Community Meets Luxury
Sleight Farm’s blog about building a custom home and living in Dutchess County, NY.
10 Tips for Choosing a New Home Floor Plan
August 20, 2022
How do you choose the right floor plan for your new home? It’s a huge decision, and can feel overwhelming. After all, you’re literally mapping out your family’s environment and lifestyle for years to come. At Sleight Farm, our new home builders and sales team guide buyers toward choices that are right for them, and your own builder should do the same, but some buyer prep work and brainstorming can really help you streamline the process. Here are our tips:
1) Visit homes for sale and model homes – in any community, not just the ones you’re considering building with — and make a list of the features you like about each one.
2) Visualize your daily life in the home. For instance, imagine going through a typical morning routine, entertaining guests, and doing household chores. Does the flow from room to room, and space to space, work in these scenarios? Will the bedrooms offer enough privacy? Will it be easy to transport laundry around the house or tend to young children during the night? These things may seem minor, but if you are doing them every day, having a home layout that makes them easy will become really important.
3) Decide whether you want to live on two levels or just one. If you plan to stay in the home for many years, will there come a time when you don’t want to deal with stairs? Another option to consider is a first-floor master bedroom, which allows for accessibility and privacy depending on your family’s needs.
4) Ask yourself: Are you interested in open spaces where living areas are blended, or do you like the concept of “every room has its own function”? Will your current furniture work better in one than the other? If you have young children, do you like the idea of an open floor plan where you can keep an eye on everyone? Or will that kind of space limit privacy and be hard to keep uncluttered? Open concept layouts are definitely a trend right now, but they’re not for everyone. Stay realistic about your needs and wants, apart from what you see in friends’ homes and home design TV shows.
5) Consider the little nooks and crannies, which can end up being significant from day to day. Do you want a mudroom with storage for coats and shoes, offering a buffer between your house and outside world? What about a laundry room on the second floor, maybe with a sink? Will you need walk-in and linen closets?
6) Remember that you can use a room any way you want. Sure, it says “dining room” on the floor plan, but you could easily turn that into a home office or playroom. Think first about your family’s needs and apply them to what’s being offered.
7) What do you feel you’ve been missing in your current home? Maybe that’s more sunlight in a certain room, or a double sink in the master bedroom. Perhaps you’ve imagined what it would be like for the wall between two shared living spaces – the kitchen and dining room, for instance – were not there. Call up all your “I wish” moments and make a list.
8) Try to peek into your future. How will your family be different in five years? In ten? Perhaps your young kids who share a bedroom now will someday want their own spaces. Maybe you’ll be caring for an aging parent, or will want a room where you can work from home or pursue a hobby. Does the floor plan leave options for changing families and new possibilities?
9) Consider whether a floor plan makes great use of the square footage at hand. If it’s designed well, you can be living in a home that feels much bigger than it actually is.
10) Look at how the floor plan fits with the home site you have in mind. Examine the size and orientation of your lot when looking at floor plans, and find out if there are any restrictions on how large the house can be. If your home site offers a great view or lots of sunshine, think about how your floor plan can maximize enjoyment of that.
At Sleight Farm, our aim is to facilitate an enjoyable process of choosing and customizing the new home floor plan, and we hope this is the same for you wherever you build your new home.