ᐅ Arranging the Floor Plan of a Penthouse Apartment – Some Different Ideas!

The attic apartment here is planned to be updated with dormer windows and a roof renovation. During this process, some modifications inside the apartment can and should also take place. The design is not yet finalized. I am looking for ideas and possibilities.

The sizes of the dormers are not yet decided, but according to the building authority (building permit / planning permission), quite a bit is possible. What would not be allowed, for example, is a dormer running along the entire length of the roof. However, two or possibly three dormers on one side of the roof would likely be feasible. To clarify this in more detail, we first need to come up with ideas and concepts.

The apartment is old, this is the current layout

The office/toilet/bathroom/kitchen face north, and the balcony is on the east side.
Walls marked in red are exterior walls and cannot be changed.
Now follows my "first" idea of how the floor plans including dormers could look.

What has been done here:
- The bathroom and toilet have been combined to create more space and fitted with a dormer window.
- Room 2 is removed and combined with the large kitchen/living area. The black line represents a half-height wall as a room divider. Furthermore, a dormer is added here for more light and especially more space.
- Room 1 is reduced in size by moving the wall toward where Room 2 was (the proportion of the two rooms is currently very unbalanced). This is mainly because Room 2 might later be restored as a separate room. Dormer 2 is therefore planned and built accordingly.
- Dormer 1 is a regular dormer to enlarge one of the rooms.
- The dormers are shed dormers (lean-to dormers).

What bothers me about this plan is the relatively long hallway. It already feels quite long in the current state, has no natural light, and if the door to the former Room 2 is removed, it probably won’t improve.

Since many people here are currently building and planning, maybe some other ideas are available. What ideas or suggestions would you have, what else could be done here? Feel free to let your ideas run free; the only thing to keep in mind are the walls that cannot be changed. I don’t have the exact measurements at hand right now, but that shouldn’t stop you from sharing your thoughts or suggestions. The total area as it stands now, before the renovation, is about 75–90m² (800–970 sq ft).

A few measurements for the walls would be helpful 😉

Unfortunately, I don’t know the exact measurements. I can only estimate. The long side is about 10–12m (33–39 feet) and the short side 6–7m (20–23 feet). I can’t provide more details at the moment. I have no idea about the dimensions of the interior walls, but that wouldn’t really matter if you want to design freely anyway.

Well, dimensions are quite important.

6 to 7 m (20 to 23 ft) in depth... Is that an external measurement? If so, according to the provided drawing, the bathroom is not even 200 cm (79 inches) deep, and the hallway is at most 1 m (3.3 ft) wide, if that.

So who is supposed to judge whether these spaces can actually work if there are no dimensions provided? 😉

If you want to try “different ideas,” why not simply leave out the wall between the hallway and the living room? If it is load-bearing, you can likely replace it with an open beam support structure. And if in the future you want to separate room 2 again, you can just put up a drywall partition there—although that will bring back the dark hallway.

Alternatively, you could leave out the wall between the office and the hallway, which would allow natural light into the hallway. The office would then have a “landing model” layout—I’ve seen this in houses before, and it can be designed quite nicely. It also works well combined with a coat rack or closet (which would be useful if this upper floor is intended as a fully independent apartment) on the wall facing the staircase.

Combining the bathroom and toilet has the advantage of saving space, and if only 2–3 people live in the apartment, that’s usually sufficient. However, if you have guests, it’s nice to have a separate toilet so someone can use it while another person is showering. In that case, having them separated is the better option. (You don’t mention whether you own the entire house or if the lower floors’ sanitary facilities are available to you.)

Regarding the dormer windows: yes, they provide more light and space, but they also significantly change the exterior of the house. A house usually looks best when it has a certain symmetry, especially on the side facing the street. Considering a possible future separation of room 2 from the living room, three equally sized dormers evenly distributed along the south side might be better than one small and one large dormer.

I like the idea of having the office open to the hallway. The built-in closet is nice; you can hide the PC inside. I would shorten the hallway at the "back," maybe add a storage room if removing the wall doesn’t work out as @kivaas suggests. Since the entryway is located in front of the stairs, there’s no need for a closed hallway leading to the living areas. I would omit the half-height wall as it only gets in the way. If a room divider is needed, there are nice shelving units available.
Of course, you also need to consider who will be living in the apartment later. One or two people?