ᐅ Floor Plan Design for a 150 sqm Townhouse with Gable Roof, 6 Rooms

Dear forum members,

We have completed a preliminary design for our house together with a company and are now at the beginning of the detailed planning stage. Therefore, we would greatly appreciate any suggestions for improvement, critical feedback, and additional ideas or tips regarding the floor plan.

Unfortunately, we do not yet have a site plan, but we do have the floor plans for the ground floor and upper floor at a scale of 1:100, as well as drawings of the house.

Thanks in advance!

Development Plan / Restrictions
Plot size: 700 sqm (7,534 sq ft)
Development according to §34 of the Building Code; the neighborhood features a wide variety of house types, sizes, number of floors, roof styles, etc. A positive preliminary building inquiry exists for a two-story townhouse up to 200 sqm (2,153 sq ft).

Client Requirements
Style, roof type, building type: shallow pitched gable roof, townhouse
Basement, floors: no basement, 2 floors
Number of occupants, age: 2 adults, 1 child (1 year old), possibly a second child planned
Space requirements for ground floor and upper floor: 150 sqm (1,615 sq ft)
Office: family use or home office? Home office for both adults about 3 days per week on average
Occasional overnight guests per year: parents-in-law visit several times a year
Open or closed architecture: open
Conservative or modern construction: modern
Open kitchen, kitchen island: open kitchen with island if possible
Number of dining seats: 4–8
Fireplace: no
Music/sound wall: no
Balcony, roof terrace: no
Garage, carport: yes, one parking space including a shed
Utility garden, greenhouse: possibly
Additional wishes / special features / daily routine, also reasons why something should or should not be included:
- Larger guest room on the ground floor with space for a double bed as the parents-in-law visit frequently
- Guest room on ground floor must also be usable as an office
- Bright rooms / mezzanine
- Open entrance area with open rooms and a view of the garden (a clear sightline)
- Straight concrete staircase to upper floor for dogs and parking space underneath (built-in cupboards)
- Office on upper floor should also serve as a utility/laundry room
- Façade in stone gray with wood cladding elements

House Design
Designer: planner from a construction company
What is liked most? Why?
- Very practical room layout and good room sizes
- Barrier-free access to the guest shower on the ground floor
- Additional storage space in the roof as a storage binder
- Lots of light through large windows
- Laundry room on upper floor close to the bedrooms/children’s rooms

What is disliked? Why?
- Kitchen might be too small / cramped
- Question whether a passage to the kitchen is necessary
- Main entrance is not barrier-free (terrace exit also not)
- The gray elements in the façade are to be replaced by wood cladding to give the house a more distinctive exterior appearance.

Preferred heating system: heat pump

If you had to do without, which details/features?
- Can do without: second washbasin in upper floor bathroom, round window in dressing room (can have a different shape), kitchen island if it doesn’t fit
- Cannot do without: straight concrete staircase, windows, large lift-and-slide door, larger guest room, mezzanine, guest shower on ground floor, walk-in showers, laundry room on upper floor

Why does the design look as it does now? For example,
This is the initial individual draft without adjustments from us so far. A mezzanine, a larger guest room on the ground floor, storage space in the roof, and laundry room on the upper floor were explicitly requested and implemented accordingly.

I’ll start.

Stairs... approximately 340 cm (11 ft 2 in) with no indication of the rise-to-run ratio. It will definitely be steep with a quite shallow tread depth.

Kitchen 3 m (9 ft 10 in) rough dimension... it’s not spacious.

Living room, if furnished as shown in the plan, good luck reaching the sofa.

Wardrobe???? Completely missing or at most the space under the stairs, which isn’t much when you consider seasonal jackets, shoes, etc.

Upper floor - Bedroom… it would be better to plan the walk-in closet first, then the sleeping area. As it is, there’s little space on either side of the bed, and the door is right next to the headboard. The closet layouts, with many corner units, are also not ideal.

The windows
Child 1 has a floor-to-ceiling window at the desk. And at the other window, there isn’t enough space to put a standard-depth wardrobe against the wall.
The office and bathroom, on the other hand, have basement-style windows, so much for that.

