This is Day 100 of the Slow Home Project, and we need you to join us in our quest to evaluate the design quality of houses in nine North American cities in nine months. This week we are analyzing townhomes in Denver and today we are going to be doing an in detail review of the bedroom question on the Slow Home Test.
Today we are looking at bedroom design for our “In Detail” segment. As you will remember from the “Slow Home Test”, a bedroom is well designed if it has natural ventilation and light, well proportioned closets and the room itself is properly sized to fit a bed. Sadly, there are too many houses that are built without these basic bedroom design fundamentals.
Let’s look at some good and bad examples of bedroom design in townhouses from the Denver area. To guide this discussion, we will be looking at the issues of size, shape, proportion and closets.
This is an example of a bad bedroom design as the townhouse is really too narrow to accommodate two bedrooms side by side. The 45 degree angles to get access to these rooms reduces the effective size of the bedrooms even more. A good rule of thumb is that a bedroom needs to be a minimum of 10 feet in any direction.
This is an example of two well designed bedrooms in a townhouse with one larger and one smaller bedroom sitting front and back.
This is an example of badly designed bedrooms that are irregular in shape and would be difficult to furnish.
This is an example of a badly designed bedroom with a 45 degree angle which disrupts furniture placement and circulation to the ensuite.
This is also a badly designed master bedroom with too many focal points. Notice how almost every wall has a feature like the fireplace, a window or
door. How would the furniture be placed in this room?
This is an example of a bedroom with good proportion. Notice how there is a good distance from the door into the bedroom to the bed.
This is an example of bad proportion in a bedroom. As you can see, there is
hardly any space from the door to the bed and the room is too wide.
These are examples of poorly designed closets. These closets bump into the room and take up valuable floor space as well as disrupt circulation.
This is an example of a “classic” and good way to design closets. They are embedded into the wall and also provide a degree of sound separation between the two rooms.
We want to hear what you think is important about bedroom design in a town house. Post your comments and let’s have a discussion.
Join us tomorrow when we will be doing our Friday wrap-up on townhomes, discussing the design projects and announcing the Slow Homer of the Week!
