
How to Choose an Apartment Layout For a Comfortable Life
How to choose an apartment for a comfortable life? Most often, this question arises when choosing a home before buying.
An apartment is a serious purchase and probably one of the most expensive in our lives. Therefore, choosing a comfortable home should be approached responsibly. In addition to the area, infrastructure, location, ecology and other factors, at some point the question of planning the chosen apartment arises . If it is not difficult to compare the pros and cons of the location of the area and the distance from frequently visited places, difficulties may arise when you see two empty plans with walls.
What should you pay attention to in planning, how to understand which planning is suitable for you and which is not suitable for your goals? Universal advice cannot be dispensed with here, this issue is individual.
In this article, we will try to teach you how to compare apartment layouts before buying and how to facilitate this process and make the right choice. This article will be useful to those who carefully choose real estate, are in no rush to buy quickly, for whom the price of real estate is not the most important factor, but not the last either. For those who are looking for a price-quality balance in everything.
List of functions, agenda
Before choosing the area of the apartment and comparing the layout, it is necessary to determine the requirements for the premises. I often come across a situation when there are requirements for an apartment, but it is difficult for a person to explain why exactly such requirements are. Your wishes and requirements for an apartment should not be based on stereotypes and generally accepted rules, not on wishes “like your neighbor”, but on your own way of life, on how you will be comfortable. To do this, we recommend writing out the functions, actions and scenarios of using all zones in the apartment, the routine of your normal day.
What does it all mean?
Functions are actions. Try to list all the activities that occur regularly in your daily life. If you want to somehow change your lifestyle by moving into an apartment, then write down your ideal day.
A routine simplifies this task. Write your weekend and weekday at home. Write in as much detail as possible. Think of scenarios when guests come to you, what you do together, how it usually happens. You sit in the kitchen at the round table and chat, or you like to sit in the living room, maybe smoke a hookah in the lounge area. All these nuances are individual for everyone.
The trick is that after writing out all this in detail on a piece of paper, you will be able to more accurately imagine the dimensions and requirements for the zones and correctly prioritize the rooms, even if it is at the level of sensations. When you choose between plans, you will draw your daily routine on the plan in your head. This simplifies the process of choosing housing.
Compare BTI plans
The BTI plan is a passport to the apartment. The plan shows the boundaries of rooms and zones. When choosing an apartment, it is worth comparing these plans, we will explain why. Most often, developers and realtors use the expression “apartment with free planning”. Even if you don’t have partitions in your apartment, it doesn’t mean that you can do whatever you want in it.
The BTI plan shows the boundaries of the rooms. According to the rules of legislation, the borders of some zones cannot be violated. This means that the term “free planning” means at most no load-bearing walls, but does not allow you to do whatever you want. An exception to the rules can be apartments. Legally, this is not a residential premises, so the laws and rules of residential buildings no longer apply here.
What should you pay attention to on the BTI plan?
According to the law, it is not allowed to enlarge the kitchen at the expense of living rooms. But you can remove the partition between the kitchen and the living room. In fact, this means that you cannot move the kitchen to the place of the living room or bedroom, but you can move it to the corridor. Also, you cannot increase the kitchen at the expense of the bathroom and the bathroom at the expense of the kitchen remodeling.
Knowing these basic rules, you will be able to navigate the BTI plan faster and thereby understand the pros and cons of planning.
Bearing walls
Bearing walls can also be defined on the BTI plan. As a rule, load-bearing walls are thicker on the plan than partitions that can be demolished. Most often, load-bearing walls can seriously limit the possibilities of planning an apartment .
You can make a hole in the load-bearing walls, but it must be agreed. However, you should not count on 100% approval of such an opening, because it will be allowed only if the structure of the building is not violated by your decision. It is better to choose a layout in which there are no load-bearing walls, or they are reduced to a minimum.
Sometimes load-bearing walls can greatly limit the functionality of the apartment, sometimes not. We remember that we have a daily routine and requirements for premises according to functions and professional actions. Based on this, you can determine whether the load-bearing partition is interfering with you or not.
Location of personal and public areas
All zones and premises of the apartment can be divided into personal and public.
Public areas are a living room, kitchen, dining room, hallway, corridor, guest bathroom. These are areas that are intended for public use. Reception of guests, family gatherings, parties are most often held here.
Personal areas: bedroom, bathroom, dressing room, children’s room, office, etc.
These are the premises where an outsider cannot enter. These are the personal spaces of individual family members.
The location of zones is considered successful when public zones are closer to the entrance to the apartment, respectively, personal zones are further from the entrance. Especially if you often have guests, friends, relatives come, this division will be the most successful.
Location of windows and their sizes
It is customary to consider the number of rooms by the number of windows in the apartment, but this may not always be true. For example, the kitchen combined with the living room can be located far from the window. In one of our projects, we placed a bedroom in which light penetrated through the living room window and a glass partition.
It is worth paying attention to the size of the windows. The ideal option will be large panoramic windows. The more light penetrates into the apartment, the more possibilities the apartment has. The presence of light in the apartment affects your health, well-being, and mood. Therefore, the more light, the better.
But, again, we are all different and for some, having a lot of natural light is not a priority.
Most often, our customers ask for a bright space, because for a modern person and his rhythm of life, light is, as a rule, a very important topic.