ᐅ Floor Plan Optimization for a Single-Family Home with a Secondary Suite
Created on: 19 Jan 2026 10:26
D
DieHnnH
Hello everyone,
We are a couple (both 34 years old) looking to build our home in a rural area of Baden-Württemberg. Important preliminary information: no children planned, but a dog. A separate apartment (granny flat) is mandatory with at least 23sqm (250 sq ft).
We would appreciate your input to help us avoid making major mistakes.
Development Plan / Restrictions
Plot size: 494sqm (5314 sq ft)
Slope: none
Site coverage ratio: 0.32
Edge building allowance: garage permitted
Number of parking spaces: 3
Number of stories: 2 full stories required
Roof style: gable roof with a pitch of 25–38°
Orientation: see plan
Additional requirement: separate apartment
Homeowners’ Requirements
Style: country house / modern Swedish style
Basement, floors: no basement, 2 full floors
Number of occupants, age: 2 adults (34), 1 planned dog, 1 person in separate apartment
Space requirements on ground floor and upper floor: 120sqm (1292 sq ft) for us plus at least 23sqm (250 sq ft) for the separate apartment
Office: home office, 1 person working fully from home
Guest stays per year: total about 5–15 nights
Open or closed layout: open
Open kitchen, kitchen island: open kitchen with kitchen island or U-shape preferred
Number of dining seats: 4–6
Fireplace: desired for coziness, small in size, probably not really necessary
Garage, carport: carport plus 2 additional parking spaces
Kitchen garden, greenhouse: small greenhouse plus kitchen garden
Other wishes / special features / daily routine, also reasons why certain things should or shouldn’t be: the most important space to us is the kitchen and living room combined as an open area. We want it to be cozy, which is very important. The building plot faces east on the edge of the village, with no further development planned in that direction. We really like this view, but we would also like the terrace to face south.
In general, we want to make the best possible use of the remaining garden and are looking for ideas on how to place the house on the plot to maximize garden usability. We understand the garden won’t be very large.
We both have home-centered hobbies that require space: my husband plays drums, I play piano—space needed upstairs. I enjoy baking, he enjoys cooking—space needed in the kitchen. I like to read—books require space too. We both enjoy gardening.
House Design
Designed by: architect (BU)
What do you like especially and why?
- Layout of the open space and size of the kitchen
- Location of the separate apartment
- Additional space gained upstairs. We originally considered a single-story extension for the separate apartment, but the architect said it’s more expensive than enlarging the whole house. This way, we can keep the technical room small downstairs and move the utility room completely upstairs. We would swap room usage upstairs: bedroom → utility room in the northeast, office → bedroom (this also allows a nice built-in wardrobe niche).
What do you dislike and why?
- The separate apartment has no room for a closet
- Unsure if the size of the open space is sufficient
- The bathroom is very large—like a ballroom. We considered extending the hallway to create a small extra storage room. However, this would reduce western light in the bathroom.
- We don’t like the windows and terrace doors at all yet
- Carport location: needs to be rotated and, in our opinion, moved to the boundary
Cost estimate according to architect/planner: €600,000 including secondary construction costs
Tasks we will do ourselves: roofing, purchase and installation of photovoltaic system & battery, wall and ceiling boarding, filling, painting, flooring, bathrooms
Preferred heating system: air-water heat pump with underfloor heating
If you have to give up some details / expansions
- Can give up: fireplace, so much space upstairs
- Cannot give up: separate apartment, large kitchen
Why has the design turned out this way?
Because this reflects our wishes, the separate apartment, and respects the development plan. We tried ourselves to design a squarer house to create space on the south side, but that didn’t work with the separate apartment.
We’re happy for you to roast the floor plan and welcome any improvement suggestions—thanks in advance.
Circled in green and oriented to north.
Sunny regards
We are a couple (both 34 years old) looking to build our home in a rural area of Baden-Württemberg. Important preliminary information: no children planned, but a dog. A separate apartment (granny flat) is mandatory with at least 23sqm (250 sq ft).
We would appreciate your input to help us avoid making major mistakes.
