A buddy told me my floorplans looked like a maze, so I changed how I think about hallways

I was designing a small house for a friend and he looked at the layout and said "man, it's like walking through a spiral just to get to the bathroom." At first I was kinda defensive, but then I counted the turns you had to make from the front door to the kitchen. It was like 5 turns. So I went back and widened the halls and tried to line up doors directly across from each other. The new version cut the walk from 45 feet to about 30 feet. Has anyone else gotten feedback that totally made you rethink circulation paths?

2 comments

2 Comments

evand6513d ago

Yeah my own house is basically a monument to bad hallway design. I once timed how long it took to get from the bedroom to the coffee maker in the morning and it was almost a full minute of zigzagging. Felt like I was playing a video game level just to get caffeine into my system. Your buddy did you a solid honestly, sometimes you need someone to just point out youre making life harder than it needs to be.

margaret_lane12d ago

A full minute, like 60 seconds of zigzagging just to get coffee? That's honestly wild to me. I mean, idk how you haven't just moved the coffee maker closer to your bedroom at that point, maybe even put it in the hallway itself. Like, a minute every morning adds up to like 6 or 7 hours a year of just wandering around your own house. That's basically a full workday per year lost to bad hallway design. I'd probably just start sleeping by the coffee pot honestly.