25 House Design Mistakes

One of the biggest concerns in designing a new home is making mistakes you’ll have to live with if you don’t notice them beforehand.

Below are 25 common design mistakes for houses. I’m purposefully discussing them with a bit of humor in order to point out how we can easily go awry when designing our houses.

Building the wrong-sized house

It can be a struggle being Goldilocks. Trying to figure out what’s too big or too small and what’s “just right” can be challenging.

Many of us will go overboard once we have enough money to build our dream house. We want to show our success. However, unless you have a huge family do you really need 6 to 8 bedrooms, a rec room, a fitness room, a crafts room, a home theater, a swimming pool with a swim-up bar, a guest house, and a 6-car garage?

The answer is no. Most of us could never effectively use all that space. That doesn’t mean we can’t dream big, but we should be realistic about it.

On the other end are those that want to build a house but want to spend as little as they can even though they can afford more. It’s that miserly thinking that can lead to designing something smaller than you really need or would like, believing the pennies are more important than your satisfaction and happiness and over the long term. This can lead to regrets with what you end up with.

Getting to the right size for you is always the goal and takes a lot of self-reflection and effort to figure it out.

Building a house inappropriate to the neighborhood

Sometimes people dream too large. Most of us would never need a mega-house, but we often desire more than we really need. The rise of the ‘McMansions’ over the past few decades has led to some atrocious leviathans being built among more typical houses. This is something to avoid. If you really want a huge house, buy acreage rather than lots.

Below are two examples of leviathan houses in a new suburban neighborhood. Note the massive difference in size compared to the surrounding homes, taking up multiple lots to squeeze in their over-sized castles.

Poor proportions to the outside of the house

America is rife with poorly proportioned designs, especially since World War II. Kitsch has replaced quality of design and proportion. Developers try to outdo each other selling ever more over-designed houses to appeal to a sense of ‘wealth’ people feel they’ve achieved. This has led to a tawdry mashup of styles, even on a single house. This Frankenstein’s Monster has multiplied many times over.

In the four images below, you’ll find the following problems:

• Top left: Two Sphinx-like projecting bays, one with a balcony as a wart on its paw, squeeze an over-sized and poorly-proportioned “classical” style entry feature. Note the odd skinny turret bay window at the far right.
• Top right: An unnecessary grand arch spans over an already grand and nicely proportioned entry. Totally unnecessary.
• Bottom left: Watch out! The oversize gable roof is about to crush the porch below it.
• Bottom Right: A tawdry mix of Spanish Mission style with a poorly proportioned “classical” style entry porch – note the toothpick columns, all applied to a building form that’s not appropriate for either style. The little fountain in front must’ve been put in to distract us from looking too closely at the house.

Going crazy with the roofs

We’ve all gone roof crazy. Two things have led to this: A reaction against the simple low-slope roofs of our mid-century ranch houses of the 20th century and the advancement of computerized roof truss design. The latter has “freed” house designers from having to consider the roof and building form when they create floor plans. Just put rooms anywhere you want, push a button, and wow! You get a crazy roof!

Forcing a style onto a plan that doesn’t match

This issue is an extension of the poor proportions discussed above. Design has gotten away from any design cohesiveness and appropriate proportions, instead leading to throwing everything on the wall to see what sticks.

The house below has “French” styled bay windows and a terribly proportioned classical entry – note the Corinthian columns, of all things – pasted onto a rather generic suburban house. The balustrade (railing) over the porch is apparently for a “balcony” that can’t be accessed as there are only windows next to it.

The form of the house creates a ridiculously large and steep roof to one side that adds nothing to the visual composition.

Using shutters…DON’T!

Applying fake shutters has been a problem in house design since the early 20th Century. Once used as a necessity, they’ve become a kitschy way to “improve” bland design, almost always with the incorrect size compared to the windows.

In the image below we have very skinny shutters for very wide windows. If they were sized appropriately they’d be massive! This rather nice simple house should’ve been detailed better.

There are many ways to design attractive windows in exterior walls without stooping to fake shutters. Use them!

Poor placement of the main entrance

Though not a common problem, some houses have an issue with the entry. Basically its a “find Waldo” situation.

In the very large mid-century modern house below there are two sets of driveways that lead to either side of the same garage – which one are you to use if you’re visiting? When you look down each driveway there is no visible front door or discernible path to a door. A guest who’s never been to the house would be befuddled.

