- Varied ceiling heights create a sense of shelter over the bed and the window seat — details that make a house more personal.
Are there rooms in your home that you hardly ever use? Would more vertical storage and less total floor space give you that cozy cottage feeling you’ve been craving? Are you spending way too much on utilities during these hot summer months? Then maybe you should consider scaling back to a smaller home–an increasingly popular trend during a rocky economy.
Benefits of a smaller, downsized home can include:
- lower mortgage payments
- lower property taxes and utility bills
- spending less money on decorating
- spending less time on housekeeping, yard work, and other household chores
- reducing some of the stress that comes with maintaining a larger home
Two women ahead of this trend are Deryl Patterson, owner of the Jacksonville, Fla.-based architecture and planning firm BSB Design, and Raleigh’s own Sarah Susanka, FAIA, owner of Susanka Studios and author of “The Not So Big House” book series and “The Not So Big Life.”
Patterson takes an individualized approach to designing the right home, taking a home-buyer’s lifestyle into consideration. “To effectively downsize,” she says, “you must furnish the floor plan so the buyer can understand how it lives and performs. Women often get this better than men. Women also understand what not to downsize — like kitchens and storage.”
Susanka’s right-sizing approach to house design is as applicable to remodeling as it is to new construction, and it can be applied to homes of any price and size. “A not-so-big house is also a sustainably and energy efficiently designed home,” she says. “That is one of the core principles behind ‘Not So Big.’ In the long run, that somewhat smaller but better designed house of your dreams will become the best investment for the future.”
If this is something you’re ready to get serious about, call me so we can look for the right home to remodel or hook you up with the right builder to design your dream right-sized home!
Adapted/excerpted from National Association of Home Builders online,
“A House ‘Built for Me’ — Consumers Beginning to Drive Right-Sizing Trend”
