Custom Home Builders Considerations

Creating a personalized home of your own is a fun and exciting project, but it can be incredibly overwhelming for a first time custom homebuyer. Fortunately with professional home builders, you'll have many resources to use which will help you make decisions about the type of floor plan you'd like to have for your family. You'll want to consider your family's needs and lifestyle as well as some of the current trends in custom built homes.

Many custom homes today are using an open layout to utilize the entire square footage of the house. For instance, bedrooms are often positioned off the living room or off an upstairs loft area instead of being relegated to a hallway. The hallway simply takes up space that can be used as living area. Even with an open floor plan, you'll want to section off the downstairs area into individual "rooms." The dining room, kitchen, living area, and den can all lead into one another, but be separated by half walls. This concept provides separate areas but keeps the layout open.

High ceilings and varying ceiling heights are another technique used by custom home builders to add to the home's uniqueness and the open layout. It's not uncommon to find a living space with a 20-foot vaulted ceiling. Or a loft area above, which provides a 2-story, ceiling height for the main room. Nine and ten-foot ceilings are becoming the norm in other rooms, including the upstairs bedrooms, kitchen, dining, den, and office areas.

Traffic flow is one of the hardest ideas to consider in the initial planning stage. Experienced custom home builders will help you think through where your furniture and appliances will be placed, and give you suggestions for placement of the various rooms. That's why it's important that you choose an experienced professional who's had lots of experience in layout design. Of course, you may have developed an idea of traffic flow already based on how your family functions in your current house. But if you're going from a two-story home to a ranch-style (or visa versa), there are several new considerations to think about.

As you're working on the layout of the inside of your home, you'll definitely want to consider outside elements which may affect the comfort of your family. For instance, if you plan to have your entertainment set facing a window, you may want to consider what time of the day the sun will be shining directly through that window! If it's going to affect your TV time, you'll probably need to consider curtains, or rearranging the furniture to accommodate for the sun's rays so your family isn't constantly annoyed by not being able to watch their favorite programs!

Overall, designing a custom home with one of the many custom home builders working in the field today is a rewarding experience. It's incredible to watch your dream home being built from the foundation to the roof, and to know that you played an integral part in designing it!