For homes that have potential views from a top storey, there is a growing trend towards an upside down design, where the living areas are upstairs and the bedrooms are downstairs.
Here are some things to contemplate when planning your home.
Noise transmission
If you have children who go to bed relatively early, it's important to plan where their bedrooms will be relative to the more high traffic parts of the house. This could include the garage and front door of the house where guests are likely to come in and out of the house, as well as looking at whether rooms directly above the child's bedroom will conduct noise (such as kitchens with tiling or hard covered floors). It often makes sense to have the children's rooms relatively close to the parent's room so that there will be limited noise transmission at night as well as keeping the kids rooms on the opposite side of the house from doors and garages.
It can also be great to give guests a quiet position in the home and some privacy from the family bedrooms if you are also planning on including a guest suite.
Construction costs
Most homeowners do not have an infinite budget when building a home. An upside down home design tends to have a higher construction cost as the cost of plumbing up, as well as running sewer lines and gas line, tends to add cost to the construction. As a result to keep the cost down, it's a good to keep as many of the wet areas on the ground as possible, such as keep laundries and extra bathrooms on the ground floor.
Privacy
Having your living rooms upstairs can be an issue for your neighbours if this means that your guests will be able to look into their bedrooms and backyards. For that reason, you may not be able to have full vista windows but instead may need to have windows that are placed to allow you to look over the other house but not directly into bedroom windows or into the neighboring yard. The house design company can help to model the visibility from the windows, based on both the survey data of your block as well as the proposed home design.
If you are contemplating building a home with an upside down approach it makes sense to talk to a building company with experience in building homes with a similar design so that you can find a great design for the right price.
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