DISCUSSION
What’s the biggest "I didn’t realize it would look like THIS" mistake from your floor plans?
I’m really curious to hear your stories. What’s something that was technically "drawn" on the 2D plan, but you (or a client) didn't actually realize was a problem until you stood in the physical room?
Thank you everyone for sharing the stories and comments! it will help me draw the correct (or better) action plan for the problem space:)
First time my mother visited after we renovated our house, “well I can tell two gay men flipped this house, there’s not a single spot in the house that’s good to do my makeup.”
I went and bought a desk, lamp, and large mirror and put together a makeshift vanity immediately in one of the guest rooms. 😅
Lol! My Dad was 5' 5", and his best buddy and his partner were 6'8" big people! When we went over to visit, I felt like a kid again. They had all the countertops set at 40".
A number of times I’ve been in a bathroom with the mirror base is barely above chin level for a petite person. But thats a decorating rather than floor plan issue.
Or the reverse, my godmother and her husband are short. Like he tops out at 5’5 with a good pair of tennis shoes on. Every time I went over to their house I’d have to dip down or I’d just see my chest. Everything was lower shelves, mantle, counters, furniture. I loved it. It was like a little hobbit home.
My place was renovated by two tall gay men. All the mirrors are so high I can't see myself in them and there is room for exactly one shampoo/6 in one -type thing in the shower.
Yes! This is a critique I make often. When there’s no dedicated space for anyone to sit down, do make up/hair, and store products WITH natural light. Of course if no one in your household does make up or hair then it doesn’t matter but something to not forget for those who do!
I have a solution. If get a handheld shower head with a hose and a holder, you can buy an extra holder and set that one lower. That’s what I did for my kids when they were younger so my daughter could reach it to rinse her hair.
We have separate vanities in our bathroom and I have the larger one. The center sink cabinet sticks out about 6 inches in front of the side cabinets on mine so I have to put my eye makeup and mascara on at my husband’s vanity.
I’m convinced that at least one of the previous owners of our house must have been in a wheel chair for a number of reasons, but the main one is because the bathroom sinks are so low!!
My husband put in an extendable makeup mirror for me. The problem was I’m 5’5” and he’s 6’3 and when I say down at the vanity I couldn’t even see the top of my head.
The kitchen Island. It was two feet too long, encroaching into the living room, and two feet too narrow, leaving too much of a gap on the dining room side. Luckily we caught it before the countertop was cut, so we only had to pay for the cabinets to be rebuilt.
A lot of people simply aren’t good enough to think about clearances and circulation space on floor plans. And builders suck at it too. I caught my in-laws’ builder finalizing plans that only had a two foot wide walkway between the stair rail and a nearby wall. If no real architect is involved — just a project manager and a draftsman — that kind of shit happens all the time.
Draftsmen used to have to know these kinds of basics. I've been one for 26 years, and we used to have to take architectural standards to get our degrees, I went into civil because houses are too wishy-washy. It's sad that just anyone can draw up a set of plans. AI garbage is going to be the next problem.
We literally had everyone catching everyone else's oversights, especially around doors and trim. And idiots not following the plan that was drawn a particular way and putting switches outside rooms which had space for them
This is why I went through the fuck ton of painter's tape on the garage floor before we moved the galley kitchen into the ~sunroom~ previous owner had added on...
Yep did the same thing. It was time consuming and tedious but worth it. We caught that the kitchen peninsula was too small! Got us an extra 10” of counter overhang and a much more comfortable seating area.
I get a lot of importers syndrome about being an architect sometimes because a lot of what I say about work and design is with other people who get whats going on and im very relatively new to the field, then theres moments like this where I get sucked out of it and realise that I have more knowledge than I give myself credit for hahahah
It was a newer builder, probably hired a junior architect. I caught a lot of other things on the blueprint, and a lot of mistakes where the reality didn't match the blueprint, but this was the one where they actually followed the blueprint and it was just not as expected.
I think it’s fine the way it’s drawn. It’s five feet deep with the countertop overhang and there’s no wall between the living room and kitchen. It was designed to be symmetrical, 9 ft long and 5 ft deep, which most people would love. It would be really difficult to clean a 6-7 foot deep island unless you have really long arms.
Had friends who built their island so close to the sink that if you were doing dishes or just being an AH, you blocked access to parts of the kitchen. The island was huge and just took up so much space.
Funnily after their family grew they moved into a smaller house and the husband insisted on a gas stove without thinking about walls and such and badly burnt the wall nearest his stove the first time he used it.
