The right starting point is your lifestyle. Picture four families on the same street. One has a teenager who lives for cricket on a Saturday and wants the back yard sorted around an outdoor entertaining area. Another runs a small business from home and needs a proper office, not a glorified cupboard. Another has Nan moving in, so a downstairs bedroom with an easy bathroom matters more than a third living area. Another loves the garden more than the inside of the house. Same suburb, same street, but four very different homes if you build them properly.
That's why I push every family I work with to do a brainstorm before we look at a single floor plan. Get everyone in the household around the table. Write down what they actually want from their day — not just rooms, but how they live. Where do you want morning sun? Where do the kids do homework? Where do you sit on a Sunday with a cuppa? In our climate up here — humid summers, the western afternoon sun that'll cook you if you let it — those answers shape everything. They tell us where the bedrooms should go, where to put the eaves, whether a verandah earns its keep.
Once we know how you want to live, the square metres and bedroom numbers fall out of the design naturally. They're an outcome, not the brief. That's the difference between a house and a custom new home that actually fits you.
If you're at the stage of dreaming about your lifestyle focused build in Sydney, come and have a chat. No pressure, no jargon — just a sensible conversation about what would actually work for your family. You'll find me at inh.com.au/sydneynorthshore.
