Guide

How much space do you actually need around a bed?914 mm each side is the working minimum. Here is where that number comes from, and what a real bedroom measured out at. Where the head of a bed can and cannot goThe head of a bed belongs against a solid wall. Three walls in an Indian house are not that, and each one has a cost. A room with one window is not a ventilated roomOpenings on two different faces is the rule. One window gives you light and nothing else, and the code agrees. The five bedroom placement mistakes that cost the most to fixBedrooms go wrong in the same five ways, and every one of them is decided in the first hour of planning. The wall that wakes you at 5amA bed head shared with a bathroom party wall is the single most common bedroom mistake in Indian plans, and it is invisible on the drawing. Measuring the kitchen work triangle in a real 2BHKEach leg 1,220 to 2,740 mm, total under 8,230. Here is the arithmetic on a real plan, and where a normal layout breaks it. Three kitchen corner mistakes you only notice after moving inCorners are 25 percent of a kitchen's cabinet run and the hardest part to use. Three errors, and what each one costs. Why your chimney extract is not workingEvery bend in an extract duct costs airflow. The fix is a layout decision, not a bigger chimney. The honest case against a fully open kitchenOpen kitchens trade cooking smoke for light. In an Indian kitchen that trade is usually a loss, and there is a middle option. Do a whole-house door pass before you buildDoors are the highest-leverage variable in a plan. Thirty minutes, every door, hinge side and swing, as one exercise. What you can see from the front doorThe view from the entry decides the whole privacy structure of a house. Five things that should never be in it. The height that makes a door handle comfortableHandles are set to a dimension, not a habit. The wrong height is felt every single day and costs nothing to correct on a drawing. Where a door goes, and what you see when it opensA door is placed twice: once for the swing, once for the view through it. Most plans only do the first. Group the bathrooms into one wet coreTwo bathrooms in one corner instead of two corners. Shorter drainage, fewer shafts, and a quieter bedroom wall. Every bathroom fixture, by the number760 in front of the pan, 914 short side of a shower, 914 to circulate. A bathroom below these is not a small bathroom, it is a broken one. A fan is not ventilationEvery wet room needs an external wall and its own high-level louvre. An extract fan moves air, it does not replace it. How much room a dining table really needsTable size is easy. The space around it is what people get wrong, and it is the part you cannot fix later. A bathroom your parents can actually useIf an elderly parent lives with you, three dimensions in the bathroom decide whether they keep their independence. The kitchen work triangle, measuredSink, hob and refrigerator form three legs. The lengths are what decide whether a kitchen works. Where the television goes, and where the seating goesThe viewing distance sets the room, not the furniture. Get the distance first and the layout follows. The living room dimensions that decide whether it worksSeating needs 750 mm behind it and 450 mm to walk past. Get those wrong and no sofa arrangement will save the room. Why living room lighting feels wrong, and the layered fixOne light on the ceiling lights the middle of a room and nothing else. Three layers fix it, and only one of them is the ceiling. The right size for a TV wall, in numbersScreen centre at 1.06 m, viewing distance at least 2.5 times the diagonal. Two numbers that fix a bad living room. Plinth height and where the water goesPlinth is not a style choice. It is the height that keeps the floor above the ground around it. How far a septic tank must be from a borewell18 m is the separation that matters, and on a small plot it decides where the whole house sits. Which way your house should face, and whyOrientation decides heat gain, daylight and where the wet rooms can go. It is free to get right and expensive to get wrong. What actually fits on a 30 × 40 plot1,200 sq ft of land. After setbacks you have about 600 to build on — and that is a good two-bedroom house, not a bad three. Every diner needs elbow room600 mm of table edge per person and 750 mm behind the chair. The table you can fit is decided by those two numbers. Why one window is not ventilationAir needs a way in and a way out. A single opening moves nothing, however large it is. How deep a wardrobe needs to be, and where it goes600 mm is the depth that takes a hanger. Anything less and the doors will not close on a coat. The 150 mm that costs a bedroom its doorA wardrobe is 600 mm deep. A door needs to swing past it. On a small plan those two facts fight, and the resolution is written on the drawing. Where storage actually goesStorage is not a room. It is the residual space in a plan, and it only exists if the plan was drawn with it in mind. What a concept sketch is for, and what it is notIt is a dimensioned brief for a professional, not a permit drawing. Knowing which one you are holding changes what you do next. Setbacks, and what your plot actually leaves youThe buildable envelope is your plot minus the setbacks. On a 30 x 40 plot that arithmetic decides everything else. How many bedrooms fit in your square footage?The honest numbers, and why a tool that never says no is not doing you a favour. A bathroom layout that works on a small plotThree fixtures, one door and a wet floor. The order they sit in is the whole design. Fitting a car into a small plotA car needs a bay and a turning path. On a 30 x 40 plot that decision takes floor area from the house, so make it deliberately. Why the plinth is 600 mm, and why it is not optionalThe plinth is the cheapest thing you will build and the most expensive one to get wrong. 