Think of it as Yoga for the brain, we are going to stretch a bit.
10 THINGS THAT MATTER MORE THAN A BIGGER HOUSE
What Good Architects Prioritize When Designing a Home for Themselves
One of the most revealing questions you can ask an architect is not:
“What kind of house would you design for a client?”
It is: “What would you build for yourself?”
The answers can be surprisingly different.
If someone has spent decades designing homes, watching them being built, and then hearing from owners five, ten, or twenty years later, they begin to see the difference between things that look impressive on a floor plan and things that actually improve everyday life.
The biggest house is rarely the best house.
The most expensive finishes do not necessarily create the most comfortable house.
And whatever happens to be fashionable this year may be precisely what makes a house look dated ten years from now.
The best houses tend to have something else in common:
The important decisions were made deliberately.
Here are ten things worth prioritizing when designing a house that is supposed to work for you—not merely impress someone looking at it.
1. SPEND MONEY ON THE HOUSE YOU CANNOT SEE
When people begin budgeting for a new house, their attention naturally goes toward visible things:
Kitchen cabinets
Countertops
Appliances
Flooring
Tile
Plumbing fixtures
Decorative lighting
Those things matter.
But they are not where the house begins.
A house begins with its building envelope.
The building envelope is essentially everything separating the conditioned interior of your house from the outside world: walls, roof, insulation, windows, doors, waterproofing, air barriers, vapor control, and all of the joints and penetrations connecting them.
It has to manage much more than temperature.
A properly designed envelope needs to deal with:
Water. Air. Heat. Humidity. Vapor. Insects. Drainage. Drying.
This is especially important because water does not need a large opening to cause major damage. Neither does air leakage.
A beautiful wall covering cannot compensate for a wall assembly that traps moisture.
An expensive kitchen cannot compensate for a house that is uncomfortable to cool.
And a $5,000 front door does little good if the surrounding construction leaks air and water.
Good construction therefore means thinking about details that the homeowner may never see again after drywall goes up.
Continuous air sealing.
Proper flashing.
Good drainage planes.
Rain-screen assemblies where appropriate.
Reduced thermal bridging.
Well-sealed penetrations.
Correctly installed insulation.
These are not glamorous expenses.
They may be some of the best money you spend.
The Design Lesson
Spend first on the bones and skin of the house. Decorate it afterward.
Thirty years from now, you are unlikely to congratulate yourself for choosing the expensive backsplash.
You may congratulate yourself every month for building a house that remains dry, quiet, comfortable, efficient, and structurally sound.
2. DESIGN WITH LIGHT—NOT JUST WINDOWS
One of the easiest requests to make during home design is:
“Put in more windows.”
But more windows do not automatically create better architecture.
A window is not simply a hole in a wall.
Its effectiveness depends on:
Orientation
Height
Width
Glass type
Shading
Exterior exposure
What room it serves
What happens outside it
What time of day the room is normally occupied
The better question is therefore not:
How many windows should this room have?
The better question is:
What kind of light do I want in this room?
Perhaps you want morning sunlight entering the kitchen.
Perhaps your office needs soft, indirect daylight that does not produce glare on computer screens.
Perhaps a bedroom should receive controlled morning light without baking in afternoon sun.
Perhaps a living room should open dramatically toward a waterfront view.
These are different problems.
They should have different solutions.
Good architecture considers how sunlight moves around the house during both the day and the year.
Roof overhangs, porches, trees, louvers, recessed windows, orientation, and other shading devices can all be used to admit desirable light while controlling undesirable heat.
The Design Lesson
Do not count windows. Design light.
A carefully positioned window can accomplish more than an entire wall of poorly positioned glass.
3. BUILD WITH THE LAND, NOT AGAINST IT
A beautiful property should influence the house built upon it.
Yet one of the first things many builders do is erase the property.
Trees are removed.
Slopes are flattened.
Fill is brought in.
Natural drainage patterns are changed.
Interesting terrain disappears.
Then the homeowner spends enormous amounts of money landscaping the property to give it character again.
That is backwards.
The site should become one of the designers of the house.
A slope may suggest where one level belongs.
A mature tree may determine the location of a courtyard.
A waterfront lot may determine the direction of the primary rooms.
A narrow section of property might naturally become the arrival sequence while the wider portion becomes the living area.
Even an awkwardly shaped lot can become an advantage if the house responds intelligently to it.
