Floor plan design of a single-family house with garage and roof terrace

We had a similar situation, so as an amateur I spent some time dealing with it. For your property, I would have divided the sides into two "types". Good sides and bad sides. Good is towards the meadow and garden, bad is towards the neighbor and street. Personally, I would make sure that the living room, dining room, kitchen, and office are on the good sides. At the corners facing the bad sides, I would put the kitchen and office, since I am less bothered by the bad side there. On the bad sides, things like guest bathroom, staircase, and technical rooms belong. What I then learned is that the shape of the stairs is very important because it changes the entire floor plan. Here I would place different staircases on the bad sides and see how the upper floor turns out. The ground floor results naturally from the good and bad sides. Personally, I would give the good side on the upper floor to the children, since they are often there during the day and will look outside now and then. The bedroom is usually only really used by the parents in the evening, so you need a view much less often there.

One more thing, since I dealt with this more than I wanted: A G-shape in the kitchen is often not so optimal because you are practically surrounded by the kitchen. If you have a pantry, you need much less storage space in the kitchen. The upscale version here requires at least 3 tall cabinets (dishwasher, refrigerator, and oven). Position of the sink and stove ideally so that when using them you are looking in a "nice direction" (usually garden or living room).

I think that is a very good idea, especially since it seems that from time to time you could place food directly from the pantry into the kitchen through some kind of pass-through. The optimized layout for walking distances depends on exactly what you want to store in the pantry. As soon as there are items you often need while working in the kitchen, the connection to the kitchen makes sense. If you store things there that you transport in one "go" to the kitchen for cooking, the arrangement near the front door is more advantageous. I like the solution you found in principle. I would call the room "pantry."

Access to the roof terrace from outside is sensible in order not to have all the people who want to go onto the terrace walk through the private bathroom area. The little bridge to the house is a nice gimmick that adds more value to the ensemble than practical utility. The outdoor terrace is quite a "dirt area," and the master bathroom is pretty much the opposite of that. I speak from experience, as our bathroom has an outside door that leads to the forest. We also have another outside door right next to it that leads directly from the living room to the forest. Once you use these exits, you have to deal with dirt being brought inside. That is not practical. We can live with it well and have no real everyday problem with it. Still, this is one of the few details we could have better formulated in our requirements to the architect. For example: "We want our dogs to be able to play in the forest from the upper level in the morning and evening at any time of the year. We want to let them out and back in without having to go far from our resting area and at the same time limit dirt being brought in from outside to an area that is easy to clean."
(Before anyone gets upset that dogs shouldn't run freely in the forest – we have a fenced area at the edge of the forest, the rest of the forest, which makes up most of our property, is freely accessible to wildlife and protected from human visitors. The reserve works; we even have a shy pair of kites nesting on our property.)

A dressing room only really makes sense if it can be used for dressing and undressing. Often these rooms are planned so narrow that you basically only have a corridor with closet doors. The quality of stay in between is cramped and unpleasant. If for space reasons one of the rooms has to serve as a passageway, it is a question of lifestyle which arrangement is suitable. If sleeping times differ, it is not sensible to go through the bedroom to get to the dressing room as every path means disturbance. When bedtimes coincide, it makes sense to consider the process of getting up, going to bed, and occasionally checking on the children. Then access through the bedroom is a good option. Different lifestyles make different arrangements sensible.

That sounds like a good idea.

With the exterior design of the facade, it is about setting your own priorities and weighing them. Fitting into the place is one of several aspects. The affinity for a material is another, and personal taste yet another, along with durability, maintenance effort... We also let it be built in timber frame construction because we are attached to the material. We put a cladding of rough larch wood in front of it. We left it untreated so that over the years it would look like an old barn. Larch wood is almost maintenance-free. If done professionally, it lasts many decades – in our case longer than we ourselves will. I advocate cladding a wooden house with wood – I find that not only very beautiful and fitting in a rural area but also harmoniously combined as a material. But here it is not about "right" or "wrong."

The position of the seat window depends on future use and execution. Whoever wants to comfortably sit and read in a seat window wishes for light. Whoever wants to primarily use the seat window as a built-in seat for socializing in the living room considers better when one sits there and which warmth from sunlight is desired at what time. There is no "right" seat window position. How good it is depends on the wishes and habits of the people in the house. A winter view of the sunset can be a fantastic feature for people who take time for contemplation in everyday life and a complete waste of money for others.

It is nice to read that you think these things through for your family. That was not evident from the initial post. With the additional information you give, I understand the floor plan better. The architecture of a house supports the life of its inhabitants and must consider how they live their lives. Standards are good for construction quality and energy efficiency. Layout standards are useful sparring partners for your own ideas. They solve many things well for many people. Building a house for your own life is a complex task.

Access to the roof terrace from the outside makes sense in order not to have all the people who want to go onto the terrace walk through the private bathroom area. The small bridge to the house is a nice gimmick,

As a result of the bathroom planning, we received the advice to really separate the toilet to prevent odors. For example, one could separate the WC with a frosted glass door (so as not to darken the room completely). What do you think about that?

The window seat is primarily for relaxing, reading, etc.

The roof terrace with bridge and stairs are, in my guess, the first three tones of the string concert ;-)

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

The entire structure including the garage is just under 22 meters wide. Depending on the state, you must observe the boundary distance of 2.5 or 3 meters.

We find half-timbered frame construction more beautiful, efficient, and sustainable as a building method and also have a professional connection to wood, so we feel “connected” to it. The facade, I think, is a matter of taste; we don’t like a plaster facade at all. It also wouldn’t fit into the small village where almost every house is brick-faced.

The walking distances in the parents' bedroom are a good hint—then a layout bedroom -> dressing room -> bathroom probably makes more sense, right??

Hello,

thank you very much for the detailed answer! I was very pleased—I will now try to reply:
We originally had not considered the access to the pantry. This thought arose because we thought that when shopping, etc., you would have to go all the way around via the hallway, living room, kitchen to unload the things. This way you would have direct access and could simply put the bags there more quickly.

The utility room can certainly be designed smaller—maybe 10 sqm is enough here. In this room the building services must be accommodated and ideally, two drying racks for laundry should also fit.

We also thought a long time about the access from the upper floor to the roof terrace. But there is also supposed to be access from outside via an external staircase, so we thought that if you sat up on the terrace, you would have a quick way to go to the toilet.