not necessarily a wall. Proportion is a whole topic alone, and it is also something that many laying out a plan fail to consider. Good architecture has rhythm, balance, order and excellent proportion of all of its elements including the shape of rooms about one another.
12. Angled Uncomfort – In the plan, peculiarly shaped rooms warn against a poor layout. Primary living rooms work best as rectangles of a ratio approximately two to three. Bedrooms often end up nearly square, which is fine, as long as there is a width of at least eleven feet in both dimensions. Bedrooms that are too small do not flex well into other uses, and secondary bedrooms rarely remain for a specific purpose for long. Kids grow up, you need a home office, or you want to take over the space to make a spacious wardrobe. Only in huge houses should rooms take on unusual shapes, and in those cases, the geometry needs cohesion and purpose in the overall scheme of the architecture. Awkward angles in design feel strange. While you cannot determine ceiling height from viewing the floor plan, you need awareness that two-story spaces in a single room can feel hollow and weird also. Sloped or vaulted ceilings work best for dramatic height, but they also need a proper geometric relationship to the architecture.
13. Oink, Goes the Garage – The derogatory reference to placing the garage forward toward the street in front of all else is called the snout house. For a good reason, it deserves ridicule. Garages are big so that they enclose our cumbersome vehicles, and if not placed artistically, dominate an elevation. Most lot orientations require the garage space to face forward, but there are ways to make it less prominent. Stepping it back from other parts of the elevation, even by a few feet, lessen the pronouncement of the garage door. Placing a projecting entrance porch beyond the garage helps. Garage doors with better architectural detail, especially custom designed, also aid in a pleasing appearance. A forward facing gabled roof over the garage doors says, look at me! If the roof ridge runs perpendicular to the front of the garage, it gives it less emphasis. If you have to have the L-shaped plan with the forward facing garage, enclose the area within the shape into a courtyard. This places a wall even or a few feet in front of the garage door and provides intrigue into the space behind the fence, which is an architectural tip. If the wall or fence articulates with screening or other design detail, it gives it focus rather than the garage door.
14. Cul de sacs of Entrapment – Place rooms so that you do not pass through another to get there. Dead end rooms don’t flow with the general circulation rhythms in houses, especially for dining spaces. Rooms should serve as path terminations, and traversing through another room’s activity is not desirable. And if you must travel through an area to get to another space, furniture placement should not interfere with the path, and the way should avoid the furniture arrangement.
15. Shower by Artificial Illumination – If ever there was an annoying situation, it’s the interior bathroom without a way for it to have a window. Each time you enter the space, you must turn on artificial light, and let’s not get into the ventilation. Wait… let’s do. While exhaust fans do handle odor elimination well, opening a window for fresh air makes a greener solution as well as giving the space daylight. And who wants to listen to that exhaust fan make a racket, anyway? Look for bathrooms placed along exterior walls so that accessible windows situate conveniently in the layout of the space. The last choice if none other will work is a window in the shower. But beware the placement of a window, especially one up high that you can’t reach to open without getting into the tub. One would believe this feat is perplexing to achieve in a floor plan, but I assure you it is not if you know how to configure plans correctly.
16. Buffer the Bedroom – Noise from adjacent rooms offers another annoyance that you can control at least a little. Placing bathrooms or closets between bedrooms delivers a decent sound buffer between spaces. If there are large walk-in closets between bedrooms, you achieve a terrific way to absorb the noise so that the occupants less likely disturb one another.
17. Path of Delight – Consider that you spend a lot of time in your house traversing the different spaces and rooms. This is an opportunity for the architecture to give its occupants a more enriching experience. Watch out for dark hallways, so typical in the ranch houses of the 20th century. The circulation routes to the floor plan need an efficient transition between rooms, but they also need to deliver a pleasant experience. Natural light helps if it is possible, think clerestory windows and skylights if not illumination from the windows in adjoining spaces. The architectural detail in hallways demands good delineation as well. It’s all right to allow circulation through rooms, but the path must be distinct and not interfere with furniture placement. You see spectacular stairways in houses with the best architecture because it is a place with frequent use and it is centrally positioned within the layout, which also makes it a focal point.
18. Window Extravaganzas – Although it’s more evident on exterior elevations or perspectives of the design, window sizes are another clue to how well conceived of a plan it is. Along with coordinating the proportion of window shapes, the same sized window should appear several times throughout a design, and there should not be too many different window sizes and shapes. A good design exhibits a consistent use of shape and size thoughtfully placed within the facade of the building. A wall with several different window shapes, sizes, and types, (such as sliding, casement, fixed, and awning) appear messy at best. You want a consistent sequence and proportion. And only one or two windows along an entire side of the house also indicate a less than desirable architectural expression. You want to see that most rooms’ windows orient to the front or back of the house so that they don’t face just a narrow side yard.
19. Out of Scale Elements – Architecture starts with scale. Floor plans, or any plans at all, need the correct size of the various elements shown in the drawings. Look for consistent application of plumbing fixtures, kitchen appliances, along with door and window symbols to indicate whether or not the illustration accurately represents the design. For example, if a shower stall appears small relative to the sinks, then it’s likely drawn at an incorrect measurement to the plan.