If your home is going to house multiple generations of your family (not just you and your partner, but your children, perhaps their children, and one or both sets of your parents), finding the right floor plan for your home can be difficult.
How do you make sure that you have not just enough room for everyone, but that everyone also has the privacy that they need?
Multi-generational homes are more and more common these days, as families are pooling their money to be able to afford a home.
Here are some of the most popular floor plans for multi-generational families.
Studio over Garage
You can easily add room to your floor plan by maximizing the space over your garage. Most people simply have a one-story garage or use the extra space for storage.
But if you are trying to find space and provide privacy for your family, a studio suite over your garage could be the ideal option. This is the perfect location for parents (or just a mother or father), as well as a child returned home after university, or a young couple that are just getting on their feet.
If the family eventually picks up and moves away, it could also be used as a rental space, or for storage or hobbies.
Additional Suite on the First Floor
If you want a more private suite, it does not necessarily have to be disconnected from the rest of the home.
A portion of or even the entire first floor could be its own suite, with another suite upstairs or attached to this one.
Adding in a mother in law suite, with its own sitting room, outdoor access, and private bathroom could be a great way to maximize a small space and still give the generations in the home some privacy.
In this iteration, the family would still share the common areas and the kitchen, which you likely necessitate more storage and bigger spaces, but this is still a good option.
Second Floor Suite
A suite on the second floor, with a separate entrance has a wide variety of benefits.
Not only does it provide privacy and independence to the people or person living there, it also makes use of space that might otherwise be left empty.
If you do not want to install a separate entrance but do want an easy way for parents or grandparents to get to their suit on the second floor, an elevator might be an expensive, but necessary addition to the home.
Basement Apartment
If you have a basement, you have an opportunity to create an entirely separate suite (or even two, depending on the size of the basement), that is ideal for multigenerational living.
These spaces tend to be a little bit colder and damper, so it is necessary to provide the person living there with plenty of ventilation and their own heating and cooling system, but with the right layout and the right building expertise, you can totally transform an underground space into a private suite.
Multiple Master Bedrooms
If you don’t need as much privacy as a separate suite with its own entrance provides, you might, instead, want to add in extra master bedrooms with their own master bathrooms.
Because bathrooms are one of the hottest commodities in a large home with lots of family members, master bedrooms and their own en suite bathrooms are an ideal solution.