The ideal floorplan will bring a sense of harmony and practical design between your indoor and outdoor spaces. Here’s how to achieve it:
1. Locate the kitchen at the heart of the home
It makes sense to locate the kitchen – a bulky utility space – away from areas that have direct access to outside. Your living and dining areas should be situated in the best spots in the house with lots of natural light and next to the outdoor space. Then your kitchen can still benefit from a lovely outlook, across the lounge and dining rooms, but its ‘working’ area where there’s lots of foot traffic and cooking activity is kept separate and not impacting access routes to the garden.
2. Create an unobstructed pathway to outside
This may sound obvious, but it’s important to leave space for movement. Make sure there is no furniture in the way and avoid any dramatic level changes at the threshold of inside and out. This also applies to the pathway once outside – if you are planning an outdoor dining area, try and offset it to one end of the courtyard or garden.
3. Choose sliding glass doors (rather than bifold or concertina)
Our recommendation is sliding glass doors – they are more robust and give the best flexibility in terms of use. It’s very rare that you’ll want your doors fully open, which is the only real advantage of bifold doors. Also consider double glazed doors for thermal insulation.
Final tip: If you do have sliding glass doors, consider sheer curtains. The vast glass doors can look soulless at night, whereas with the sheer curtain you can pull this across to soften the room. They also act as a filter for the harsh summer sunlight.