LeFy2023 schrieb:

- Lots of light through large windows

Bathroom
It had to be a T-shaped layout, right?
If you want a proper washbasin and a somewhat attractively framed bathtub, the passage between them will be extremely narrow.

LeFy2023 schrieb:

The office on the upper floor is supposed to be an additional utility room or laundry room

I don’t believe it — why not use the “mezzanine” space for that instead?

LeFy2023 schrieb:

Barrier-free access to the guest shower on the ground floor

I don’t think so either — the shower door and bathroom door will always compete for space.
You’ve used “barrier-free” several times now, what exactly do you mean by that?

LeFy2023 schrieb:

Additional storage in the attic as a storage binder

How is that supposed to be accessed? Pull-down ladder? What is intended to be stored there?

Thanks for the quick feedback @kbt09

You can disregard the drawn-in furniture; those are just placeholders from the draftsman.

kbt09 schrieb:

Stairs ... about 340 cm (11 ft) with no information on the riser ratio. It will definitely be steep with quite shallow tread depth.

Do you have a good idea or adjustment suggestion here?

kbt09 schrieb:

Kitchen 3 m (10 ft) rough dimension ... not very generous.

One option could be to open the kitchen into the living/dining area. Do you have another idea?

kbt09 schrieb:

Wardrobe???? Completely missing or at best the space under the stairs, which isn’t much when you think of seasonal jackets, shoes, etc.

It should be under the stairs. Do you have any other ideas or suggestions?

kbt09 schrieb:

Upper floor - Bedroom ... it would be better to plan the walk-in closet first, then the sleeping area. As it is, there’s little space on either side of the bed and the door is right next to the headboard. The closet design with multiple corner units isn’t optimal either.

An alternative thought would be to skip the walk-in closet, place the bed under the round window, and put a long wardrobe on the stair side.

kbt09 schrieb:

The windows
Child 1 has a floor-to-ceiling window at the desk. And at the other window, there isn’t enough space to place a standard-depth wardrobe against the wall.

Good point regarding wardrobe depth. We’ll have to reconsider the desk placement in front of the floor-to-ceiling window.

kbt09 schrieb:

Office and bathroom have basement windows, so far so good.

What do you mean by “so far so good” here?

kbt09 schrieb:

Bathroom
It had to be a T shape, right?
If you want a decent vanity and a nicely framed bathtub, the passage between them will be very tight.

T shape is desired. We could shift the wall of the washroom (currently still the office) a bit.

kbt09 schrieb:

I don’t think so. Why not rather use this space "gallery" for that?

What do you mean? Our thinking was that it’s practical to have the washing machine upstairs near the bedrooms and also a room to dry clothes. We don’t need a second office.

kbt09 schrieb:

I think so too, shower door and bathroom door will always compete.
You mentioned barrier-free several times, what’s the idea behind that?

That’s right, the door is not correctly drawn in the ground floor bathroom.
The idea behind barrier-free refers to the possibility of living on the ground floor in case of injury or limited mobility where stairs can’t be managed for a longer time.

kbt09 schrieb:

How is that going to be accessed? Pull-down stairs? What will be stored there?

Pull-down stairs would be our first idea. Storage would be for everything typically kept in a basement (luggage, seasonal items, etc.).

LeFy2023 schrieb:

What do you mean here by "soweit zu"?

Please read my post again; I included a quote from you regarding rooms filled with natural light afterwards.

Why don’t you plan the rooms based on the intended furniture?

LeFy2023 schrieb:

An alternative idea would be to remove the walk-in closet, place the bed under the round window, and put a long wardrobe on the stairwell side.

The wall under the round window is 3m (10 feet) wide, so there would be narrow pathways on both sides of the bed.

LeFy2023 schrieb:

What do you think? Our idea was that it’s practical to have the washing machine on the upper floor near the bedrooms and at the same time a room to dry laundry. We don’t need a second office.

No, you wrote

LeFy2023 schrieb:

Home office for both adults on average 3 days per week

Wouldn’t two separate offices make sense, especially for video conferences or online meetings? I appreciate that no one else is in my home office at the same time. Also, I still don’t see how the double bed fits into the lower office properly.

You write

LeFy2023 schrieb:

Do you have an additional idea?