600 mm above ground, with water falling away on every side. Which way should your house face, and does it matterFacing matters less than which wall you blank. At 11 degrees north, the west wall is the one that decides your afternoons. Where the rainwater goesA recharge pit beside the borewell, after a first-flush diverter. Without the diverter you are putting the roof into your water. Sizing your water tank from the people in the house135 litres per person per day is the standard. That number sizes the sump, the tank and the septic tank, all from one answer. The fall that makes drainage work100 mm pipe at 1:48, inspection chamber at the building edge. Get the fall right and the drains never need clearing. Building on a sloped plotA slope is a level problem. Where you put the level decides whether you build retaining walls or cut and fill for nothing. Six of ten doors in a set we drew were in the wrong placeA human had already reviewed them. The automatic check found six. This is what a checked drawing means. What the 34 checks actually measureNot a quality claim. A list of measurements taken off the drawing at build time, and what happens when one fails. Why a picture of a floor plan is not a floor planImage models draw walls that do not close and rooms with no door. That is not a limitation to work around, it is the wrong tool. When we say no with the numberFour bedrooms on 995 sq ft does not work at standard. Saying so, with the arithmetic, is more useful than quietly shrinking the rooms. What construction costs per square foot, and what the number hides1,600 to 4,500 rupees per square foot in 2026, depending on finish. The spread is the useful part, not the midpoint. Built area, carpet area, and which number you are being quotedThree different numbers are all called the area of your house, and the difference between them can be a fifth of the price. What an architect does that a concept sketch does notA checked sketch is the beginning of the conversation, not the end of the architect's job. Knowing which is which saves you money. Designing for the family you will have in ten yearsA house is built once and lived in for decades. Six questions about the future decide the plan more than any question about now. Your plot is north facing. Now whatA north facing plot is not a bad plot. It moves the shading, the entry and the kitchen, and it gives you the one face with no direct sun. The west wall is the one that costs you your eveningsSame sun angle as the east, entirely different result. What to do with a west facing plot that is worth more than any other single decision. Why the kitchen goes south-east, in climate rather than in ritualThe traditional corner and the climate answer agree here, and the reason is a duct that runs straight out. Where a pooja room works best, and whyNorth-east for light and no afternoon heat. Also two practical rules nobody mentions until the room is built. Never let a corridor end on a blank wallA dead end reads as waste whatever its measured area. Three cheap ways to terminate the view, and one that costs floor area. Making a small house feel bigger without adding areaSeven decisions that change how a house feels, none of which add a square foot to the footprint. Sockets and switches, decided before the walls go upConduit and back-boxes are built in as the walls rise. On an earth or lime wall they cannot be chased afterwards without damage. Lighting thumb rules that survive contact with a real roomFour numbers that decide whether a room is lit, and why the fixture you were going to buy is the last decision. The buffer zone: what to put between two roomsEvery plan has joints where two rooms of different kinds meet. What you put there decides whether the house is quiet. The floor plan mistakes that are expensive to fix laterTwelve of them, each with the number it costs. Most are decided in the first hour of a plan and discovered in the first week of living in it. How to read your own floor plan in twenty minutesA drawing is a set of measurements. Six passes over it, in order, and you will find what a professional would. If you might build an upper floor, the stair goes in nowA stair footprint is designed into the ground floor or it is carved out of it later. The second is what people actually do, and it is the worse outcome. When you actually need a retaining wallNot every change in level needs one, and building one that is not designed is worse than building none. Here is the distinction. A ventilation checklist for a plan you are about to approveEight items, each of which can be checked on the drawing in a minute. Six of them are decided by walls you have already drawn. Designing out the noise before you buildWhere a house sits on its plot is an acoustic decision, and it is free. Once the walls are up, it is expensive. How far daylight actually reaches into a roomA window lights roughly twice its height into a room, and then only if nothing is in the way. That arithmetic sizes rooms. Dead space or extra room: the residual space problemEvery plan has leftover area, usually at a corridor end or under a stair. It is either given a job on the drawing or it becomes a dumping ground. The utility area, and why it is not the kitchenWashing machines and wet work belong somewhere with drainage and ventilation of their own. Usually they are put in the kitchen and everyone lives with it. The entrance is a sequence, not a doorA threshold, then a place to stop, then the