Floor Plan Design Tips
A layout can look tidy on paper and still be awkward to live in: a door that hits the wardrobe, a bedroom with no wall for the bed, a route to the kitchen straight through the sofa. These ten floor plan design tips catch problems that are cheap to fix on a plan and expensive to fix once built, in any home from a studio to a family house, and you can test each one on your own plan.
Check every door swing
Ten checks for a better floor plan
1. Furnish before you fix the walls
A room’s real size is the space left around its bed, sofa or table. Furnish early and move walls to suit.
2. Check every door swing
Doors should not hit each other, a toilet or a wardrobe, and should open against a wall rather than into the middle of the room.
3. Keep routes short and straight
Corridors cost floor area. Arrange doors so you cross rooms along their edges, not through a seating area.
4. Give furniture a wall
Beds, sofas and desks need unbroken wall. A door, window or radiator on every wall leaves nowhere to put them.
5. Group the wet rooms
A kitchen, bathroom and laundry near each other, or stacked on two floors, keep the plumbing simple.
6. Follow the daylight
Put the rooms you use most in daytime where the light is best, and storage and utility rooms where it matters least.
7. Plan storage up front
A coat cupboard by the door and a linen cupboard by the bedrooms are easier to plan than to add later.
8. Separate quiet from busy
Avoid a bedroom sharing a wall with the TV; put a hallway or wardrobes between them where you can.
9. Check the view from the entrance
The view as the front door opens is the first impression. A bathroom door in that line of sight is worth moving.
10. Compare the numbers
Read each room’s area against your brief. A room that is too small on paper rarely feels bigger once built.
Why these checks, and in this order
The first four are about furniture and movement, because they decide whether a room works at all. A bedroom of 3.0 × 3.4 m (about 9′10″ × 11′2″) sounds adequate, but with the door in the middle of one long wall and a window in the middle of the other, a 1.6 m double bed has only one wall it can stand against. Move the door 0.5 m toward the corner and a second layout appears.
The middle checks, wet rooms, daylight and storage, shape the plan as a whole and are hardest to change later. The last three are about how the home feels and whether it meets the brief, and they are best judged with the furniture in and the plan seen in 3D.
Worked example: fixing two doors in a corner
The drawing above shows a common problem. Two doors sit close together near an inside corner, say a bedroom door and a bathroom door off a small landing. Both open inward toward the same corner, so their swings overlap: open one and the other cannot open fully, or they hit each other.
There are three usual fixes. Move one door along its wall until the arcs no longer meet, which is what the right-hand drawing does. Flip one door so it opens the other way, against its own wall. Or narrow one door, if the room behind it allows. On a plan each fix takes seconds; on site it means moving a door frame.
Signs a layout needs another look
A room you walk through to reach another
Fine for a kitchen-diner, a problem for a bedroom. Check how each private room is reached.
Furniture floating with no wall
Usually a sign of too many doors and windows on too few walls.
A long, dark hallway
Shorten it, or borrow light with a glazed door or a window at its end.
Storage only in the bedrooms
Coats, cleaning kit and bulk shopping need a place near the entrance and kitchen.
Testing a plan in the editor
Furnish at real sizes
Resize library items to match what you own or plan to buy.
Flip doors
Select a door and flip its swing to see which way works best.
Measure the gaps
Press M and measure the walkways between pieces of furniture.
Walk through in 3D
Enter walk mode and follow the route from the front door to each room.
Read the area schedule
Compare each room and the total with your brief.
Frequently asked questions
What makes a floor plan work well?
Rooms sized for their furniture, short routes between them, doors that do not clash, daylight where you spend the day and enough storage. The ten checks above test each of these.
How wide should a hallway be?
Commonly about 0.9 to 1.2 m (3 to 4 ft). Narrower halls make moving furniture hard, and building rules where you live may set a minimum for new work.
Should doors open into a room or out of it?
Most interior doors open into the room and against a nearby wall, so they do not block the hallway. A small WC door sometimes opens outward so it cannot be blocked from inside.
What is the most common floor plan mistake?
Fixing walls before placing furniture. Many other problems, such as no wall for the bed or a route through the seating, follow from it.
Do these tips apply to apartments as well as houses?
Yes. In an apartment the outside walls and wet rooms are usually fixed, so the checks on doors, furniture walls, storage and routes are where you have the most freedom.