In the plan below the main entry to the house is buried into the far corner of the carport. Given the lack of light that would reach that far back it would be hard to make out where the front door’s at. Once you figure it out you have to move among the cars as if walking through someone’s garage.

Main entry not having what you need

Many houses have entries that are barely wide or deep enough to maneuver. It’s often the thinking that any circulation space is a waste. However, its not.

An entry should be roomy enough for several people to arrive at the same time without being crushed together. If your door opens opposite a wall you should have an entry that is at least 7 feet deep. Entry halls should be at least 5 feet wide if they lead from the door to a room at the other end.

Though it seems obvious, you need to make sure there is a coat closet for guests immediately available or nearby. You’d be surprised at how many floor plans I’ve seen where people forgot to include a coat closet.

It’s also nice to have an entry big enough to place a bench or chair that people can use to take off or put on shoes due to weather or to a tradition or preference to remove shoes when in the house. Be sure to have a place to put the shoes out of the way.

Another beneficial thing is to include a side table with a mirror over it. This allows someone to put down their purse or a package while dealing with coats or jackets and to catch a quick look at their appearance when they arrive or leave.

Daily entry not having what you need

Most of us use a different entrance from the front door. In the age of cars we often use the door from the garage to the house or a side entrance off of a driveway.

This entrance, typically called a mud room, should also have what you need when leaving or returning. This could include a bench for putting on or taking off shoes, a place to store those shoes, a table to set stuff down, shelves for book bags, pegs or a shelf and rod for coats and jackets, a spot for keys, a place to charge phones, etc.

Lack of circulation clarity

So many new homes today have ridiculous circulation that forces you to zigzag through the house to get to from one part of the house to the other. Today’s plans seem to purposefully overlook simplicity for the sake of placing rooms scatter-shot through the house.

The plans in the next section show how this circulation often looks. The left plan below shows how a visitor enters from the front porch, hangs a left looking down a hallway going to the bedroom, then has to figure out where to go. Once they see they’re to go right, they then have to pass by the kitchen but then cross to the other side of the house to get to the Family Room to visit.

Poor placement of Laundry

The laundry room is often placed such that you have to lug the laundry all over the house. It’s not necessarily the location that’s bad, its the path one has to take to get to the other rooms. The plan at right above shows the crazy paths needed to get from the laundry to the bedrooms in the front of the house and the master bedroom at the back.

Poor circulation paths through the house

Poor circulation is similar to the issues discussed in the previous two sections. However, it encompasses more than just a crazy path.

The plan below shows the house I grew up in, a little 1950’s ranch house that my parents bought in the mid-1960’s as an affordable house.

Note how you have to go all over the place to get around. You’re forced to circulate from the front door to the opposite diagonal corner of the living room to get anywhere else in the house.

The small hallway at the center is a pinch point where everyone literally runs into each other. That’s where the telephone was located in the days of land lines. When someone was talking on the phone you had to squeeze around them to get to another room.

To get to the back yard you have to again cross from one corner of a room to the other, this time walking through the work triangle of the kitchen. You then have to step down to a small raised concrete pad in the corner of the garage, trying to open the back door without falling off the pad, then step back up to reach the tiny porch at the back door. From the little porch you then take steps down to the patio. Crazy.

The sad thing about this house is that it was designed by the people who had it built for them. This is a great example of how things you don’t consider well will be a problem for decades!

Below is another plan that was drawn by someone for their new home. The circulation problem has to do with the way the main main room is laid out and where entrances occur.

The main entry is very shallow (and doesn’t have a coat closet), and the second door opening to the great room fights the front door.

The home theater’s entrance is on the other side of the great room. However, the sitting area and dining area a crammed together in space that’s been pinched by dual circulation paths needed to get around the room and by the stair at one end.

A guest who’s invited to watch a movie in the theater would have to walk to one end of the room then double back, or else attempt squeezing between the furniture and the wall in front of any TV that’s likely placed on the wall.

Main entry opening into a living space

Many people forgo having an entry space by just opening the front door into the living room. Though this seem efficient and quaint, it’s a bad idea.

Again using the house I was raised in, the plan below shows how the front door opens directly into the living room.

One problem with such a placement is a lack of privacy when someone comes to the door – once you open the front door they can immediately see anyone else in the room. If you’re in your PJ’s with your family it’s quite a site!