The best solution is not always to force a standardized floor plan onto the property.
Sometimes the property is telling you what the floor plan should become.
The Design Lesson
Before designing the house, design your relationship with the land.
Ask:
What should remain?
What should disappear?
What should be framed?
What should be hidden?
Where does the sun rise?
Where does it set?
Where are the best views?
Where is privacy naturally available?
Where does water move?
The property is not merely the place where the house sits.
It is part of the house.
4. DESIGN YOUR ROUTINES BEFORE DESIGNING YOUR ROOMS
Most people begin designing a house with a room list.
Four bedrooms.
Three bathrooms.
Kitchen.
Dining room.
Family room.
Office.
Laundry room.
Garage.
Pantry.
But human beings do not actually live in lists of rooms.
We live through routines.
Consider an ordinary morning.
You wake up.
Walk to the bathroom.
Get dressed.
Make coffee.
Feed the animals.
Check your phone.
Sit somewhere.
Walk to your office.
Leave the house.
Where do those activities happen?
How many unnecessary trips does the house require?
Where do things get dropped?
Where does clutter accumulate?
Where do you naturally sit?
Where do you actually spend most of the day?
Now think about evenings.
Weekends.
Guests.
Groceries.
Laundry.
Working from home.
Coming in from the rain.
Walking in from the garage.
Taking garbage outside.
The floor plan should be developed around these movements.
A house designed this way often feels strangely effortless.
You may not even consciously notice why.
Things are simply where you expect them to be.
The Design Lesson
Before drawing rooms, write down:
What do I actually do every day?
Then design the house around those activities.
That may be one of the most important exercises in this entire book.
5. DESIGN FOR WHO YOU WILL BECOME
A house may last fifty, seventy-five, or one hundred years.
Your present lifestyle will not.
Families change.
Children grow.
Careers change.
People begin working from home.
Parents move in.
Children move out.
Grandchildren arrive.
Bodies age.
Mobility changes.
Unfortunately, many houses are designed as though the people inside them will remain exactly the same forever.
Consider stairs.
At forty, stairs may mean almost nothing.
At seventy-five, stairs can determine whether you can continue living in your own home.
Thoughtful design today can avoid expensive renovation later.
Possibilities include:
A bedroom on the main floor
A full main-floor bathroom
Wider doorways
Wider circulation areas
Zero-threshold showers
Minimal floor transitions
Structural blocking for future grab bars
Space reserved for a possible elevator
Separation between children’s and parents’ bedrooms
Rooms that can change functions over time
None of these features require making your house look like a medical facility.
Done correctly, you will barely notice them.
That is the point.
The Design Lesson
Do not design only for the person you are today.
Design for the person who may live in this house twenty or thirty years from now.
A real forever home must be capable of changing with you.
6. USE MATERIALS THAT AGE WITH DIGNITY
There is an interesting difference between old and aged.
Some materials deteriorate.
Others develop character.
Wood changes color.
Copper develops patina.
Stone wears.
Brick softens visually.
Certain metals oxidize beautifully.
These materials tell the story of the building.
By contrast, many imitation materials are manufactured specifically to avoid changing.
Plastic pretending to be wood.
Vinyl pretending to be stone.
Printed flooring pretending to be oak.
There are perfectly legitimate places for synthetic materials, particularly where moisture, sanitation, maintenance, budget, or durability makes them practical.
But pretending one material is another should not automatically be the design objective.
Sometimes the honest material is the better material.
Wood can look like wood.
Concrete can look like concrete.
Steel can look like steel.
Brick can look like brick.
The Design Lesson
Ask not only:
“How will this material look when the house is finished?”
Ask:
“How will this material look after twenty years of living?”
A great house should become more interesting as it ages—not simply become older.
7. BUILD ONLY THE SPACE THAT EARNS ITS PLACE
There is enormous pressure in American housing to make houses larger.
More square footage.
More bedrooms.
More bathrooms.
Larger closets.
Larger kitchens.
Larger primary suites.
More garages.
More everything.
But every square foot has consequences.
You pay to build it.
You pay taxes on it.
You furnish it.
You clean it.
You repair it.
You heat it.
You cool it.
You insure it.
And then, surprisingly often, you do not use it.
A well-designed 2,500-square-foot house can be dramatically better to live in than a poorly designed 4,000-square-foot house.
The question should not be:
How large a house can I afford?
