I should certainly hope so as you still have over 1000 sq ft till you reach 4000!

1000 sq ft of hallway in a 4000 sq ft house would mean that 25% of the house was hallway. Seems to me like those would have to be some pretty impressive hallways or the house would have to be designed like a maze with hallways twisting every which way to use up 25% of your total square footage.

For example, if you designed a long narrow house (say 30 ft deep by 133 ft long) so that it was just 2 rooms deep, you could run a 5 ft wide hallway from one end clear to the other and only use up about 600 sq ft in hallway. A more compact design...with some rooms opening directly off of other rooms instead of off a "hallway" should need less total hallway space.

So, I can't imagine how one could possibly design a 4000 sq ft house and waste 1000 sq ft in hallways.

Of course, if you want a really impressive room-sized foyer and you count that as "hallway" space... then maybe.

Our house is a 3200 sq ft 2-story and we decided we wanted extra wide hallways (5.5 ft wide) so that there would be enough room to line the halls with bookcases. Even with the extra wide halls and counting the 4 ft wide staircase (which has two midway landings and therefore takes up much more space than a straight staircase run would have) our hallways still account for only about 10% of our total square footage.

Maybe you should look online until you find a floorplan that you like the general flow of and which is about the size you want, and use that to begin the discussion with your next architect. Or, you could purchase an inexpensive non-professional CAD architecture program and play around sketching some floor plans till you get something that seems close to what you would like.

Good luck.

We have approx 120 sq ft of hallway in our 2750 sq ft house, not counting stairway or entry, so I certainly agree with Bevangel that over 1000 would be a lot! Part of the house design's aim should be to get you the most usable and valuable sq ftage for your money...so this would mean as little superfluous hallway as you can manage. It'll be different if you want to use hallway as storage, gallery, etc., and will also depend on how wide you want/need.

We have about 100 sq ft of hallway in our 3050 sq foot ranch. I think 1000 sq ft is plenty -- you will easily come in under that if you are just adding hallway.

Keep in mind, though, that to figure total sq footage of your house, you will need to measure from the exterior of the home, factoring in 2x6 or 2x4 walls. That extra 4 or 6 inches seems to add alot in the overall square footage. When you just add up the sizes of our rooms plus hallway and closets, it comes in way less than the 3050 sq ft number that our architect gave us for the total sq footage.

I'm so glad to hear so many positive responses on this. We actually gave our first architect/designer the same measurements and he came up with alsmost 4600 sq. ft. We stressed heavily that we wanted to keep it under 3900 sq. ft. if possible. We went with 48" wide halls. As for the foyer, we expressed MANY times that we did not want this to be huge. He always told us it had to be for a "grand" entrance into the greatroom. We do not want anything fancy, as we are not that type of people. We also don't have expensive artwork to hang on the wall. I want to give the room measurements below to see if anyone thinks they are out of the ordinary.

Kitchen 16x18 -- I want this area to be larger than normal due to family get togethers

Pantry -- 8x10

Greatroom 22X22

Breakfast/Dining area 11X15 (No formal dining)

Study 9X11 -- just big enough for a desk with two computers

Game Room 20X20

Master Bedroom with SMALL sitting area 16X18

Master Bath 13X17

Master Closet 12X12 (does not have to be square, just large)

Three kids bedrooms: All to be 12 X 12 each

Walk-in closets in their bedrooms 7X7

Three extra full baths plus one powder room 150 sq. ft.(I may be off or have not allowed enough room for these)

Utility: 7X11

Misc: extra instructions were for closets where ever there is room
This will be a one story house. We want the study on the left as you walk in. The game room needs to be placed off the kitchen towards the rear of the house. We purchased 1 1/3 acre on a lake so we want the best views from the greatroom, gameroom and master bedroom.

The room measurements don't seem excessively large to me. All rooms will be very nice sizes. Our ranch is 3000 sq ft and the measurements for our rooms are all at least 3-4 sq feet on each dimension smaller -- with a few exceptions.

Our room dimensions:

kitchen: 15x19
pantry: 5x7
pocket office: 5.5 x 5.5
Bkfast/dining: 16x10
master: 16x16
master bath: 17x10
master closet: 7x10
study: 13x13
kids bedrooms: 12x13
kids WICs: 5x5.5
kids bath: 9x11
foyer: 10x12
mudroom ( powder room, closets): 15x12
laundry: 6x9

Three extra full baths plus one powder room 150 sq. ft.(I may be off or have not allowed enough room for these)

If you find yourself needing to cut costs or footage, I'd think about removing, or reducing at least one of these down to a half-bath. Bathrooms are among the more expensive rooms in the house.

Game Room 20X20

Similar comment: If footage needs to go, could you consider putting this in the basement (assuming you have one) in the future? I would absolutely not want to cut the size of rooms like the kitchen, or the bedrooms, in order to meet the budget.

--Steve

I meant to say two extra full baths and one powder room. We are not having a basement of any type. We're trying to get everything we want under 3900 sq. ft. if possible. Anything over that will be too much house for us.

Your room dimensions look appropriate to me. The only thing that's a bit fishy is the 150 sq/ft for 2.5 baths. A full bath probably wants to be 80-100+ sq/ft, accounting for tubs and showers and vanities, etc. Also, what about a garage? Won't be included in the finished living area calculations, but still needs to be considered. Finally, if you want to avoid having ANY dead space, you're gonna need to hire the best architect in the world, be very flexible with your layout, or end up with a funky looking house...

I was assuming that your 3900 sq ft limit was for heated and cooled space and did not include the garage. If not, a 2 car garage will add about 650 sq ft and a three car garage will add about 900 sq ft.

