Congratulations on your new build.
How exciting !
A lot of west facing Windows, and no eaves, will be a warm house...or are the Windows double glazed and tinted ?
My 2 cents, I would put a sliding door from kitchen to laundry and delete pantry door. It will never be shut, no one can see in to the pantry and you can have some hooks to hang a broom etc on the wall where the door would have opened on to or some art, IMO

But well done, you've put a lot of thought into it.
My concern is just heat and glare ( ESP watching tv) with west sun shining in.

My concern, the only access,when in garage, is through the laundry past the pantry, through the kitchen to get to the rest of the house. (Green line)
I would suggest a door directly into entry way from garage. (Orange circle)
There also seems a waste of space by having garage door diagonally opposite the door into pantry/kitchen. I would suggest the door to be opposite each other. (Red line).
Another alternative, is to have the access for laundry from entry way, where linen cupboard is. You could put linen cupboard along garage wall. (Blue circle)
At the moment, to access the laundry, from bedrooms, you have to come down the stairs, through the kitchen, past the pantry etc.
Having a door directly opposite the stairs, into laundry, would be easier access. Or install a laundry chute.

What is the distance from right hand garage wall to boundary. If your garage wall is a parapet wall, on the boundary, there doesn't seem to be enough width for a clothesline. Or if clothesline is at the back of home, then it will be awkward walking past AC unit and rain water tank, with a basket full of laundry.

where is the side street and what is the distance from the sides of the house to the east and west boundaries?

What a beautiful big house for your young family, just a few suggestions for you, family room and TV as you already have a media room I would change layout or just furniture to allow you to open up both spaces to the rear northerly aspect.

Swap laundry and powder room, Garage door opening into anti space next to it, this also adds to WIP space. Add a north facing window to Media room

Your garage seems to narrow to allow 2 cars easy access.

Bigreader, I think there is one.

Hi JNJS,

congratulations on your first home, it's such an exciting time.

However if I could provide some feedback, I'd say that this design looks like many other project home builder floor plans that I have seen in the past, where the floor plan is essentially laid out to make it easy to build and ultimately maximise the profit of the builder. If I was to provide feedback on the design I would say that this design connects poorly to the outdoors. It will be very hot in Summer, with poor cross ventilation and a lack of eaves that will make the upper floor very hot. The nice window hood that you have placed on the front façade is designed to keep the sun out but has been used on the South West side as something that looks nice and won't stop any Sun as this is where the low setting Summer Sun is. The verandah at the rear of the ground floor will not only stop the Sun from penetrating in Winter, making the interior colder but will reflect the Summer Sun onto the top floor in Summer, making it hotter. Your air conditioning bill is going to be very high even with additional insulation, especially in Western Sydney.

I think a bigger question to ask is, does this really reflect who you are, how you live and what your needs are?

• Do you need a separate media room, or could your living space be more generous and accommodate it?
• Do you need a separate study, or would a nook suffice for your work needs?
• With the upstairs lounge room, you have three separate living areas. Do you need an upstairs lounge room?
• Do you need three bathrooms?

Of course, these are all questions for you to answer but if you'd like to discuss these things at all, I'd welcome the opportunity.

Thanks

Th plan looks lovely. There have already been some comments on layout so I won’t repeat those.
My 2c, about all its worth probably, is:
Increase robe space in kids bedrooms, move robe from b2 to the west wall. Increase length of b3 robe to fill space.
Add built in storage in the upper stairs lounge,
If you flip layout of downstairs powder bath you could improve access to the store under the stairs by creating access from the bathroom, or laundry in Siriuskey’s plan.
Think about where garbage bins are stored and taken to street and gardening equipment and sports equipment like bikes. Without a site plan I can’t see how these are addressed.
The windows on the stairs face west and will let a lot of heat in if not designed accordingly, hard to clean etc so think about that aspect, inc how to change light bulbs over stairs. In fact all western windows upstairs should be minimised

Gosh I had put paragraph returns in my post above, not sure what happened to them

Papercourtyard has pretty much already suggested the same as what I thought -- 3 ( in fact , if you count the study and the media room as 2 , then you have 4 ) living areas , plus a dining room . Personally , I don't like an upstairs lounge , just seems kind of weird , but if that's what you want , go for it !

Me , I'd rejig it .

I'd try for a bigger family room , put the TV etc into that . That way the 'family' are within view / talking distance from the kitchen and dining room .

C P says about the garage , and again I suspect is correct too . I'd get rid of the front part of the downstairs hallway , make the garage wider there , have the front door come straight into the study , BUT basically make it and the media room open plan , maybe a partial wall or a bookcase or fish tank to split it into say a home office and a kids study area .

