Do you know what your house should look like even though you don’t have a floor plan? If so, you might have the same question one of our readers asked me recently.

Luci wrote:

I know the correct answer for this, but I’d like to find out that it CAN be done differently – My husband and I will be building, (and by building I mean designing and having someone else build it) our retirement home in the near future, and I’ve found an “outside” that I like.  I don’t just like it, I want it!  I know you should design the floor plan first, then the outside, but I want to do it the other way around.  Any advice?

Thank you very much!

Luci

Here’s my answer:

Luci – Thanks for the good question. I have begun a number of projects with an image my client has found that captures the exact look they want. What we often do is to evaluate the plan of the house that has the “ideal” exterior and see how well that floor plan fits the program we’ve developed for the client’s Perfect House. Sometimes the plan can be simply adapted to suit my client’s needs. Sometimes it takes some clever redesigning to get things perfect. A good architect can even modify the exterior of the house to fit the revised floor plan and still retain the essence of the look of the house that captivated the client initially. The secret is that the exterior usually does not have to be a perfectly identical match to still look “just like” the exterior they had found and fallen in love with.

So don’t worry. Your Perfect House plan can usually be designed to give you Your Perfect House exterior look. It just takes some clever and creative thinking.

Best regards,

Bill

For more articles about home design, homebuilding, and remodeling, please visit my other site, www.about-home-design.com.

There are rules for selecting the correct size shutter for your windows. This shouldn’t be a wild guess. If you get it wrong, it will show. The window will look odd, even if you can’t immediately tell why it looks odd. Here are some tips to get it right.

Shutters used to serve a functional purpose on a house. They were opened and closed regularly. Wooden shutters increased a home’s security when closed and allowed light and fresh air to enter the house when they were open. Shutters were usually closed and latched at night to make the home less susceptible to break ins. And, glass was very expensive. It needed to be protected during storms to prevent breakage and shutters served that purpose, too. Shutters were a key part of the function of the windows. (more…)

These days, with lower real estate values and the economic uncertainties, reinventing your house may make more financial sense than building a new one. I hate to admit that. Being an architect, I love building new houses. But I understand that selling a house these days can be tough. Real estate commissions, fixing up your old house to get it into condition to sell, and the costs of moving can add up fast. But what if your family situation has changes?  What if your children have grown and left home and you need a house to retire comfortably in that is easier to take care of and will remain accessible even if you should lose mobility? What if your  bathroom is outdated or simply old and you want a new look? (more…)

It’s the holiday season and that means your house must adapt to accommodate a different number of occupants than normal. When design your new house or design your remodeling project, consider making your house flexible by thinking through how your house will live during the holidays.

I know that in our house, with four adult children and their family and friends visiting, we often have a packed house. We wanted a house that was not too big, but would be able to adapt to different needs. We wanted a house that was flexible. (more…)

Good house design is something we can feel, but often we have trouble putting into words. When I set out to write Designing Your Perfect House, I was presented with this challenge of putting feelings and impressions in written form. I wasn’t sure how well I could do it, so you can imagine how gratifying it was to receive this comment from a reader recently:

“Mr. Hirsch, I love your book, it puts into words all the things I couldn’t when viewing houses!” Cathy B.

Thanks, Cathy. You made my day.

House design is very intangible. Many times we can feel that things are not right in one house and comfortably perfect in another, but it is hard to explain why. However, there are principles architects employ to make a design cohesive, flowing, and appropriate. Architects deal with scale and composition. Good house design is about much more than putting one room next to another. It’s about balance, proportions and sequencing of spaces. It’s about optimizing space and making spaces fit their purpose. These are things architects study and understand.

In my book, Designing Your Perfect House, I explore these concepts and try to explain them in plain English. I’m delighted that Cathy felt I managed to do that. You can download a few chapters, for free, on my website. Just click here.

Take a look and let me know what you think.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

You might think your house only becomes watertight when the siding, brick or stone is completely installed. Actually, sidings of any kind, including masonry and stucco, are not as watertight as you might imagine. They are not the last line of defense against water.

