ᐅ Single-family bungalow, approximately 1,500 sq ft – looking for floor plan ideas

Hello everyone,

After following the discussions here for some time, I would like to join in and share my own concerns.

We have purchased a 1,700m² plot of land (28x60m width x depth). The site coverage ratio is 0.2. By the way, we are a couple in our late 20s and currently have no children. We want to plan for one child’s bedroom and one study room (home office).

About the plot:

• no slope
• Restrictions: up to 2 full floors allowed, site coverage ratio 0.2, roof pitch must be 40%
• Location: rural village, no through road, a residential street runs parallel to the lower boundary (bathroom to guest WC) at about 5 meters (16 feet) distance

About the house:

• Desired house type: bungalow
• Desired size: 140-145m²
• no basement, no upper floor
• Double garage with access to the house; if building regulations allow, this should be the only entrance door and it should be built on the boundary line
• Kitchen: open plan to make the living/dining area appear larger
• To avoid numerous doors in the hallway → entrance to bathroom/bedroom via dressing room and a "corner in the hallway"
• 2 patio doors, one from the kitchen (two-panel) and one from the living room (sliding door)
• Gas heating (underfloor heating) + solar support for domestic hot water production
• No (decentralized or centralized) ventilation system
• Bricks: Poroton T10 36.5cm (or T10 42cm?)
• Covered terrace
• Tall and narrow window between kitchen and hallway to brighten the hallway

House design:

• We created the design ourselves as laypersons.
• Coordination with the architect/structural engineer of the construction company will take place in September

What is very important to us:

• Access to the house via the garage, since 99% of the time we enter the house by car and don’t want to walk to the house in cold or rainy weather
• Terrace facing west or south
• 4 rooms (bedroom, living room, child’s room, study)

What is relatively important to us:

• Utility room (HAR) should not be too small (minimum 12m²)
• Utility room and kitchen should not be too far from the entrance (garage)
• Especially large/wide attic ladder
• Bathroom and guest WC should each have a shower

Open questions:

• Do you have any general suggestions for the floor plan?
• Building materials: The construction company uses Poroton T10 36.5cm for exterior walls and 11.5cm for interior walls as standard (no additional insulation in the walls)
• We don’t want to build a passive house or extremely energy-efficient house, so T10 bricks seem sufficient. Or should we invest more here? My idea was to increase the wall thickness to 42cm (outside) and 17.5cm (inside), as 11.5cm seems too thin to route cables, sockets, etc.
• Poroton T10: I’ve read that the thin ribs and thinner exterior walls make the bricks less stable. Is there any truth to this, or would we have problems fixing furniture, for example?
• Poroton is said not to be very soundproof... however, I hear more often that doors and windows are typically the weak points regarding noise (and thermal insulation).
• The window between kitchen and hallway is planned to be 200x30cm and positioned above the wall cabinets. Do you see this as a good idea, or could it cause problems?
• Is the only access to the house through the garage possible?
• I’m uncertain about the layout of the bathrooms; is it optimal as shown?
• We would like tile flooring in the kitchen area, utility room, garage, and hallway (?), and laminate flooring elsewhere. Is this okay with underfloor heating?
• I find some rooms quite small. The hallway width is only 1.33m (4.4 feet), so nothing more can be sacrificed.

Floor plan

Front elevation

Request an exception for a roof slope of max. 30–35 degrees. Everything else looks unattractive. Make the attic accessible by stairs as a basement alternative. How do visitors or delivery services enter the house without a proper front door with a doorbell? If there is a child, do they have to pass through the wardrobe to get to the bathroom? Poor idea.

Only having an entrance through the garage is not practical.
Where will the mail carrier ring the doorbell?

I would swap the entrance and the utility room.

What kind of staircase leads to the attic?
A 40-degree roof is quite steep—why shouldn’t it be used?

I would extend the hallway up to the bathroom. You have no space for storage in that area, and the hallway offers more privacy. Imagine in 20 years standing in front of the wardrobe in the morning while your child’s current partner is using the bathroom.
Then the children’s and study rooms would have four straight walls.

I really don’t like the open plan living area.
The kitchen feels cramped.
The route between kitchen and dining area is quite long.
The distance between TV and sofa is too large.
I also don’t like that slanted wall.

Do you really want to extend the roof over the garage that far?

Hello everyone,

Thank you very much for your feedback. I will try adjusting the roof pitch as suggested; the current development plan specifies 40° (degrees), so that’s a good tip.

If the child has to go through the dressing room to get to the bathroom, then that’s just how it is... this way, we avoid having a very long, narrow corridor and save on doors.
We want to access the house through the garage, where there will, of course, be a front door with a doorbell. The mail carrier will find it there, and visitors as well. This has worked well for friends of ours.

Why wouldn’t the entrance there be practical? Of course, you have to open one more door to get to the front door and walk about 2 meters (6.5 feet) further, but we don’t have five different package deliveries every day anyway.

Regarding the attic: currently, only a larger attic ladder (140x80cm (55x31 inches)) is planned. We would prefer to have everything on one level and not have separate rooms like bedrooms or children’s rooms upstairs. Also, finishing the attic right now would exceed our budget, so we would have to reduce the ground floor area to about 110m² (1,184 sq ft) and end up with two floors again. We want to keep the attic as a reserve in case we plan for more children, for example.

We originally had a longer corridor, but then the dressing room seemed quite small. Also, the doors wouldn’t fit anymore because the corridor wall would be at the middle height of the bathroom door. I’m still experimenting with this. Your point is definitely valid.

I find the kitchen feels bigger rather than cramped due to the lack of walls. The distance from the kitchen center to the dining table is 4 meters (13 feet), which doesn’t seem too far. Currently, we often eat on the sofa and walk about 7 meters (23 feet) instead.
The distance from the TV to the couch is about 4.0 to 4.5 meters (13 to 15 feet), depending on seating position. For us, this is optimal with a 55" television, as we currently have a very similar living room setup in our apartment.

I will also draft a version where the utility room and entrance are swapped, but then we might lose wall space in the utility room, which I consider important for the heating system, shelves, electrical panels, washer, and dryer. But we’ll see how it looks.

Thank you again for your feedback so far. I look forward to hearing more opinions.

One thing you didn’t understand:
I don’t want to convert the attic into living space. I just want to possibly install one Velux window, some lighting, an electrical outlet, and boards as flooring—no insulation, nothing else. Making it accessible with a staircase gives you a wonderfully convenient storage area for various things. I can also set up two workbenches up there and do some painting. Our suitcases, Christmas decorations, a cabinet with extra bedding—better to have than need, and so on.

For the insulated part of the house, the general contractor built a small hallway upstairs. For the door, we chose a patio door because of the temperature difference between the attic and the main house. The additional cost here was about 8,000 (currency), including a beech wood staircase. K.

Hello Nordlys, that’s basically how we planned it, just with an attic ladder to save space. So the attic is already accessible, you might have misunderstood that. However, we didn’t plan for a hallway. We will see if it’s possible to build a permanent staircase now; of course, that would be better for the future than a folding ladder.

PS. The roof is not supposed to extend that far over the garage; that’s more of an error in the tool or a lack of knowledge on my part.