LeFy2023 schrieb:

Do you have another idea / suggestion?

and so on. You can’t just change individual details directly; if the staircase is too steep, it needs to be longer, and then the floor plan no longer works. This applies to several of the issues I pointed out.

LeFy2023 schrieb:

Do you have a good idea or a suggestion for adjustment here?

What is your floor-to-ceiling height? You either have to live with a steep staircase or make the staircase longer and mess up the floor plan. If you want to keep the staircase as it is, I can only advise you to visit and try out a similar staircase with the same slope.

LeFy2023 schrieb:

A pull-down staircase would be our first idea. We plan to store everything there that is usually kept in a basement (suitcases, seasonal items, etc.).

How high is your attic or do you have a building section drawing? Just judging from the side view, I think the height is quite limited, and you will have very little space.

LeFy2023 schrieb:

The idea behind barrier-free was related to the possibility to "live" on the ground floor in case you cannot use stairs for an extended period due to injury or limited mobility.

With such a narrow bathroom on the ground floor, it will be quite difficult. My better half used a walker around the house for a while after a spinal fracture. You would have to back in because turning around with a walker is impossible.

LeFy2023 schrieb:

A site plan is unfortunately not available yet,

But you must have a sketch showing the plot as a rectangle with dimensions and the house and parking area marked out?

LeFy2023 schrieb:

Can't you do without: …, larger guest room, mezzanine

What is the purpose of the open space here? I don’t see a mezzanine.
You can’t simply furnish the guest room with a double bed. I don’t see age-appropriate furnishing options in the guest room or the shower toilet!

LeFy2023 schrieb:

You can disregard the drawn-in furniture; they are just placeholders by the designer.

But shouldn’t they suit your needs? It's understandable that the planner uses their standard templates. However, your task as future occupants should be to actually “draw in” your furniture and check whether everything fits.

LeFy2023 schrieb:

Laundry room on the upper floor.

Where is it located?

LeFy2023 schrieb:

What do you mean? Our idea was that it’s practical to have the washing machine upstairs near the bedrooms and at the same time have a room for drying. We don’t need a second office.

The washing machine is shown on the ground floor. Is the enclosed room with the porthole window supposed to be the laundry room? If so, where is the wardrobe planned? Even without the washing machine: the dressing room isn’t really usable, at least not with standard wardrobes. These corner wardrobes hardly provide any space… meters, to store more than one meter of hanging rail length.

LeFy2023 schrieb:

The idea behind barrier-free was related to the option to "live" on the ground floor in case, due to injury or similar, you can’t use stairs or are immobile for an extended time.

As I already mentioned: I don’t see that here.

Without quoting further: there’s hardly any walk-in storage under the roof; the open space only contributes acoustics on the upper floor and somewhat reduces space; the laundry room is not planned by the designer and if it exists, it competes with the dressing room; the bathroom is too narrow to fit a bathtub, washbasin, and T-shaped toilet; floor-to-ceiling windows reduce privacy in the children's rooms; the bed in the bedroom is squeezed into too little space.
3 meters (about 10 feet) on edge in the living space is simply 10cm (4 inches) too little.
A wardrobe (at least 50 to 60cm (20 to 24 inches) wide per person) is not planned at all. The utility room of 8.x square meters (about 86 square feet) is adequate if additional accessible storage space exists. Personally, I find the kitchen cramped and not modern as requested.
Regarding the toilet, I wonder why a rectangular layout wasn’t chosen (which the guest room would benefit from) and the shower placed at the back, with a window facing north.
In the living room, it makes sense to place the sofa against the wall, but then the position of the side window at the corner of the house becomes questionable.
I also find the exterior views unsuccessful. I like the porthole window as an accent, but it should be centered in the gable. I personally also like the two narrow windows in the gable, but not combined with the porthole. And I don’t see any added value inside a “mezzanine” for this extravagance.
Overall, I find none of the four facades successful—I don’t see any thought or purpose behind the colored accents. These should support leading lines instead of adding more in an already confusing arrangement.
What is interesting here is the carport/parking area situation.
I don’t see the big picture yet—more like a round shelf than a smooth solution.