Thanks for your input, chartist. That's a good point about the shower/toilet use, but we have another bathroom 5 steps down the hall, so I'm not sure it will be a problem in real life. We currently only have one bathroom in our house (2 adults, 2 young kids), so anything is going to be a major upgrade! I like the toilet and shower flipped, and had tried that in an earlier layout, but still had the pocket door, which would interfere with the plumbing for the shower. Without the door, I see that this could work. I'm concerned however about putting the plumbing for the toilet on the outside wall, as I've been told it's hard to insulate. How big does a water closet need to be? Did I read 36x60 is the absolute minimum? Maybe it's not even worth separating it. I liked the little room for toilet and shower, as we have hardwood throughout that space now, and I was thinking we could tile just the floor in that small room, rather than in front of the vanity as well. I'm torn on the closet through the bathroom. Part of me thinks it will limit the noise myself or my husband makes while getting ready, as we won't have to come back through the bedroom. And honestly, we are trying to save space (like a builder I guess). We currently have about 1500sf on our first floor, 4 bed 1 bath, and we're adding dormers to our walkup attic to create 3 bedrooms and another bath. We're using 3 of the 4 bedrooms on the first floor to create a master suite and laundry room. But it's not like this is a big, high-end house. In the end, it will still be a modest cape...we just want it to work as efficiently as possible.

Your layout looks like it works, although I don't know about dimensions. I'm wondering if you can eliminate the hallway into your room and the room above your bath, to incorporate all that extra space into your rooms.

One of the things that struct me about these two plans was that the windows were drastically different between them. What does it look like from outside? It's usually best to have a cohesive plan that looks balanced and thoughtful from both the outside and inside. Too many windows outside of different shapes and sizes looks bad. Also, with the different window exposures in the two plans, I don't know where you live, and thus whether western sun is highly desired, or very undesired. I would start from what looks correct outside, as well as the sun exposure right for your climate, and then build the floorpan inside that makes sense to your lifestyle. I agree with loobab about almost all of the bathroom issues. I would rather share a sink and have lots of storage and counter space. It would drive me crazy cleaning behind that tub with so little access. However, I like a separate toilet area, and definitely don't want to notice the toilet when I enter the master bath. You can set it up so that there isn't a door, or that you can leave the door open, as long as it is not obvious from the entry. That leads me to another point- when you enter the bathroom, you want to see something nice right in front of you so that you have a sense of entry. [Not a wall, as in plan 2.] In well-planned high-end bathrooms, you see something nice in front of you- perhaps a free standing tub with a window behind it (and with lots of room to clean around the tub). Or a beautiful vanity with a nice mirror and lighting. Or even a knock em dead shower (although that is harder/more expensive to make a nice focal point). Plan 2 has better symmetry and less wasted space overall, but still has some problems for me. Are you using an architect for this project?

Depending on the layout of the rest of the space I may use some of the mudroom for master space, could move the entrance to the master from the mudroom to the family room - there are a 1000 different ways to do this and if you are taking everything out, this is the time to make sure you have everything the way you need it to work for your family.