You should always feel like you have room to manoeuvre in your home. Sometimes, although you love your current house, you'll find you’ve outgrown it. A new addition to the family, children growing older, getting a large dog or deciding to work from home are just a few things that might have you feeling a little cramped. Before you up and move, you could consider an addition to your property so you get the best of both worlds: you can keep your well-loved, familiar home and gain a little extra square footage. Here are a few things to consider with home addition plans.
The best home additions
Know your limitations
Your home addition plans need to take into consideration any limiting factors from the outset. Your garden or outdoor space is one of these: is there a tree you don’t want to fell and how much outdoor space do you want left for your family? If it’s possible to utilise the loft space or expand the second story for your house addition plans, this will save you adding to your property’s footprint. When you consider how much space you actually need, it may not be a whole room but rather an extension of an existing room – a half-room or a sunroom. If your addition will be on the ground floor of your home, consider how its presence will affect light and access to other rooms. Your budget is, of course, a limiting factor in the design too. But you needn’t see these as cumbersome restrictions; designing within limits usually sparks more creative and exciting solutions.
Plan to the nth degree
From deciding you want an addition to your home, to actually sitting comfortably in your extension with a cup of tea, will inevitably take longer than you'd like. Once you have a rough idea of what you’re looking for in an extension, you’ll want to discuss plans in detail with several architects or contractors before settling on a design. With home addition plans it’s always better to have more than one opinion on budget and design, and an architect will be able to set out a realistic time frame.
Consider the overall architecture
It’s tempting to think only of the interior in your home addition plans. After all, this is the part of the extension you’ll be looking at most often, so it is integral to the design. The overall external architecture of your home deserves careful consideration too however, as an addition to your house which isn’t in keeping with the overall aesthetic could decrease the value of your property and affect a future sale. The angle of the roof, placement of the windows and the shape of your property's footprint should all be considered in your home addition plans.
Select your materials carefully
It will always be challenging when planning your home addition to match the materials to those of the original build. Especially if you’re living in an older home, the materials may simply not be available any more. When planning a modern addition to the house you may also like to consider sustainability, as well as durability and the green credentials of the materials you choose. You may opt for something more naturally insulating than the original ones used, for example. Even if you decide on an ultra-modern addition to the house, as a complete contrast to your stone-walled cottage, the designs will have to create a seamless flow between the new material and the old, inside and out, so it doesn’t look mismatched.