Development Plan / Restrictions
Plot size: 494sqm (5314 sq ft)
Slope: none
Site coverage ratio: 0.32
Edge building allowance: garage permitted
Number of parking spaces: 3
Number of stories: 2 full stories required
Roof style: gable roof with a pitch of 25–38°
Orientation: see plan
Additional requirement: separate apartment
Homeowners’ Requirements
Style: country house / modern Swedish style
Basement, floors: no basement, 2 full floors
Number of occupants, age: 2 adults (34), 1 planned dog, 1 person in separate apartment
Space requirements on ground floor and upper floor: 120sqm (1292 sq ft) for us plus at least 23sqm (250 sq ft) for the separate apartment
Office: home office, 1 person working fully from home
Guest stays per year: total about 5–15 nights
Open or closed layout: open
Open kitchen, kitchen island: open kitchen with kitchen island or U-shape preferred
Number of dining seats: 4–6
Fireplace: desired for coziness, small in size, probably not really necessary
Garage, carport: carport plus 2 additional parking spaces
Kitchen garden, greenhouse: small greenhouse plus kitchen garden
Other wishes / special features / daily routine, also reasons why certain things should or shouldn’t be: the most important space to us is the kitchen and living room combined as an open area. We want it to be cozy, which is very important. The building plot faces east on the edge of the village, with no further development planned in that direction. We really like this view, but we would also like the terrace to face south.
In general, we want to make the best possible use of the remaining garden and are looking for ideas on how to place the house on the plot to maximize garden usability. We understand the garden won’t be very large.
We both have home-centered hobbies that require space: my husband plays drums, I play piano—space needed upstairs. I enjoy baking, he enjoys cooking—space needed in the kitchen. I like to read—books require space too. We both enjoy gardening.
House Design
Designed by: architect (BU)
What do you like especially and why?
- Layout of the open space and size of the kitchen
- Location of the separate apartment
- Additional space gained upstairs. We originally considered a single-story extension for the separate apartment, but the architect said it’s more expensive than enlarging the whole house. This way, we can keep the technical room small downstairs and move the utility room completely upstairs. We would swap room usage upstairs: bedroom → utility room in the northeast, office → bedroom (this also allows a nice built-in wardrobe niche).
What do you dislike and why?
- The separate apartment has no room for a closet
- Unsure if the size of the open space is sufficient
- The bathroom is very large—like a ballroom. We considered extending the hallway to create a small extra storage room. However, this would reduce western light in the bathroom.
- We don’t like the windows and terrace doors at all yet
- Carport location: needs to be rotated and, in our opinion, moved to the boundary
Cost estimate according to architect/planner: €600,000 including secondary construction costs
Tasks we will do ourselves: roofing, purchase and installation of photovoltaic system & battery, wall and ceiling boarding, filling, painting, flooring, bathrooms
Preferred heating system: air-water heat pump with underfloor heating
If you have to give up some details / expansions
- Can give up: fireplace, so much space upstairs
- Cannot give up: separate apartment, large kitchen
Why has the design turned out this way?
Because this reflects our wishes, the separate apartment, and respects the development plan. We tried ourselves to design a squarer house to create space on the south side, but that didn’t work with the separate apartment.
We’re happy for you to roast the floor plan and welcome any improvement suggestions—thanks in advance.
Circled in green and oriented to north.
Sunny regards
DieHnnH schrieb:
What weaknesses do you still see? The weak point here is currently the user of the planning tool: the ground floor is simply not buildable at all. You are using walls that are much too thin, and everything is reduced in favor of the open-plan area. The space required for the cold storage room and the shower toilet is missing. Is the scale of the furniture correct?
Everything on the ground floor is so incredibly tight that it cannot be used. Does the staircase even have the necessary length?
It also doesn’t help to reduce the depth of the base cabinets in the kitchen just to get a more pronounced peninsula.
Wow, I must have been sleep-deprived. Thanks for the tip, I’ll redo it.
I saw those narrow cabinets on the south side of the kitchen in a real, existing kitchen and thought they looked nice. However, the question is whether that will work here or if it will have to be a U-shape instead.
With more coffee in my system tomorrow, I’ll fix the mess.
I saw those narrow cabinets on the south side of the kitchen in a real, existing kitchen and thought they looked nice. However, the question is whether that will work here or if it will have to be a U-shape instead.