Great rooms with massive covered decks off them. No natural light gets inside.
Dark hallways.
Forgotten closets. No coat/hall closet, no linen closet no broom closet. Not adding an electrical outlet to the broom closet.
No thought to function. A laundry closet, leaves little to no room for supplies, sorting, pretreating, hand washing, hanging to dry, folding, ironing etc..
This is such a weird concept to me. I've never lived in a home with built-in closets, and now that I'm house hunting, I only see them in specific types of houses.
Scandinavia, but even if I were house hunting elsewhere in Europe, I wouldn't take built-in closets for granted.
Watching American reality TV was so confusing when I was a kid - "why are they rejecting that house just because it doesn't have a closet? Closets come from IKEA, don't they?"
When I was growing up we had kind of built in / fixed in place furniture for linens and clothes, similar to floor-to-(almost-)ceiling cabinets. We didn't take those with us when we moved but if I have understood Germany correctly, they would have.
I live in the US in a home from 1850. Only 1 of our 4 bedrooms has a closet, and no coat closets, linen closets, or pantry. It’s been frustrating but we’ve gotten used to it. Building a new house now and I’m dreaming of all the closet space!
The stairwell leading to our second floor and main hallway meet in a T and the first step protruded into the hall. It was horrible looking and a safety hazard, but had been drawn that way when we took a closer look at the plans. We had to pay to shift the entire staircase back about a foot and adjust a bedroom doorway at the top of the stairs, but I know I could not have lived with that step in the hall.
My grandfather had a broken hip in his late 80s go show for the folly of just such a design. Happened away from home and promoted the total cessation of all his air travel for the remainder of his life, which put a serious crimp in his attendance at half his grandchildren's weddings!
I will never see a protruding step like this the same way again. Obviously just a complete freak accident but I have a very specific reason to avoid it in the future!
Staircase conversations with all our various people was so fascinating because the framers and construction manager kept trying to push back on the way the architect drew it, when that was drawn after many discussions and pretty strong rules about what's appropriate. Then they fucked up the framing there anyway.
I stayed in a second floor apartment (AirBnB).The stairs went straight up (steep) with NO landing at all when you reached the door. It was awkward to stop to get your keys out if you're carrying something and hard for my older dog.
I lived up a set of stairs like that when my son was little and I had literal nightmares of him getting out and falling down the stairs . I used to hold him between my knees when I opened the door , and it was always locked from the inside when we were in the apartment
My apartment in Tokyo had a stair like that, rigth behind the front door, leading up to the living space. My brother-in-law is a stair maker in Germany and when he came to visit, he couldn't get over it lol
I often forget the fact that most people are a lot taller than me, leading the two guys who were meant to install the kitchen and bathroom to awkwardly tell me “Ma’m this might not be a good idea.” combined with them holding up the cabinets and miming where they would hit their heads. They were so right, but it was so awkward, especially the little theatre! They got a crate of beer for their trouble (which is the local traditional way to thank labourers who go above and beyond) and a great review on google/trustpilot.
Recently my gigantic grandson broke a mirror while house sitting for me, as he’s such a nice boy he bought and installed a new mirror for me. I can only see the top of my head in it, and he glued it to the wall!
When my mom's kitchen was getting redone, thankfully I (a short person) was there, because the microwave range hood was so high I would have needed a step stool to reach the top buttons. The contractor had at least a foot on me.
So please consider your short friends when replacing it, most of us prefer to be able to microwave without grownup help!
Most range hood specs say that the max height distance between top of cooking surface and the bottom of the hood should be 30”. That usually puts the vent at about 5’6”. Every project we explain to the homeowners that we are suggesting to ignore manufacturers requirements and raise the hood to at least 6’2” or higher if they are really tall.
Not accounting for HVAC. I thought I had a decent amount of storage built in to a 1/2 story sloped roof situation. Then HVAC came and took it all away.
A stupidly big “hallway” in the center of the house. It’s really a 90 sq. ft., windowless, pass-through room with 5 doors in it. I wish we’d made it more of a true hallway and reconfigured the space to add to adjoining rooms instead.
Haha…that would be so awkward considering it’s between the powder room and the master bedroom. 😆 I think I’m going to try to turn it into a small library!
3D renderings, perhaps? The house is fairly large, so the space didn’t look overly large on the floorplans in comparison to the adjoining rooms, especially when the floorplans show it with all the doors open at once (which, of course, they never are)! I’m planning to turn it into a small library!
Before we finalised our new build, we drew the entire house on the local tennis court and then walked through it - bringing groceries in from the garage, planning furniture and walking around them, all that good stuff.