OR the radical suggestion -- turn what you call the study and media rooms ( with a rejig of the walls ) into the Master Bedroom and en-suite . Personally , I like the Master to be seperate to the rest of the bedrooms , but not on seperate floors , but I know some people have done that successfully . Just a suggestion -- and of course , you'd then have to keep the 'skinny' garage and the hallway , as you can't have visitors trudge through the master haha .

ANOTHER suggestion may be rejig the downstairs bathroom , and turn the media and study into kids or guest bedrooms ?

But then theres the upstairs haha -- if you adopt any of my ideas , you'll probably have extra space upstairs , so maybe rejig that , possibly even make it smaller ( the entire upstairs floorplan ) with a 'rear' deck .

Anyway , just throwing out some alternative ideas -- hope I haven't confused you too much !

The upstairs lounge is great for kids - it can be totally their zone, especially when their in late primary school or in their teens.

A separate study is great, you can work quietly & close the door when necessary. lots of people are now working from home & a good office space has many advantages. I think a few people are now scrambling to create that

The suggestion of a cavity solder to separate the laundry from the kitchen is a good idea, I'd defiantly do that!

& I'd put a door from the garage directly into the main house, meaning you don't need to walk through the kitchen all the time except when you have groceries at a minimum. However Dreamer makes some good suggestions re your laundry I'd seriously consider them. You might be able to create a mud space/bag drop area for kids belongings, people's coats, shoes etc with her ideas :) You'd have a door directly into the hall from the laundry & a door directly into the kitchen/butler's pantry from the laundry & I'd stick with only 1 door from garage into house.

The facades look great.

Floor plan is a good starting point.

However IMO -

WIR facing street, see this quite a bit on new homes and I'm lost as to why its even considered, can only be for front facade aesthetics! Used as dressing room its not very private, add privacy screens, blinds closed or obscure glazing to be able to use the space. Why not have ensuite, robe on same side as main bedroom.

Relocate bathrooms across so they're between the other bedrooms.

Maybe lounge to be where WIR is. Re-jig the upper layout. Lot of potential combinations here.

Garage is quite small a 6 x 6 is minimum and even then its tight with 2 cars.

Kitchen/laundry/pantry needs a bit more thought with layout, big enough floor area but a bit wasteful for me. Sinks get used more than an oven/cooktop yet its tucked off to the side.

Don't forget to consider those details of wheely bin storage, clothes drying locations, service areas like meter box and hot water system, service stacks for upstairs to ground level waste plumbing (plumbers can struggle getting them in between joists and getting enough fall on waste pipes!), cut and fill/retaining walls, landscaping is required for BASIX so this must be factored in as well.

paper courtyard has some very good advise with shading and ventilation.

I quite like your plan, I know some have said that your garage may be to small, after living with a big garage we are currently renting while we build and we have a garage that is 5.6m wide, it has a standard 4.8m door, which I assume you have too, it’s absolutely fine, its a little tight, but we are making do, we can fit both cars inside and my husband has a large 4wd, while its not ideal, if you dont have a lot of stuff that you need in the garage then it will be ok.

In regards to your laundry, I’m on the same page, I just think its a poor deisgn, I would hate to walk through the pantry and kitchen to get inside the house, its a good size, I just think with some clever design( and there are some clever people here), you could have a mud room area, easy access and laundry all in one.

I’d probably make the study a little smaller and put the room into the media, but thats me, we love our theatre room, and we’ve gone from a big old fashioned study, to a well designed smaller space.

It can be a bit brutal here, lots of opinions, particularly when you think its perfect, just consider every opinion and think whether it may work for you and your family, Ive put my plans here, and got some great feedback, we are now ready to start building (council approved, yippee!), some things I considered and some I knew weren’t right for how we live, take it in your stride, and remember everyone is trying to help :)

Good luck!

Hi all,

Thanks for all of your in-depth feedback and comments! We appreciate all the comments and will be taking these into consideration, particulary garage/laundry access.

We had in mind to make the study, a bedroom in the future i.e for inlaws/guests etc.

We have thought about the amount of glazing on the western facade - they were intially going to be 900mm high windows instead of the 2100mm shown in the facades, however we thought we might be able to get a larger window and plant a tree in front to block off some of that afternoon heat. Depending on overall costs - we may have to revert back to the 900mm windows.

We are also still deciding on whether we are going to go with the contemporary (as shown) or more traditional facade.

@dreamer/@oklouise - The secondary street is on the western side with that boundary being 2220mm from the wall of the media room. The garage wall is 900mm from the east setback, then is further setback at 2100mm at the living/kitchen wall.