house. Three moves, all cheap on the drawing, and this is what visitors read first. How to write a brief an architect can actually useTwo pages, eleven answers and a drawing of the plot. It is the difference between paying for discovery and paying for design. Where traditional placement and climate give the same answerMostly they agree, and it is worth saying so. Where they do not, the disagreement is recorded rather than hidden. Municipal water or a borewell, and the arithmetic that decides itAn 18 m separation between the borewell and the septic tank does not fit on every plot. When it does not, that is the answer. Where the inspection chamber goes, and why thereThe building edge, at the point where the drain leaves it. One chamber in the right place saves a plumber's visit every year. The turning path nobody leaves room forA bay is a rectangle. Getting into it is a path, and that path is where most small plots go wrong. A first-time builder's checklist, in the order it mattersTwenty things, sequenced. Most of them cost nothing and all of them are cheaper before the first brick than after. Staircase types, and how much floor each one eatsA straight flight, an L, a U, or a spiral. The space difference between them is larger than the cost difference. What travels through a party wall, and what stops itSound moves through mass and through gaps. A 110 mm partition has neither. Here is what to put in the joint instead. Choosing exterior materials for a hot, humid climateFour wall systems, what each one does in monsoon and in summer, and what it changes about every dimension in the plan. Passive design at 11 degrees north, in six movesShade, cross-ventilate, blank the west, open the north, use the ground, and plant. Six moves, no machinery. Colour in a hot climate, and what it does to a roomColour changes how bright a wall is before it changes how a room feels. In a bright climate that order matters. Ceiling height, and what it buys youHeight is the cheapest comfort you can add and the most expensive one to add later. What it does for heat, for light and for a small room. Windows by the number: sill, head and where they goA sill height decides what the window does. At 900 mm it lights a room, at 300 it ventilates one, at 1,500 it does neither. The rug under the bed, by the numbersThere is an arithmetic to a rug that works, and it starts from the bed rather than from the room. The height to hang a picture, and why eye level is the wrong answerArt is hung relative to what is under it, not to the person looking at it. Three cases, three heights. Sink placement, and the plumbing that decides itA sink has a drainage requirement, a window relationship and a work-triangle position. Usually only one of the three gets considered. Built-in or free-standing: what the plan wantsBuilt-in storage uses the wall. Free-standing storage uses the floor and moves. On a small plot that difference is the whole argument. Where the sump, the tank and the borewell goFour things on your plot that must not be next to each other. The distances are code, and they decide the site plan. Damp at the base, and the four things that stop itDamp almost always enters low or from above. Both are solved on the drawing, not on site afterwards. Where greywater goes, and why not into the soak pitKitchen and bath water is not sewage, and mixing the two ruins the cheap part of your drainage. The first hour of a plan decides the next thirty yearsSix decisions taken in the first hour, none of which can be changed afterwards without moving a wall. A list of problems is not a houseA report tells you what is wrong. It does not put a wall anywhere. The gap between the two is where most plans fail. The gap between knowing and buildingAlmost everyone who builds a house knows more than they apply. The gap is rarely knowledge. It is that nobody carried the list into the drawing. Advice is cheap. Geometry is notAnybody will tell you to leave 914 mm. The work is placing a wall so that 914 mm exists, in a room that also has to hold a bed, a wardrobe and a door. Diagnosis and delivery are different jobsAudit tools are built to find problems. Finding problems was never the bottleneck. Carrying them into the work was. What you are actually buying when you buy a planA drawing, a set of measurements, and the reasoning behind each decision. Only one of those three is usually delivered. What actually happens while your plan is being drawnNo architect is consulted and none is claimed. Here is the real sequence, in the order the engine runs it, with the numbers it produces. The symbols on a floor plan, and the three that matterDoor swings, window lines and level marks. Most of a drawing is a schedule, and these three carry the meaning. How many bedrooms actually fit on your plotSetback, then envelope, then rooms at standard. The arithmetic in the order it is actually done, for five common plots. Bathroom placement: the practical rules firstWhere a bathroom can go is decided by drainage, an external wall and the wet core. Tradition has a preference; physics has a constraint. What to do with the roofThe roof is the largest surface you own and the one most often left blank. Four uses, and one of them is structural. Work out the budget before the plan, not afterA plan that cannot be built is not a plan. The buildable envelope comes from what you will spend, not the other way round. Can you build a house without an architectYou can plan one. You cannot get a permit without stamped drawings in every jurisdiction, and structure is not a place to save money. What to ask a contractor before you signSeven questions, and the two answers that tell you more than the rest put together.