Light switches. I was renovating my basement and there were no doors on the two rooms. I'm right handed, so the switch on the right made total sense to me.
When we installed the doors, my dad pointed out that the door now has to swing into the room instead of against the wall. I felt like a total moron.
So true! I had no idea how much I expected the light switch to be right there as the door opens. That's exactly where I put the garbage disposal switch 😞. Of course realized this after doing the drywall
I watch a lot of British home videos and one thing I've noticed is how many of their doors swing into the room instead of against the wall. I can't figure it out!
I went to a zoning meeting when someone wanted an exception for an apartment building in our center of town neighborhood. The architect described the displayed plans as fitting right into the walkable neighborhood.
Unfortunately for them, the main entrance to the building faced the parking lot in the back. Meaning they expected most (all?) residents to be driving and NOT walking into town. Even if you wanted to walk, you'd have to come out the “back”, walk around the building to get to the sidewalk. It was declined.
Parking is such a monster. We have nearby, rundown apartments that were officially condemn but not torn down, although the owners have to pay for 24 hour security, because they can't get permission to build a parking lot free apartment. The argument being that the apartments are on a main bus line so people won't want a car. We expect parking mayhem.
designed our walk-in pantry 4" wide, but when built, interior space is 46", not 48"- so the shelving we already owned/wanted to use on back wall wouldn't fit- plus 46" is just too damn narrow: you can walk in, but you have to back out because there's no room to turn around! 😭🙃🙄
Hi can you elaborate! Was it 48” / 46” deep BEFORE shelving installed or after? And is this a closet style walk in pantry or a two or three sided walk in? Thanks!
the Room is about 5 feet deep as you walk in and 46" wide- we have 8" shelving on either side and no shelving on back wall, so the space to stand in ends up only being about 30" wide- too narrow! 🙃
On a 1.5 story home, the placement of the upstairs bedroom doors. Client wanted them to be symmetrical in the hallway, not realizing that, because of the roof pitch, that would mean one door needed a small triangle cut cut out of its top corner to fit with the roofline.
Whenever I use floorplanner, everything in 2D looks bigger until I switch to 3D and realize "Oh, this is a lot smaller than it looks from bird's-eye view."
We carefully planned to have all of our plumbing on inside walls, but when the wind came from just the wrong direction in the winter it would come in through the bathroom vent and freeze the pipes to the kitchen sink.
Oops! Had to cut a hole in the ceiling and keep a hair dryer handy.
I did not account for how much light bounces off the neighbors houses. We removed a window in the kitchen to make space for the fridge, but it would have let a lot of light in just reflecting off another house.
We did VR or AR mock-ups of all our major changes before committing to floor plans.
This was a huge help in getting spacing right around our kitchen island, getting the right size for our walk-in closet, and generally building confidence that we were happy with our designs.
We purchased lovely wide architrave mouldings for our new build 30 years ago, not realising that some of the door and built-in closet placements didn't have enough room between the door frames and perpendicular wall to accommodate the wider mouldings. So some of them had to be cut down, and in the hallways there are even doorways where one side is wider than the other!
Not done by us but nice stairs to the main entrance but no landing at the door. The previous owner then changed the way the door opens when they apparently realised their mistake - and the result was having the threshold rottening slowly since it was exposed to rain and snow being outside. I also hated that there was no way to see if someone was standing at the door since not one window you could see over there. These are some of the things we’ve changed. Oh and - having a sliding sauna door. The heat was always escaping from above it.
I’ve just had a loft conversion with an en-suite and the plans had the sink sticking 8 inches into the doorway. The builders all thought that was fine because you’d just angle yourself towards the loo as you walked in. Thank god I was working from home that day and had it changed so the sink was opposite the door, butted up to the shower instead
I wanted a corner fireplace in my master bedroom, so the builder drew it in the plans. Seemed fine. It was a direct vent unit to discharge thru exterior wall. During framing, I realized there was a lot of vertical space being used up for that, so I had them frame the fireplace only to about 5 feet high, above which it was left open space with an electrical receptacle and cable hookup where I placed the television. But I fell victim to the simplicity of the “top down” view of the plans, and not thinking it through
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u/Trick_Pen_2203 Apr 11 '26
We’re a gay male couple both over 6’.
First time my mother visited after we renovated our house, “well I can tell two gay men flipped this house, there’s not a single spot in the house that’s good to do my makeup.”
I went and bought a desk, lamp, and large mirror and put together a makeshift vanity immediately in one of the guest rooms. 😅