Choosing A Floor Plan - Choosing Your New Home

Congratulations, you are going to buy a new home! Once you decide on your location, your price range and your time frame for your move, it's time to begin to design that home to suit the needs of you and your family. Where do you begin? Your home's floor plan will have a definite impact on how your family actually lives together in your new home. There are many questions you should ask yourself when deciding what you want in a floor plan. Where does your family live? Do they spend most of their time in the kitchen sharing meals and catching up on the day's activities? Or do they head off to quiet spaces like bedrooms and specialty rooms for crafting, gaming, or media? Answering these questions will help you decide. You may be looking for an open floor plan that flows together and allows for family and friends to socialize and interact. Or, you may decide you are more interested in a home that has a study, a game room, a man cave, or a quiet window seat for curling up with a good book. How much space do you need? Do you need lots of bedrooms for family and guests? Do you need more storage space to hide away large stores of stuff? Are you downsizing or moving up? Answering these questions will help you decide how large a home you really need. You may need to search out floor plans that have bonus rooms and flex spaces if you have a large family, or an extended family that likes to visit. Or you may be a pack rat, a collector, or have an at home business or simply have a shoe fetish that warrants lots of closet space. But perhaps you're looking to save on energy bills, keep the clutter to a minimum, and streamline your life allowing you smaller, easier to maintain spaces. How many stories do you want? Do you want an easy one-story ranch style home, or do you prefer a traditional home with the bedrooms upstairs, and living space downstairs? Or even yet another choice, do you want a master down with other living spaces upstairs? Answering these questions will help you decide on the long term goals you have for the home. You may anticipate growing old in the home and want to be able to maneuver into your golden years. Or you may want separate areas of the house to go to when needing an escape. In beginning to analyze how you want to use your space, and how you would like the design to work for you, it will help you better understand how a floor plan will impact your life, and allow you to choose an option to fit for the whole family.