Opinions, suggestions, and improvement proposals for planning

How big are the individual rooms. We can't do much with just the exterior dimensions.

I don't have any room sizes yet - we're still pretty much at the beginning. But we have another meeting today and the topic of room sizes is already on my agenda.

I would move the gym to the basement and give the space to the cramped living room

If we put the gym in the basement, then the living room would just have some weird annex - you really can't use it like that!

Our house is only just under 9m by 12.5m, but somehow it is or feels bigger, even though we also have 3 children's rooms and 2 bathrooms and a large hallway on the upper floor. Just like on the ground floor - and we don’t have a basement.

Where are your floor plans, so I can take a look at them.

Do you have any exterior views?

I only have an exterior view from the 1:200 planning - but it's probably not very informative. I'll try to upload it.

I think you misunderstand the problem with the "tightness." Your house is not too small overall. 270 sqm is huge even with 3 children. And that’s without the attic and basement.

But some of the rooms are very cramped, hard to furnish, and relatively small, while you have, for example, a huge hallway on the upper floor that somehow reminds me of a hotel corridor.

Take a look at the bedrooms. They’re now 14 sqm. For a smaller house and well-designed, that is certainly sufficient, but in a house this large, that doesn’t fit at all in terms of proportion. And you want to make the whole house even bigger by adding another meter? Then the external dimensions will be larger, but the fundamental problem remains.

Yes, I said yes, your house IS big, but it feels cramped. And then just barely 14m2 for the children? Our children's rooms are all almost 16m2 (4x3.95) and we also have a playroom with about 30-40m2 in the attic. Our house has only just under 200m2 on the ground floor and upper floor. I don't want to put the floor plan online, especially not if I can't delete it anymore. We also have a large hallway - I like large hallways - but yours feels more like a storage room because of all the cupboards. We also have space in ours for a large cupboard (1.5m), shoe cupboards, and also a coat rack. And another thing is that the wardrobe/stair area in your house will be very dark. The window in the entrance area is not enough to bring in sufficient light. Where the wardrobe area is, you won't get by during the day without artificial light either. By the tight space in front of the stairs, I meant the landing. I couldn't see that in the first pictures. I find it unusual to plan the stairway like that, but well - if you like it. I just don't think it's very nice to run into a wall when coming down the stairs. Where the fitness room is now, for example, you could create a room for all your wardrobe things and also for supplies. Then the pantry in the living-dining room could be eliminated and you would have completely different possibilities for the kitchen. Yes, why do I find the entrance area uninviting? Maybe because it is so isolated from the rest of the house. But well, it has its advantages, so not everyone can see directly into the house. I would put the passage from the dressing room to the bed at the height of the foot end of the bed. Up top is not good either because you are right at the head of the bed and then you first have to walk around the bed.

Or a huge hallway that somehow reminds me of a hotel corridor.

Yes, hotel "Mama" ;-)

No - I understand - but the corridor is not that wide and the length is caused by the elongated main structure. I wouldn’t know how else to solve that. And we would like the rather elongated main structure, because with a square base the garden becomes small. How could the layout be changed with a similar floor plan without ending up with walk-through rooms?

Take a look at the children's rooms. They are now 14 sqm. In a smaller house and well designed that is quite sufficient, but in such a large house that doesn’t fit proportionally at all. And you want to make the whole house even bigger by adding another meter? That increases the exterior dimensions, but the basic problem remains.

Why - if I add some more depth, the children's rooms will get bigger - about 16 sqm. That is plenty - isn’t it?

Can’t something more "pleasing" be done with the existing floor plan through small changes? It can’t be 100% bad. I would like to improve the negative points - but not discard everything - because then surely new negative points will arise.

If you want to change something, try not to arrange the children's rooms lengthwise along one house wall, but rather have 2 bedrooms at the front side each and then the bathroom and dressing room opposite the stairs. That would at least loosen things up a bit upstairs.

You can keep the elongated main body. But 50cm - 100cm in width would do your house quite well. And your plot is so huge, those few centimeters you lose won’t matter.