Article: How to Design a  Home to Look Larger than Your Neighbor  for Minimal Expense 

As an Architect in designing homes for new clients, when they first come to me they have standard tastes you would see from any house you would see in any neighborhood. What I try to do is to expand their architectural vocabulary and be bold in what their trying to do, without spending a lot more money. Part of that is to make their house look bigger from the street and live bigger inside. You can get a lot of “wow” factor if try some simple things in your home design

1. Make your house longer, not square--Most people want to make their houses more square in design, in the preconceived notion of saving costs. While this may be overall true, it also makes your house very small looking (and boring).  For a 2500 square foot house instead of designing it 50 foot by 50 foot, make your house longer like 75 foot long by 33 wide. To see an example Click Here to See a Picture  You’d be surprised how much more elegant and more expensive it looks for not that much more money. It also gives you a bonus of giving windows into almost every room in your home, giving light and visual space to them

2. Use lots of repetitive windows. By using the same window size over and over in a long pattern, it’ll make the house seem longer. And these don’t need to be operable windows. Fixed windows are less expensive the operable windows. Hopefully this will help you in your house design

3. Use the Split level home concept. he split level home was more prevalent in the 1960’s than it is today, but it has a lot of advantages it you modernize it. First, in most areas of the northern part of the country, you need at least a 30” or deeper footing to get below the local frost line. Well, let that be the staring point of your basement (or as I like to call it, the Lower Level). That means the Lower Level is 2 feet below  grade, which means you can have full size windows. The  Lower Level foundation wall is 30” tall, the rest of the wall height can be wood (whether 8’ or 9’ tall) if you want to see an example Click Here to see a Picture If  you use 8’ tall lower level (to reduce costs) there is a design I like to use to eliminate bulkheads for HVAC, incorporate them in a floor truss system. I love to use 16’’ high floor trusses, 24” on center, and keeping the trusses in the same orientation throughout the house. It give plenty of space for the HVAC ducts. If you need space for the HVAC to “step over” each other, do that in the mechanical room.