Floorplan Programming

Present Needs

Floorplan Programming is the beginning process to designing your home. It is where you sit down and specify the various rooms that you wish to have, the number of people that will live in the home and the capacity of the various rooms and their essential functions.

Architect: Scott Matula AIA, Plan Available at Healthy Home Plans.

For instance, if you think about your master bathroom, and both of you work, it's essential function is to provide enough space and facilities so that you and your spouse can both get ready for work at the same time. Continuing on this path, if you have 3 very young children all within a year of each other, you had better certainly provide a bathtub for all to be bathed in at once now, but you had better allow for additional facilities for the time when they mature and have to all go to school at the same time and have to all get ready at the same time (hint jack & Jill bath, separate tub area 2 sinks). See this page for more advice on decorating a bathroom.

Future Needs

If you do not sit and do this planning before hand you may very well design a house that will suit your needs today, but fail to do so five years from now, requiring either a new home or a major remodel. It will be less costly for you to plan this functionality and facility requirement in advance.

Even if you think your budget will not allow for all the possible contingencies, it is best to proceed in this manner to really focus your priorities to ensure you have designed a home you can live with.

This planning should occur before you engage a designer or Architect to produce the actual floorplan. They will be charging for their time to make revisions, so having a program that was well thought out and discussed in advance will save you money at every step of the way. The most costly thing to impact your project will be changes so proper planning from the start will go along way towards maximizing your dollars.

Once you have committed to a plan, stick to it. At the very least, make your second step be the construction of a budget. More about that next.

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