The question should be:
How much house will I actually use?
Every room should earn its place.
This does not mean a house needs to be tiny.
It means square footage should have a reason for existing.
If additional space genuinely improves your lifestyle, build it.
If it exists only because houses in your price range are supposedly expected to contain it, reconsider it.
The Design Lesson
Efficiency is not the same as smallness.
Efficiency means making the space you build work extremely well.
8. DESIGN A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE
People often blame clutter on having too many possessions.
Sometimes that is true.
But there is another cause:
The architect forgot to give ordinary objects somewhere to live.
Where does the vacuum cleaner go?
Where do shoes go?
Where do keys go?
Where does your wallet go?
Where does unopened mail go?
Where do charging cables go?
Where does the broom go?
Where do cleaning products go?
Where do kitchen appliances go?
Where do pet supplies go?
Where do tools go?
Where do luggage and holiday decorations go?
If the house does not answer these questions, the countertops will.
Good storage is not simply large closets.
It is storage positioned where the object is actually used.
That distinction matters.
A closet fifty feet away from where something is needed may technically provide storage but functionally accomplish very little.
The Design Lesson
Think about storage during the floor-plan stage—not after the house is finished.
Everything frequently used should have a logical home.
When storage works correctly, the house automatically looks calmer because putting things away requires almost no effort.
9. DO NOT CHEAP OUT ON WINDOWS
Windows deserve special attention because they are one of the weakest portions of an exterior wall.
Even excellent windows generally insulate substantially less than a properly constructed insulated wall.
That means window quality matters.
Poor windows can contribute to:
Heat gain
Heat loss
Drafts
Condensation
Noise
Air leakage
Water intrusion
Failed seals
Discomfort near the glass
The temptation during construction is often to reduce the window specification because doing so can save a significant amount of money without changing the appearance of the floor plan.
The opening is still there.
The view still exists.
So what changed?
Performance.
And performance affects you every day.
Windows should therefore be selected as part of the building-envelope strategy, not simply the decorating budget.
This becomes particularly important in hot, sunny climates where solar heat gain can have an enormous effect on comfort and air-conditioning loads.
The Design Lesson
Use fewer good windows rather than blindly installing more cheap ones.
Size them deliberately.
Position them deliberately.
Shade them deliberately.
And buy the best performance that reasonably fits the project.
10. DESIGN THE EXPERIENCE OF COMING HOME
This may be one of the least discussed—and most powerful—parts of residential architecture.
Your house does not begin at the front door.
It begins when you approach the property.
What do you see from the street?
What remains hidden?
How does the driveway approach the building?
Where does the car disappear?
When do you first see the entrance?
What do you see when the front door opens?
What happens ten feet later?
Twenty feet later?
Where is the payoff?
Perhaps it is a courtyard.
Perhaps it is a pool.
Perhaps it is an enormous window.
Perhaps it is the ocean, a lake, a garden, a tree, or a long interior view through the house.
The sequence matters.
If everything is revealed immediately, nothing is left to discover.
This is one reason enormous entry halls sometimes fail to create the intended drama.
If the entrance is huge, followed by another huge room, followed by another huge room, there is no contrast.
Everything is grand.
Therefore nothing feels particularly grand.
Architecture becomes more interesting when spaces compress and expand.
A narrower entrance can open into a larger living room.
A darker hallway can terminate at a wall of daylight.
A partially concealed garden can suddenly become visible.
The house begins telling a story.
The Design Lesson
Do not design the entrance as a room. Design arrival as an experience.
THE BIGGER LESSON
There is a common thread running through all ten principles.
None of them says:
Build the biggest house.
Buy the most expensive marble.
Install the trendiest kitchen.
Add another bedroom.
Build a larger primary suite.
The lesson is almost the opposite.
Make better decisions.
Design a house that performs.
Design with natural light.
Respect the property.
Understand your routines.
Plan for aging.
Choose materials intelligently.
Eliminate wasted square footage.
Create useful storage.
Invest in important components such as windows.
And make moving through the house an experience rather than merely a way of getting from one room to another.
The homes people love most are not necessarily the largest or most expensive.
They are usually the houses where somebody thought carefully about why things are where they are.
That is ultimately what good home design is about.
A house should not merely contain your life.
It should make your life easier, more comfortable, more enjoyable, and more interesting every single day.
And that is a much better definition of luxury than square footage.