Another issue has to do with weather. The entry door we’re discussing is located at the northeast corner of the house. When the door’s opened on a windy day the air rushes into the room. If that happens in winter the cold air sends chills down your spine.

Doors interfering with other doors

This is a common problem in a lot of homes. It takes a bit of thought to work out plans so that it doesn’t happen.

Again, the plan of my childhood home above has great examples of this problem.

The middle bedroom door has to be closed if you want to access the closet. The bathroom door also has to be closed to access the linen closet. The back entry discussed before has two doors to contend with to get to the back yard.

An additional issue with the door to the garage is that it’s located next to the refrigerator taking up space that could’ve been used for more kitchen counter space. It also requires you to shift around the refrigerator for access.

None of these door placements works well. You often need to access a bedroom closet during the day. The linen closet was also used to store all the miscellany of your life that you need during the day such as bandages, rubbing alcohol, cough syrups, and many other things that you need easy access to. Needless to say the backyard is accessed often by children, to let out pets, and to take garbage to the alley to be picked up.

Poor placement of equipment

Every house in the U.S. today needs space for a water heater, a mechanical unit for heating and cooling, and a place for laundry. Getting all of these placed well takes some thought.

In the plan below the water heater was placed in the middle of the house. Though the intent of this location was probably to keep it close to the bathroom and to minimize piping, it would’ve been better located in the garage, freeing up space for more storage in the house.

The washer and dryer are located in the garage. That was a typical method of placement in the ’50’s but today would be frowned upon. Had the kitchen wall been moved into the garage to align with the back walls of the pantry and front closet the laundry could’ve been accessed inside the house from the kitchen, removing the need to do the garage step dance discussed earlier.

Poor kitchen layouts

Kitchens are the workhorse of the house. Today’s kitchens are much larger and contain more cabinetry and counter tops than could’ve been imagined a long time back.

Though most of today’s kitchens get the basic function to work, there are often a few challenging items that linger in kitchen design.

First has to do with circulation. As mentioned before, my childhood home required you to walk through the work triangle to get to the garage and back yard and to do laundry.

Below is another example of being forced to walk through the work triangle of the kitchen to get to the garage. This is still a common practice in many floor plans created today. Just a bit of finesse can easily resolve this issue.

In the plan below the kitchen is too narrow due to trying to fit all support spaces in the center of an otherwise beautiful design concept. You need at least 3 1/2 feet between counters, 4 feet being preferable, and that’s if you can access the kitchen from two ends.

This galley kitchen has only one entry point, and that’s where the oven, pantry and refrigerator are located. Anyone opening one of those ends up blocking access to and from the kitchen. The narrowness is also a problem if more than one person is in the kitchen, requiring them to squeeze past each other.

Primary circulation through the middle of a room

The plan below shows a house that my in-laws once lived in. It was a nice house. However, the family room is where all day-to-day circulation occurred creating a similar condition discussed above for kitchens.

The way the room was laid out forced the circulation path to go between the sitting area and the TV and fireplace. If you were enjoying either of those you’d be interrupted by someone else walking across the room.

Though walking through the living and dining rooms was an alternative nobody ever went that way as it was perceived as the longer path. It also required you to walk through another sitting area.

Failing to take full advantage of light and views

It’s surprising how light and views can be overlooked.

The plan below shows an office/nursery deep in the middle of the house. There are no windows. Can you imagine a nursery without a window? I can’t. And an office without a window seems like a dreadful place to work.

Interestingly, the adjacent hallway does have access to an outside wall. A bit of re-planning could easily resolve this problem and get that space out of the “darkness”.

The house below was designed by a couple as their retirement home in the country, with some really nice views from the back of the house. However, notice how a mechanical room and pantry take up almost half the wall from which you’d see the view from the family area! Poor planing indeed.

Main spaces being disproportional to the size of the house

Continuing with the same house, the plan below shows how the main family area has been squeezed by a huge amount of “support” space, especially rooms that aren’t occupied such as storage, pantry, and mechanical rooms.

For a house this size it’s a shame that the day-to-day family space is basically a postage stamp when compared to the whole plan of the house. The priorities seem a bit reversed.

An opposite issue is when a room is much too large for the size of the house. An example could be a small ranch house where a family room was added to the back, the size of the room being as big as original house. That would be a bit jarring when you walk through the small house from the entrance and then step into a giant space.

Spaces being poorly sized for their use

The plan above also represents an issue with room size. Besides the family room being small compared to the rest of the house, the dining room is too small for its intended use.