I do think mojua is overestimating the size that your secondary bathrooms need to be. It is possible to fit a full bath (toilet, 30" wide vanity sink, and 5ft tub/shower) into a mere 5'x7' or 35 sq ft room. I know this for a fact because in my current house both full baths -including the masterbath - are this size. These bathrooms aren't "luxurious" but they are perfectly functional...especially as secondary bathrooms for children.

A powder-room (toilet and sink) will fit quite nicely into a 5' x 5'room so long as it doesn't need to serve anyone who is wheel-chair bound. So, I don't think your estimate for actual bathroom floor space was too small.

I also noticed that you didn't mention a mud-room. Everyone on this board seems to love having one. Did you decide you could do without or do you intend your utility room to serve for that function?

Since today was a holiday and I had some free time, I decided... just for fun...to pull out my old Punch program and see if I could cobble together a floor plan that met the criteria you've posted thus far. Thought you might like to see it just as one idea of how you might put things together. I drew this assuming your lake-view was at the back. Again, it is just one idea of what you might do...

My calculations show the heated/cooled space (plus the 4" exterior walls around the heated/cooled space) adds up to just under 3600 sq ft. The two car garage adds another 670 sq ft. The room dimensions shown are actual room sizes (i.e., from wall to wall) with width shown first, then depth.

Wow bevangel! Thanks for taking the time to do that. The 3900 sq. ft. was only for living area. We will have a three-car garage but are not calculating that with the heated and cooled space. It will be located on the side of the house due to deed restrictions. We will also have a covered large lanai in the back with outdoor fireplace and small kitchen. We will be putting a pool in at the same time. As far as the mud room is concerned, we never even considered one. What is this room's function exactly. We assumed it was the utility room.

The lake is in the rear of the house.

For the two extra full baths, we figured on a 5 X 9. That's what's in most of the models we've looked at.

In my mind a mud room (aka "clutter room") is kind of a back foyer or back hall serving whatever entry door the family uses MOST of the time. Nowadays that is usually the door into the garage.

In my mind, a well designed mud-room has a place for each member of the family to deposit coats, mittens, boots, shoes, purses, umbrellas, backpacks, car-keys, etc. All the stuff we tend to "shed" as we walk into the house and then have to gather back up again when we get ready to leave again. Room for each family member to sit down briefly to put on shoes/boots is also great.

If you do a search on "mud room" on this forum, you'll find lots of postings with pictures of the clever "cubbies" that some members have designed and built for their mud rooms.

A counter top next to the door in the mud-room is a great place for setting those things that you need to remember to take with you when you leave (lunches, that movie that needs to be returned, etc) because family members can quickly be trained to check the counter-top for anything they are supposed to take with them before they head out the door.

Since everything is dropped off in one spot instead of winding up spread throughout the house, it is easier to collect it all back up again... and the rest of the house stays a whole lot neater.

Finally, lots of people - especially those with small kids - like having at least a half-bath off the mud-room so that children playing outdoors don't have to come thru the entire house to use a restroom.

I designed a square house that terraced upward at each quadrant with steps so there were no halls.

If you design the house so that you walk through a room to get to another room, the s.f. of hallway will be 0. Hallway area is a function of how you layout the rooms which is a function of how you want to live which, of course, is very personal. I find that houses often get larger because my clients keep finding "great ideas" in design magazines.

You seem to be approaching the design problem as if it were an office building. The proper design approach to a house is something an architect should know well. Find a good one. You might also think a bit more about what spaces you really use and which ones are substantially redundant for your life style. You can only be in one room at a time and kids grow up fast.

If limiting the square footage is a budget issue, be sure also to limit the number of exterior corners on the design and keep the roof line from getting complicated.

I agree that 5x9 would be the smallest to make the bathrooms.

I spent years designing our house before we finally built it. My guiding thoughts were: views, traffic flow, function, and cost. HA! on that last one, although I achieved all of the others. I finally achieved what mighyanvil mentioned above so that when you walk through a room to get to another room, you can avoid most hallways. There's great circular flow through all of the first floor areas; the master bed room is the only dead end area.

I like entry halls with rooms off of all sides, so ours has a hallway similar to but larger than the one bevangel drew, with the study to the left on that corner of the house, the living room straight back and on the other left corner of the house, the kitchen off the back right of the entry, and the dining room behind it. So the first intentional hall has the front door with sidelite, a bench to the left, then the double pocket door to the study, then the closet. Straight ahead is the entrance to the living room, and to the right is the kitchen pocket door, and then a longer wall for a small table and a few pictures.

The other intentional hall in the shape of an "I" is on the other side of the kitchen/dining rooms. Since I can't post a drawing, let me just say that it's one of my favorite things about the house. Going clockwise from the top left, there's the door from the DR, a door to the back patio, a door to the MBR (that's behind the 3 car garage), the up stairs, a mail sorting cabinet, a bench with 3 drawers and hooks and cabinets above, the down stairs, the garage door, laundry door (laundry has a pass thru to the pantry which has a pocket door to the kitchen), coat closet, kitchen door, cleaning closet, powder room, and a back patio/misc. closet. Last night there were 5 adults and 5 kids under age 6 coming, going, and talking in the front part of this area at the same time, and everything moved very smoothly with no bottle necks.

The stairs come into the middle of the 2nd floor and lower level so there are no halls there.

Can you make reduced copies of the architects plan and draw on them to figure out where you'd move walls, eliminate square footage, reposition rooms, etc.? Or find a close enough plan by doing a search on one of the many sites, narrowing down the hundreds of choices to a couple that you could rework into an approximation of what you'd like? Then you'd have something to guide the new architect you choose. There are so many variables that can make designing the right home very time consuming, I don't see how architects ever come up with a final plan for anyone!

Anne