I refer to siding, brick, stone, stucco, and other sidings as the “weatherproofing” of the house. These materials keep the bulk of the wind and water out, but even perfectly installed siding material will still let in small, but significant, amounts of moisture. There is no effective way to stop this and it does not indicate the house is poorly built. (more…)

If you’ll pardon the bad pun, it saves dollars and makes sense to stay in your house and remodel it in the face of today’s economy and the dismal state of the real estate market. It’s very hard to sell a house right now and even harder to get a decent price for it. The equity you might have had has shrunken. It’s a buyer’s market so you aren’t going to get top dollar. But if you can wait out the market, the value will eventually come back. Remodeling can allow you to enjoy your present house while you’re waiting. (more…)

We all know how important first impressions can be. Our opinion of something or someone is formed quickly upon our first encounter. That’s one reason you should pay attention to the design of your front door, entrance, and the entire arrival and entry experience when designing your house. You won’t get a second chance. So be sure you present the image and feel that is consistent with the overall house.

One aspect of the entrance to a house that you may overlook or under-appreciate is the concept of transition from public to private. This is a concept I discuss in some detail in Designing Your Perfect House. The minds of human beings seek order. Our minds don’t like abrupt changes. We are most comfortable with gradual transitions. If you consider the sensation when you step from your dark bedroom in the middle of the night and turn on the light in the bathroom, you get a pretty good idea of how harsh a change can feel. Our psyche reacts to changes in spaces, albeit subconsciously, the same way. Sudden shifts from one type of space to another can be jarring and disconcerting. (more…)

In the world of residential architecture, there has been a long-running debate about architectural style. Is it incorrect for architects to be designing traditional houses even though the majority of the public wants them? Should new houses be modern and unadorned with decoration or else be deemed inferior and not good architecture? As you might guess, there are strong opinions on both sides of this issue. Devoted modernists even tend to blame the public for not knowing enough about architectural design to appreciate their creations. But in my opinion, it is the obligation of the architect to understand the client, not the other way around.

In a recent blog post by Clem Labine, publisher of Traditional Building magazine and Period Homes magazine, takes on the topic. Here’s a little of what he had to say in his post entitled Hard-Edged Houses for Those Who Love Machines:

Modernist architects once again are trying to sell hard-edged houses to the American public. A new home plan service called Hometta has been set up to offer “modern homes for the masses.” Hometta is a collaboration of several architectural studios whose goal is to provide “small, sleek, sustainable, affordable house plans for middle-class buyers.” Few would quibble with the goals of “small” or “affordable” or “sustainable.” Whether the market will applaud their version of “sleek” and “modern” remains to be seen.

His suspicion of how the public will receive the modernist offerings is shared by me. If you were to poll the public you would find a strong majority favoring houses that match their image of “home.” By that I mean a house with a pitched roof, windows of a human scale, comfortable places for comfy furniture, and not a house that looks like a museum for modern art. (more…)

It seems that kitchen design continues to trend in the upscale direction. People are looking for better cabinets, granite or solid surface countertops, and professional looking appliances. One of the icons of the upscale kitchen is the Sub Zero refrigerator. The name Sub Zero has come to symbolize not just a high end kitchen. Having that Sub Zero label on your refrigerator can influence a buyer’s opinion about the entire house. I’ve often joked that the label alone is worth tens of thousands of dollars in the resale value of the house. That’s how effective the brand identity campaign has been for the Sub Zero people.

And just what’s so appealing about a Sub Zero? Obviously it is a very good product. They have great features such as two individual compressors, one for the freezer side and one for the refrigerator side. Many of their super deluxe models have specialty features you probably didn’t even know you needed until they told you. But I think the single most valuable feature of a Sub Zero is the fact that it is “cabinet depth.” This means the front of the refrigerator sits even with the face of the lower cabinets and front edge of the countertop. It doesn’t stick out several inches like standard refrigerators and look like a big bulky box in the kitchen. With a cabinet panel installed on the doors of the Sub Zero, the bulkiest object in the kitchen, the refrigerator, can take a less intrusive position in your kitchen and give the entire kitchen a more unitized and cleaner look. (more…)