Why Are Custom Homes Well Suited to Modern Family Living?
The standard production home plan does not adequately service today’s family household. The two earners, usually one female, work part time from home, there’s an aging parent in the household and the teenagers need their own space and somewhere to go other than the family kitchen table and the storage needs of this growing family also keep increasing and are distributed across the one floor area of the production home.
We have outlined key design decisions and options for family households. Each of these decisions can be priced and delivered as an option, without opening up the whole design brief.
Flexible floor plans that hold up over a decade
Don’t try to sell movable walls to families, they rarely get moved. Permanent structural change is far more valuable. For example, consider using clear-span trusses over living areas, non-load bearing partition walls and stacked wet areas. These can be reorganized later without the need to touch the roof or floor slabs.
Plan for the eventual use of a space, not its immediate intention. A ground floor front-of-house area can be a play room for the kids, then convert to a study when they grow up, and finally to a bedroom for an aging parent when the need arises. However it is to be used, it must be able to be a double bed space, situated adjacent to a bathroom with a 3 foot wide door, and have its own switched lighting circuit.
Specifying for change
- Rough in drainage and a vent for a future second-floor laundry or bathroom while the floor is open.
- Use 36-inch doorways and a 42-inch hallway width on at least one route through the house.
- Block the walls in bathrooms and stairwells for grab rails, even if nothing is installed on day one.
- Leave a conduit run between the utility area and the upper floor for cabling that does not exist yet.
Multigenerational space without turning the house into a duplex
From experience, clients want two opposing things when it comes to a parent suite, proximity and separation. That closet or bathroom between the parent’s bed and the main living area can offer far more privacy than a location at the very back of the home with a shared wall to the family room.
Independent temperature control of each room is far more important than additional square footage. Many older family members require warmer temperatures and QUIET airflow. A separate zone, a dedicated return and an alternative entry point (stopping people from walking through the main living area) to a bedroom suite are three of the most important items to negotiate when the brief is tightening.
Weighing the main options
| Arrangement | Typical gain | Main trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Integrated ground-floor suite | Lowest cost, shared services, easy care access | Noise transfer, limited independence |
| Wing with separate entry | Real privacy, rentable later | Extra circulation, higher envelope area |
| Detached accessory unit | Full autonomy, strong resale position | Zoning review, separate utilities, site area |
| Convertible upper floor | Defers cost until needed | Stair access limits who can use it |
Work areas that survive two people on calls at once
Changing requirements for home work spaces mean that what was once considered sufficient for a single home office no longer meets current requirements. A design for two people to work remotely at the same time in adjacent rooms is primarily an acoustics problem, and it is worth looking at how builders of Hilton Head custom homes resolve it with staggered stud partitions, fully insulated interior partitions and solid-core doors on all work room walls and/or doors.
As for placement, work rooms are best placed away from laundry, garage doors and the main stairway. As for the issue of natural light behind a home office reading surface creating a glare for camera shots, then work rooms need to be placed so that light enters from the side and the background of the reading surface needs to ‘read’ well. Power and data points must be placed high enough on walls so that they are easily reached while sitting down, and plugged in behind any future bookcase is not desirable.
Storage planned as a system, not leftovers
Storage failure equals location failure. Families need storage at the points of greatest conflict for the household, entry, laundry, kitchen and garage. A good mudroom with individual lockers for each family member, a bench and a closed cabinet for sporting goods can store far more clutter on a daily basis than a large closet on another level.
Capacity worth budgeting early
- Conditioned bulk storage near the garage for seasonal items and bicycles.
- A pantry sized for case-lot shopping, with an outlet for small appliances.
- Linen storage on the same floor as the bedrooms it serves.
- A dedicated spot for a full-size second refrigerator or freezer.
Outdoor living that extends the usable floor area
A covered outdoor room becomes an additional living space for a large part of the year. All of the details need to be correct for it to become a functional area. It needs to have overhead heating, shaded western exposure, an outdoor-rated electrical circuit, and a hose bib located near the cooking area.
Sightlines from the kitchen to the outdoor area enable parents to keep an eye on the children in the yard while attending to other matters. Custom home builders with experience in quality construction need to be engaged early in the process and worked with to determine the best grading, drainage and door positions and ensure these are not value engineered to a back step and outdoor slab.