Floor Plans

Are you apartment or house hunting?

Have you come across a floor plan and can’t quite figure out whether or not it will work for you?

In our previous post, we talked about Tower Place’s new apartments on Broad Street and the floor plans got our attention. Generally speaking, these floor plans work well, but if you’re hunting for a home, here are three things to consider:

1. Look out for bathroom or powder room doors that open up into public spaces like kitchens or living rooms. You typically want a sense of privacy here, no? Hearing the toilet flush while at the dinner table isn’t exactly ideal. (If you can’t fix this, just turn up the volume on your Spotify.)

2. Watch out for those clusters of doors that all swing into a narrow hallway. See if it’s possible to swing the door into the room, opt for a pocket door or–even better–get a stylish sliding barn door.

3. U-shape kitchens shouldn’t open up into a living room. The area between the two rooms is ideal for a bar counter, which does double duty by providing a gathering place and a sense of separation. If you have the option (and the dollars) to fix this, take the U-shape kitchen, and rotate the entrance 90 degrees counterclockwise to put the counter between the living room and kitchen.

Naturally, there are always going to be certain constraints that you run up against when space planning, so it’s not easy to avoid these conditions. We hope these tips help when you step into a potential new home or look at a layout on Craigslist.