5 Tips for Finding Your Perfect Floorplan
The way you will use a home is key to choosing the features and floorplans that can best meet your needs. One way to identify these is to do a walk-through of your current home or apartment to see what you like and what you don't. Here are some things to keep in mind:
Grab a pen…
and notepad and start at the front door.Note how…
you use each room and what you like or dislike about each space.
Are you tired of clearing your work off your dining table at dinnertime? You might want a den.
Do you time your snack breaks to match the commercials during a football game? You’re ready for an open-plan kitchen.
Be sure to…
go through out-of-the-way spaces like the garage, attic or basement.
Do you have the storage space you need?
Have you always wanted a workspace in the garage for hobbies?
Consider your…
cleaning routine in each room.Are there awkward or unused spaces that can easily get missed on cleaning day?
Does each room have the outlets you need for vacuuming?
Make sure…
to note any favorite pieces of furniture you’ll need room for in your next home.Today’s most popular floorplan can be summed up in one word: open.
Kitchens flow into living rooms, promoting togetherness for busy families in which everyone’s coming and going. Busy parents can cook dinner while busy kids do homework on the couch, and a lack of walls makes it easy to converse — or ask for a hand with a tricky math problem — while doing so. Plus, you won’t miss a moment of the big game while grabbing a snack. It wasn’t always this way. In the 1970s, the must-have feature for the era’s divided-up homes was the in-wall intercom system that allowed family members to communicate from their preferred spots in the house. Today, intercoms are out of style because everyone’s hanging out in one large room.
Today’s families see home as more than a place to take care of basic human needs. If you fancy yourself a foodie, the thinking goes, your home should reflect that. Unlike the 1990s and prior, the kitchen’s no longer a confined workspace with the sink below a window so you can daydream as you scrub the plates. And a private formal dining room isn’t the preferred venue for showing off your culinary skills. In fact, to understand what’s driving popular home layouts today and how Meritage® keeps up with them, the kitchen is a great place to start. That’s because it plays a bigger role in the popularity of open floorplans than many realize.
Restaurants started the open kitchen concept more than 20 years ago. Today, it’s growing and growing, and these open kitchens then translated into our homes. Then, more open spaces evolved from the open kitchen.
The features of these free-flowing floorplans are always evolving, too. That’s why the team at Meritage Homes keeps an eye out for trends in all kinds of places, including hip restaurants, cutting-edge home design expos, strategic reports about consumers’ tastes, and feedback from homebuyers and Meritage’s sales teams.
Particular points of pride for Meritage include innovative kitchens, great rooms and dining areas, all of which are designed with consumers’ desires in mind. But there’s also something that’s hard to see or point to, yet is easily felt: ambient comfort. That’s because Meritage homes are designed to be energy efficient and quiet. It’s also easier to heat or cool the homes because of the open floorplan, not in spite of it. And having fewer partitions inside the home provides better air movement throughout the space as well.
This efficiency is also achieved, in part, by energy-efficient windows and doors, even when using large glass doors to bring a sense of the outdoors in — another desire Meritage caters to. Large sliding glass doors and full-lite doors are what may homeowners want today. These special features, along with larger windows, create more connection between inside and outside environments.
This flow between worlds isn’t just about connecting with the outdoors from the kitchen counter. It’s a factor in the ways that boundaries between work and play are blurring as well. Technology keeps people connected to work even after they’ve left the office, and for some, home is the office.
As working from home became commonplace, Meritage responded by offering small Work From Home areas, typically away from high-traffic areas as a place for residents to work or study. We learned from customers that these areas could be anything from a small furniture niche off a hallway perfect for a workstation to a fully secluded office with a large desk, bookshelves and chairs. Our design team discovered that as more and more people work from home, even with a laptop or a phone, they don’t all need a large desk for the computer, but they do need a space to go work. While some people prefer to work from their couch or kitchen counter, others prefer to have a space to truly disconnect from the rest of the home, so Meritage continues to offer dens, studies and work from work spaces on their floorplans.
So is there a home designed to flow with your family’s life? Experts say the best thing is to just go out and look—whether you’re touring a home in person or using web-based tools to take a virtual tour. Meritage Homes makes it easy to do both. As you shop for your next home, be sure to share your wish list with a Meritage Homes Sales Counselor. It’s their job to help you find the perfect home with the newest Meritage features.
Meet the expert.
Building homes is in Brian Juedes’s blood — both his grandfather and father were carpenters who built houses for families. Juedes started his career as a commercial architect before moving to the residential side, which he sees as more personal, 21 years ago. He’s been with Meritage Homes since February 2018, and his role is to constantly find ways to improve the brand’s homes while ensuring they’re built as efficiently as possible.
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