Thanks!

JNJS

is the deeper set back from the study and dining room necessary to satisfy local regs? as it could be better to have the western wall straight and more closed in for both sunscreening and sound reduction but also to be moved further away from the eastern boundary for a wider drying utility area and to be further away from the eastern neighbours.....what is the width and depth of the whole block?

unable to read all the dimensions my suggestions include more direct access to the laundry and garage without walking through the kitchen, reducing most of the western windows..(there's not enough space for shade trees so consider external roller shutters) straightening the western side of the house to allow more width for the garage and eastern drying area, reducing alfresco to avoid blocking northern light (although relocating the alfresco along the east or west boundaries at right angles to the house would be better) swapping dining and family room for better circulation space and outside access, rearranging all bathrooms and increasing upstairs storage..and much as i like the modern facade any building without eaves invites problems from lack of sunshade and rain shelter, and potential leaks along parapets with dirty marks down the walls

Great work okl as always

By flattening the western side the building loses a lot of it's character personally I would prefer to keep that part of the original design. clothes lines can always be to the rear of the property taking the wet gear via the interior, I find that for me sorting of the washing is done in the family room. I also found the step back in the passage to either bathroom or laundry adds a lot of and interest and breaks up an otherwise long straight passage. It was had to read the dimensions and I find that I;am giving up with trying to guess until I can get another pair of glasses or plans show clearer details to save time. Once again OKL great ideas and a lot of time

i agree with you siriuskey, with the luxury of more width i'd also prefer the ins and out of the original western wall but the garage is too narrow and my compromise allows for some extra flexibility and more storage

I think that this side of the house faces the corner.so that it's important to show your best, could any space be taken from the two front rooms it's not as if they are short on rooms

So I don't normally post floor plans but I had a dual occupancy project that I was working on that is similar to your project. Obviously it's not doing exactly what you are doing but it shows a few things.

1. It's smaller than yours but feels much bigger, as it is always trying to connect to the garden
2. Have less stuff. Do you need a walk in pantry, or do you need the amount of storage that it provides. Do you need a big laundry, or do you need somewhere to do the washing? Because these things are not very space efficient.
3. You can have small and separate spaces if it's well planned and it will feel much more generous
4. Make spaces work harder by overlapping their function, a hallway with a study space is much more efficient than a study with four walls and can still be closed off with nice joinery if that's what you want. Your living room can work as a media room and a living space and you still have your lounge as a second living space.

Now if this was a freestanding build, as yours is, instead of a dual occupancy, with one wall built against the other residence, you could place additional windows in and it could be opened up completely and could feel like you were living outside all year round. You would have a building that is one room wide and allows for excellent cross ventilation and solar access.

Lovely, totally reminiscent of a terrace house layout but with windows, you didn't post the ground floor

Its the first picture siri

thanks kM, I really do need to get new glasses but hoping stopping the Lyrica will fix that and other problems cheers

Papercourtyard a Big thank you for your post and sharing your floor plan. As I mentioned it reminds me of Terrace houses and a single fronted house we had.

I have no qualifications just years of lifes experiences and a passion for design, I always try to push the boundaries which can sometimes be hard to get across.

With so many posting new builds on narrow blocks I have also considered the narrow passage/verandah plus garage as the front width of the house.

In terrace houses that would have been seen as narrow verandah and living room at the front of the house, your plan shows it as narrow passage and garage. Simple changes to work for today.

Did I really miss the ground floor plan?, looking forward to seeing more from you, it's wonderful to be able to gives Houzzers options to consider cheers

Thanks Sirius, I worked on a terrace a few years ago and it showed me how well you can live in a building just 5 metres wide. It just takes a lot of discipline and time to make it work. With blocks getting smaller, the terrace is a great typology to inform design choices.

Fantastic floor plan Papercourtyard.

It highlights how quite humble sized rooms can really be spacious and generous!

Openings in the right locations, furniture in the right locations, it all pushes to be smart design yet simple design.

Mighty impressed!

Thanks MB, it was a dual occupancy project that didn’t end up proceeding unfortunately.

I wish more people would adopt the idea to reduce their footprint, it's been getting more and more like, I do it because I can and not what I really need to live a happy healthy debt reduced life, How disappointing that it didn't proceed, here's an opportunity for someone else to contact you and use your ideas for their new build/s cheers

Thanks again all for your additional comments and feedback. Especially to @papercourtyard & @oklouise for taking the time to provide floorplan ideas and further advice, some great ideas and tips which we might take on board.

