How to make your house look bigger from the street

As an architect, when designing new homes for clients, they first come to me with standard tastes that you would see in any home in any neighborhood. What I’m trying to do is expand their architectural vocabulary and be bold in what they are trying to do, without spending a lot more money. Part of that is making your house look bigger from the street and living bigger on the inside. You can get a lot of “wow” factor if you try a few simple things in your home design.

1. Make your house longer, not square. Most people want their houses to be more square in design, with a preconceived idea of ​​saving costs. While this may be true in general, it also makes your home look very small (and boring). For a 2,500-square-foot house instead of designing it to be 50 feet by 50 feet, make your house longer like 75 feet long by 33 feet wide. You’d be surprised how much fancier and more expensive it looks for not much more money. It also gives you the advantage of giving windows to almost every room in your home, giving them light and visual space.

2. Use the concept of a two-level home. The two-level home was more prevalent in the 1960s than it is today, but it has many advantages if you modernize it. The split level takes the basement off the ground. In most of the northern part of the country (I’m from Indiana), it takes a base of at least 30 “or more to get below the local freeze line. Well, let that be the focus of your basement (or as I call it, the lower level). That means the lower level is 2 feet below the level, which means it can have full size windows. The base wall of the lower level is 30 “high , the rest of the wall height can be wood instead of concrete (either 8 ‘or 9’ high) which saves costs. If you use a lower level 8 ‘high (to cut costs), there is a design that I like to use to eliminate bulkheads for HVAC; … incorporate the ducts into a floor truss system. I love using floor trusses 16 “high, 24” on center, and keeping trusses in the same orientation throughout the house. It offers plenty of space for the HVAC ducts in the floor truss system, and no bulkheads, which means less cost as it has flat roofs and there are no additional frames for those bulkheads.

3. With the two-level home, the second floor (or “main level” as I like to call it), located between 7 and 9 feet above ground level, not only provides a commanding view of the property, but It also looks like a 2 story building, for a price of 1 story. You can leave the windows open at night because the window sills are 10 feet above ground level. It has a lot of visual privacy because people on the street do not have a direct view of the house. When you sit down, they can’t see you, even if you have a lot of windows. On the main level, I love using vaulted ceiling trusses on the main level to give more visual height in the rooms.

4. Use wide overhangs. Wide overhangs were more prevalent during the prairie style period. This may seem strange, but wide overhangs (like 4 ‘wide) make your home appear larger both inside and out. Like I said earlier, I love vaulted ceiling trusses. I start with an 8 ‘high wall (instead of 9’). With a 4 foot overhang and vaulted ceiling joists, the wall height on the inside is now 10 ‘(8’ wall, 2 ‘on roof truss), with roof peak at 15’. This is because the roof began to “rise” further from the exterior wall. I will get 10 to 15 foot ceilings for an 8 foot high wall price. The wide overhangs also help in the summer, shielding shady windows, keeping direct sunlight outside.

5. Incorporate screened decks and porches into the design. Don’t make decks and porches an afterthought, but do incorporate them into the design, that is, lay bricks or siding, put a roof over them, and make openings look like windows, but don’t put glass in. . And consider putting them in the front of the house, not the back. I designed a house for my parents that was 1300 square feet on the main level, but added the screened porch to the front of the house. The house was 72 feet long in front (24 ‘screen porch, 16’ great room, 8 ‘driveway, 24’ garage) and it looks huge. (If you want to see it, go to my website (web address below), home page, near the middle of the page, “Click here to see more photos of the house”, and it is the first photo. screen is for left) The inside of the Screen Porch is finished with moisture resistant drywall so the inside feels like any other room in the house (it also has vaulted ceilings) but is not heated or refrigeration. It is the most inhabited space in the home. Having the screened porch or deck at the front of the house gives you more community with your neighbors, while it can give you more privacy. In my home, the deck has a solid wall from level to 42 “above the deck floor. This provides visual privacy when I sit down, but when I stand up, I can chat with neighbors (42” is also a height of support for your elbows). As a bonus, with the two-story house, the space under the deck (since it has siding and the floor 7 ‘above ground level), and the roof above the deck, I have an 18-wide, 28-foot shed. long under the mower deck. , bikes, tools, which I don’t have to keep in the garage.

6. Downplaying the garage. There is nothing visually pleasing about a garage. The most important rooms in the home (Great Room, Dining Room, perhaps the Screen Porch) should have the most visual presence in your home. Having a monster 24-foot-by-36-foot garage jutting out of the front of your house is not appealing. Place it from the front of the house and, if you can, place it towards the back of the house. Use a side entry on garage doors if you can. And put many normal windows like the rest of the house. Try to make it look like any other room on the street. By playing the garage and making it look like another room in your house, you will make your house appear larger when in fact it is not. If you are one of the homeowners who eventually converts your garage into living space, making the garage look like a normal room from the outside makes these conversions easier. Simply remove the garage doors and install windows similar in size to the rest of your home.

7. Use lots of repetitive windows. Using the same window size over and over in a long pattern will make the house appear longer. And they don’t need to be operable windows. Fixed windows are less expensive than operable ones.