The concept of a luxury custom built dream home often conjures up images of large spacious homes on a meandering manicured property. However, many discerning home owners today veer towards quality over quantity, believing bigger is not necessarily better for their particular lifestyle or ideals for the dream home. Empty nesters or families creating a vision for the perfect weekend home escape often desire less maintenance, less square footage and the simplicity that comes with scaling back the living space.
Small Custom Homes: Luxury Custom Homes with Smaller Footprints
Architects, designers and custom home builders often love the challenge of breathing new life into small cottages and existing structures, transforming them into a modern interpretation customized to the family’s dream home. Part of the challenge comes with maximizing the potential of small spaces, providing multiple purposes for different living spaces and incorporating specific design elements and materials which marry the traditional structure with the homeowner’s style preference. Examples below show redesigned spaces with multiple, practical uses: a den that doubles as a guest room utilizing a murphy bed, and a pantry that is also a family office/ scheduling center, with plenty of storage to easily accommodate both.
Reimagining older structures to accommodate modern living conveniences often means opening up spaces by taking down walls and bringing in light, allowing for an improved flow as well. This is commonly displayed with kitchen renovations, as the concept of how families use kitchens today has evolved over the years. Consider entertaining while cooking and creating a space for multiple uses for the family around mealtime, such as homework, projects or even watching television while cooking. Multi-functional kitchen islands with seating that open the room to an adjoining living space transforms formerly cramped quarters. The image below illustrates just this, optimizing the functionality of the kitchen.
Built-ins, including shelves and drawers for storage, also allow for maximizing space by eliminating bulkier furniture, providing clean lines and simple order to smaller spaces. Bedrooms in particular may benefit from such details, providing a place for everything. Lofts and bunk beds are simple solutions to creating additional sleeping spaces when needed for friends and guests. The examples below show beautifully crafted bedroom spaces that suit children and young adults equally, the loft space in particular illustrating the perfect escape for a young adult to read, sleep, do homework and entertain friends in style.
Creating a luxury home in a small space is certainly not limited to renovating older structures, as many homeowners choose to downsize and start the process from scratch. Working within the parameters of a smaller footprint may also allow for more creativity in making every square foot count, as well as allow for the budget to cover more high-end materials and artisan touches. Thinking small also creates more flexibility with limited property lines in highly desirable neighborhoods. The following link provides several examples of beautiful living spaces utilizing every square foot.
https://www.pinterest.com/colbyconstruct/maximizing-smaller-living-space/