@oklouise - yes the extension for the media room was to provide articulation to the western facade, as it faces the secondary street.

articulation for passers by to admire at the expense of a garage wide enough to park two cars side by side, open the doors and comfortably walk around??

I think it's more important to enjoy the interiors with the irregular walls which will allow for North facing windows along that wall, than to have a comfortable car, just how I look at it

I should explain, the rear of the house faces North so that the short walls on Western side could have important tall narrow windows for Northern winter sun.

By pulling up to the garage and unloading shopping and human by before "putting" the car away works

Do yourself a favour, and get more protection from the sun on your western side. Ideally you would have the garage and other uninhabitable rooms on that side, but I get that often the developer will dictate where your drive and garage will go.
Contemporary homes without eaves look great, but don’t go well in our climate. It’s like going out in the sun without a hat, your home will always have the walls being baked. The walls can become hard to keep clean.

I agree with Colin . Protection from the West and gathering North East breezes will make for a more comfortable house , unless you plan to run the AC 24/7 . Having no eaves means lots of summer morning and afternoon heat and Bedroom 4 has the best position for breezes , noise and privacy . The Master has the worst. Have you considered using an architect who can plan for the best use of breezes ?

It;s a lovely modern home, that as it is doesn't really work with the chosen block, swapping the driveway would bring it too close to the corner? The following is something that you could consider, I was looking for a Decco house with the flat concrete ledges that are built out above the windows and doors.

Western Sydney can be a very hot place in summer. So you've really got to try to minimise summer heat loads. What does this mean? Keeping the summer sun off your windows.

Easy to do in the north, with appropriate length eaves. But much more difficult to do from the east & west. As the sun is lower in the sky & eaves become ineffective. Western sun is a particular problem, as the sun is in this direction at the hottest time of the day.

So that is why quite a few people a few commenters have raise the issue of too many western windows.

So how do you resolve this? It's difficult to do when the long sides of your home face east & west. But there are options to minimise western glazing.

Firstly, eliminating or minimising windows. That's a very large western window in the dining area, which will get blazing hot in summer. I'd be eliminating this window (more in that later), or at least greatly reducing its size.

I'd be eliminating the western wrap-around portion of the master bedroom window. Yes, it may look cool, but this will be at the expense of you comfort. You certainly don't want SW sun coming in your bedroom windows in summer evenings.

Same goes for the media room. A very large western window means a very hot space. I'd this a true media room? If so, I'd think you'd want lower levels of glazing in this room. I'd actually eliminate this window, & take the following approach.

Next, where possible, swap the western windows for glazing facing a different direction. You can do this in the media room, with long, thin windows.

You can also do this in the upstairs living area. Again a large western window, which certainly should be swapped out for a northern window.

Thirdly, locate rarely used rooms in the western side of the house. So they can bear the brunt of the western sun. Bathrooms, laundries (not in your case), & importantly, the garage. So I'd actually look at flipping the from portion of the house, so that the media room faces SE & the garage SW. Tough you won't have access from the garage to the laundry, which may be something you want. I'd then consider having the entrance to the home on the western side, beside the garage. This means you'll have a shorter hallway from the entrance to you living areas.

Changes to the location of the garage to the western side may not be allowed, of the road is busier, or if the driveway is too close to the corner. So that would need to be looked at, if you were considering this change.

As for your remaining western (& eastern) windows, you've got to try to minimise the amount of heat that comes through these windows. There's a few approaches. Louvred vertical sun shades or timber battens are an option. These will reduce the amount of sun striking the window, & increase privacy, but decrease the views out the window. Shutters or awnings are an option, but probably don't look as nice. Window treatments, such as low-e glass, are a good idea too - just note reviews for some single glazed low-e glass products aren't great. Western (& eastern) glazing should certainly be low SHGC (solar heat gain coefficient).

As has been mentioned, windows should also be designed for cross-ventilation. A free was way too cool your home, especially effective at night.

Winter in western Sydney can be pretty cold too. In winter it's all about letting the sun in, particularly the northern sun, as the sun is in the northern portion of the sky. As has been mentioned above, northern covered alfrescos aren't a great idea. Robbing north facing living areas of daylight, & winter sunshine. At the very least add a vergola to let some sun in here.

you should also consider zoning your main living area. that is, having a door that can separate it from the rest of the house. Then you can just heat this room, instead of the entire house. Otherwise the staircase will act like a giant chimney, losing heat upstairs. You'd need to reverse the direction of the staircase, to add a door between it & the kitchen/laundry area. May not be ideal, but worth considering.

Whooah!

Excellent advice.