3 Golden Rules When Designing a New Home

3 Golden Rules When Designing a New Home

When designing a home for the first time, it’s very common to feel somewhat overwhelmed by the process—when you need to consider everything from selecting an architect and builder, to designing your ideal floorplan, choosing your favourite design style, perfecting the façade and finalising the finishing touches that will tie it all together, it’s easy to get a little lost.

To help you stay focused on what’s important and ensure the experience is a positive one, remember to keep these three golden rules front of mind.

Rule 1: Functionality is king

The first rule of thumb when designing a home is to ensure it is functional.

Your home needs be a haven for you and your family to retreat to when it’s time to recharge your batteries, but if the house doesn’t meet your basic functional requirements, it’ll fail to serve its main purpose.

In addition to ensuring your design includes enough bedrooms, bathrooms and garage space, it also needs to provide ample living space to suit your lifestyle. It’s important to think about how you live when creating your design so the home will perfectly accommodate everyone and everything.

You’ll need spaces where you can all come together to enjoy one another’s company, while also having areas you can retreat to when in need of some privacy or time out. Make sure you also consider how noise will flow throughout the home, how much storage you’ll need and how you plan to tie the outdoor spaces to the rest of the home.

Rule 2: Take inspiration from the experts

The second rule of thumb, is to look at what the experts are doing to help you refine your ideas.

While you may start out thinking you know exactly what you do and don’t like, when you reach the point where you need to make decisions about various materials, fittings, finishes and fixtures, it will pay to have done your research.

Before making any major decisions about the design and style of your home, it’s worth visiting some display centres (like the ones from this Melbourne builder) to sample some of the possibilities and generate ideas for your own home.

Make sure you also shop around for the right architect and/or draftsperson before settling on your favourite. Because they’ve most likely worked on a wide variety of different projects, by speaking to a few different architects, they may be able to offer up some unique ideas you otherwise wouldn’t have thought of.

Rule 3: Know your budget

The third and final rule is to make sure you know exactly what you can afford so you can keep on top of the budget and avoid any cost blowouts.

With so many variables and options to consider when designing and building a new home, it’s no wonder sticking to the budget is possibly the most common area where people become unstuck.

Make sure you have a good relationship with your bank or lender and have a thorough understanding of how construction finance works (as it can be very different to a standard home loan), and do your research by getting some quotes from a few different companies in the initial planning stages so you can get a realistic grasp of what your ideas are likely to cost.

If you’re working to a very tight budget, it’s also well worth considering if it could be better to choose an end-to-end builder who can provide a single, fixed-price quote including everything from design through to construction so you can keep a tight lid on costs.