With more coffee in my system tomorrow, I’ll fix the mess.
Here it is again with the correct walls and accurate external dimensions. Somehow everything had become distorted, and I didn’t notice.
Of course, the focus is on the open-plan living area, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing as long as the overall layout works, right? The furniture is to scale, except perhaps the armchair, which doesn’t exist (yet). The dining table is deliberately small because we don’t have a larger one and don’t need one.
Where exactly do you find the “everything on the ground floor” option very limited? I would appreciate more details on what specifically isn’t working there. Thanks in advance.
Of course, the focus is on the open-plan living area, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing as long as the overall layout works, right? The furniture is to scale, except perhaps the armchair, which doesn’t exist (yet). The dining table is deliberately small because we don’t have a larger one and don’t need one.
Where exactly do you find the “everything on the ground floor” option very limited? I would appreciate more details on what specifically isn’t working there. Thanks in advance.
DieHnnH schrieb:
Here again with correct walls and accurate external dimensions, [...] I would like more details on what exactly is not working there? I don’t see any external dimensions here at all. The guest toilet is narrow and very tight, even if you integrate the flush tank into the wall towards the technical room/laundry room. You either have a use for a shower in the toilet area (for example, for a dog), or you leave it out. But placing it behind a bottleneck is nonsense. I would not position a dog or garden worker’s shower so that you have to carry dirt through the cloakroom first. Instead, for example in the laundry room/technical room, it should have a short walking distance—ideally not passing laundry—close to a secondary entrance.
Now that the issue of the ridiculous granny flat has passed you by, you basically correspond to a one-child family without children but with a dog (or with a sports room even the “typical 2 adults, 2 children family”), so on a flat plot you have no need for a custom design. So why are you going through the effort of creating a custom house design?
What exactly do the “types 1 to 3” mean in the zoning plan excerpt?
https://www.instagram.com/11antgmxde/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bauen-jetzt/
11ant schrieb:
Why do you go through the trouble of creating a custom house design? The only "special feature" I see here is the desire for legal two-story construction. If I were you, I would look through the catalog of countless standard house types with knee walls in the attic and simply (to keep the selection manageable) focus on one with a 150cm (60 inches) knee wall. I have already explained why, with a 200cm (79 inches) knee wall, it makes more sense to raise one from the catalog of knee wall houses rather than looking at detached villas.
https://www.instagram.com/11antgmxde/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bauen-jetzt/
DieHnnH schrieb:
Where exactly is “everything on the ground floor” really that insufficient? DieHnnH schrieb:
I would like more details on what exactly doesn’t work there? But you do remember it was referring to the file in #45? The kitchen with a 40cm (16 inch) deep sink, the small wardrobe, the narrow bathroom, and then you would have to scale the walls to at least 15cm (6 inch) or 20cm (8 inch) thickness. My brain can imagine that without a drawing, but everything becomes even tighter.
ypg schrieb:
Everything on the ground floor is so extremely tight in terms of space that it can’t really be used. Take the shower toilet, which is at most 120cm (47 inch) wide and would feel squeezed because of the toilet pre-wall, technical wall, and tiling.
DieHnnH schrieb:
Of course the focus is on the open-plan living area, but that’s not wrong as long as it all works overall, right? Exactly, everything must work. But I have the feeling (and you can see it from the designs) that the open-plan living area keeps growing at the expense of the rest. That’s a mistake many make: the main point is that the open-plan living area is large, spacious, and the central hub of the house. The rest seems less important.
Personally, I’m also a bit surprised because comfort was supposed to be the priority at the beginning. Now, the living and dining area stretches across the entire house width, furnished with a 140cm by 80cm (55 by 31 inch) table, which honestly doesn’t create a cozy atmosphere. Your space becomes more like a hall. But well, that’s your choice and your house. It’s just something worth mentioning.
11ant schrieb:
So why do you even bother creating a custom house design? Yes, I actually thought that a few days ago when implementing the suggestions and alternatives. I did it because two and a half people can afford to have a bit more openness. However, when looking at the upper floor in #65 and reading the needs from the first post, I feel that individuality isn’t necessary. A standard house works perfectly fine — even a Flair 113.
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