When you opt for a smaller house, you can’t have everything.
While this seems a statement of the obvious, architects say that most homeowners haven’t gotten the message when the planning process for a new house begins.
“The homeowners say, ‘I only want 2,000 square feet,’ but when they say what they want in it, it’s all the components of a 3,500-square-foot house,” said Memphis architect Carson Looney.
His first task in working with such clients is getting them to pare down their must-have list to what they really need. Likening the exercise to an old movie in which an experienced sergeant orders the new recruits with all their gear “to strip off the junk you don’t need and just use what’s important,” Looney said that when clients focus on what they actually do in their homes, “most say the most important space is the kitchen, eating area and storage, not extra space in the bedroom.”
At that point, Looney said, the clients are willing to jettison the home office (with a laptop computer they can work anywhere in the house), the formal living room (it’s rarely used), and the fourth bedroom (house guests can use a sleeper sofa in the family room). But that’s still not enough to get down to 2,000 square feet. To reach that point, dining has to be consolidated into one place. Looney would excise the formal dining room in favor of an expanded breakfast room because that’s where most families eat most meals.
Eventually, the clients agree on what’s in and what’s out of their new house. Most spaces will be smaller, but not all of them, Looney said. In fact, some things should be larger than they are in most houses built today, whether they are big or small, and, he added, “These things will make any house feel bigger than it actually is.”
“These things” would be the hallways, doorways and stairs, all details where just a few inches can have a surprising impact, Looney said.
Most builders allow 36 to 38 inches for hallway width, but this is too narrow. It feels uncomfortable, and in some parts of the house it’s “downright dysfunctional,” Looney said. In the garage hallway, where you are constantly carrying stuff in and out of the house, you need at least a 40-inch width to avoid hitting the walls. Adding another two to five inches of width to hallways throughout the house to make them 42 to 45 inches wide “would feel wonderful, and you will definitely notice the difference,” he said.
Most residential building codes mandate 32-inch wide doorways for everything except bathrooms, but Looney said a 36-inch opening is optimal and that this is another instance where you would sense the difference immediately. Not only does the wider opening feel more comfortable as you pass through it, rooms will feel bigger when they are entered through a wider opening from a wider hallway.
Stairs are another seemingly minor detail that has a major impact, Looney said. When stairs have shallower risers and deeper treads, weekend warriors with arthritic knees, older homeowners with balance issues, short adults, children and small dogs will find them easier to navigate. Builders have resisted this idea because it increases the length of the stair run, but Looney said the pluses of the more benign stair vastly outweigh the minuses.
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