The size of the table and the number of people to be seated require a larger room to be comfortable. The current plan for that room is only about 8 feet by 13 feet, but with a table seating eight. The width and length would require you to squeeze by others just to get around the table, and there’s no room left over for a side board to assist in serving or a hutch to keep and display formal dinnerware.

For a house this size, having an undersized dining room is sad especially given the over-sized kitchen next to it.

Spaces limiting the best furniture arrangement

People often create odd spaces to try to get things to work in a floor plan. Below is a good example.

The plan below is from a house that’s basically a narrow but long rectangle except for the front. A small entry porch was created between the garage and the master suite at the front. However, they wanted to also squeeze in a formal living/dining space in the middle part of the front of the house. They decided to create an angled entry that then led to a very narrow hallway running around the formal room.

The leftover shape of the formal room is very odd for what’s going on in there. The dining table sits in a large comfortable space while the sitting lounge is crammed into an odd corner space creating a furniture placement that’s forced rather than comfortable.

Spaces being disproportionate in their size

Getting a room the right size and shape for its intended use is important but is one of the most challenging things for many who design their own houses.

An example is the bedroom below which was created by “leftover” space between a carport and the main living space. The space is too narrow for the size of bed to be placed in the room. You’d want a couple more feet in width to keep the space from being overwhelmed by the bed and to make circulating through the room easier. Turning the closet 90 degrees would also help.

Bedroom doors opening directly into main rooms

This is one issue that is frustrating. Bedrooms are meant for quiet and privacy. Opening them directly onto a living area is not accomplishing that goal.

Many people think doing this is a good way to get rid of hallways that they deem a waste of space. However, those hallways provide a necessary buffer space that transitions between the public and the private spaces.

The plan below is based upon a strong overall concept: a central living space stretching from the front of the house to the back, with two blocks of private and support spaces placed and sized symmetrically to each side.

However, the plan got rid of the privacy needed for bedrooms. When you’re in the main space you can see directly into all of the bedrooms. If you’re changing while visitors are are sitting at the table, someone opening the door to check on you ends up displaying you to all. Additionally, any noise in the public space has a direct path to those rooms, save for a door.

Don’t do this. Circulation space has its benefits.

Poor use of corners

Corners in rooms are often a spot where people just put stuff they haven’t bothered to figure out a better way to resolve. The two most common uses are for a pantry in a kitchen and a fireplace in a living room.

The problem with these two uses has to do with bulk and form.

In the plan below a step-in pantry is shoved into the corner, sized so that you can get a full door on an angled wall. The problem with this has to do with visual bulk. Kitchens have a lot going on in them, and adding essentially another room that sticks out into all of that just adds a big wart to all of that.

With a bit of planning finesse you can always find a better way to handle pantry storage, either by using full height cabinetry along one wall, or by creating a larger walk-in pantry in an adjacent space outside of the kitchen.

Keep your kitchen on a reasonable diet – don’t add unnecessary bulk.

Another item often stuck into a corner is the fireplace. Off hand it seems to make sense – you can watch TV while also enjoying the fire. I’m not disputing that benefit, and have designed a house using such a fireplace. However, there are two issues:

• A fireplace in the corner is often an odd large bulk cutting into the space. This is often covered with brick, which adds even more visual bulk.
• Adding a 45 degree (or other) angle is odd in a room that’s otherwise rectangular.

With some effort you can create a better plan without resorting to the corner fireplace.

Strange placement of and access to spaces

This is another often overlooked aspect in floor plans. Getting to a space should be inherently understandable and easy to do.

In the plan below the owner is wanting a separate toilet room from the bathroom. I think this is a good idea, as it is a different use from bathing and cleaning. However, this toilet room is placed inside an adjacent room not accessed from the bath, buried in a corner of the laundry room. Odd.

I’ve seen other plans where all bathrooms are accessed through a bedroom. Image visiting someone’s house one afternoon and wanting to use the bathroom before you leave. Walking into someone else’s bedroom to get to a bathroom is very disconcerting.

We saw other examples in other sections of this article, such as accessing a garage through the work area of a kitchen or getting to a home theater by walking the long way around a room.

Be sure to consider all of the items in this article when you plan your own house. It’s always worth taking multiple passes at your plan ideas, massaging things here and there to get it right.

All diagrams are by Cayl Hollis.