Designing a Seamless Open Floor Plan

 Photography courtesy of Canadian Timberframes Ltd. See more of this home here.

Flow may be a word more often used by rap stars and yoga teachers than timber-home designers, but don’t let that fool you: The concept is absolutely crucial in creating a floor plan that works with your life. 

In fact, arranging rooms in a way that makes sense is why we create floor plans in the first place — and to do it right, you need to take into account everything from the view you want to capture to the way you’ll move around in your home. To get some advice on how to maximize the flow in your floor plan, we talked to Allen Halcomb, owner of MossCreek Designs, which specializes in designing log and timber homes. Here are his top tips for keeping things moving:

Tip #1: Start with your site.

Before you can figure out how to make your floor plan flow, you need to pinpoint any potential blockages. “The first place to start when designing a floor plan is to look at the things that will constrain the way you organize the house,” Allen says, “and the most constraining thing is usually the site — that’s a very difficult thing to change.” If you have an amazing view of snow-capped mountains or a pristine lake, you’ll naturally want to organize the home around that focal point, perhaps by creating a linear design that will provide spectacular panoramas.

On the other hand, if the landscape is pretty similar from every angle of your site, your game plan will be much different. “If you have a house in the woods, the rooms tend to focus in on each other,” says Allen. “It’s more about the vistas as you look from one room to another, and the house will be much cozier.”

Tip #2: Decide how you want your home to feel.

There are certain big clues that will tell you whether a home is casual or formal: an open great room versus a walled-off living area, a cozy breakfast nook rather than a dedicated dining room. But there are many more subtle design decisions that can have just as much of an impact on a home’s overall atmosphere. “The two most important organizational principles in floor plan design are the public zone and the private zone,” says Allen — and how you delineate those can have a major impact on how formal or casual your house seems.

The best example? Hallways. “When you have a lack of hallways — a front door that enters right into the great room, or a master bedroom with a door in the wall of the great room — it’s extremely informal,” notes Allen. “You can use hallways to create an aesthetic and emotional separation. For some people — such as those using the home as a primary residence — that’s more important than it is for others.”

Tip #3: Visualize living in the house.

This is probably the most important thing you can do to help determine where rooms should fit inside your floor plan. The key word here is “visualize”: Actually imagine yourself walking through the house; relying on logic alone won’t do the trick. For example, locating your laundry room near your master bedroom might seem like a great idea, but, says Allen, “The majority of our customers find that in the end, because they spend most of their time in the kitchen — the central area of the house — when they locate the laundry room elsewhere, they find themselves tracking back.”

It’s also important when doing this visualization to plan not just for your current situation, but also for the future. If you’re using the home for a weekend getaway now but plan to retire there later, for example, keep the master bedroom on the main level, and make sure you plan for plenty of storage.

Tip #4: Keep your guests in mind.

When you’re visualizing yourself in your home, it’s also a good idea to think about others who might be using it, too — after all, how they move through the home will affect you as well. “If you’re planning to entertain a lot, think about additional public spaces you can add to your plan — a terrace off the back, or a screened-in or covered porch,” suggests Allen. Even if you’re not an avid entertainer, a dedicated guest bathroom (usually in the form of a first-floor powder room) is essential in any home. “Most people will want to include a guest bathroom that’s independent of any bedroom,” Allen notes. “You don’t want guests to feel like their bathroom is public domain.” 

Tip #5: Create invisible boundaries.

A large, open great room is almost always a given in a timber home — it’s what you do with that vast space that determines how cozy and intimate your home will feel. The secret, says Allen, is to use subtle design elements that will create almost imperceptible “zones” within a large room. “Psychologically, people tend to break rooms into 12-by-12-foot dimensions,” he explains, “and it can create tension in a room if you haven’t done this aesthetically.”

The most common way to accomplish this in timber homes, Allen says, is by varying the ceiling heights, keeping the tall, vaulted ceiling over the living area, but bringing it down in more intimate spaces like the kitchen and dining room. If you have a little more square footage to work with, other strategies for building in boundaries include bumping out a bay window to accommodate a dining nook or varying floor levels to create a sunken living room.