Pathways are one of the most overlooked parts of a home, but they play a huge role in your daily routine as well as your home’s general functionality. Facilitating smooth transitions between rooms is particularly important in large homes with ample open floor plans. 

With this in mind, here’s how to design pathways to ensure easy movement throughout a large home:

Little Space Between Kitchen, Dining Room, and Living Room

Step one for facilitating seamless transitions is identifying your home’s high-traffic areas. When you come home, do you enter through the garage or the front door? Where do you go next? What about the rest of your family?

You need to design for the transition from the outside world to your home – sometimes this means an inviting foyer by the front door or a mud room connecting the garage to the house with space for backpacks, purses, as well as all the flotsam and jetsam we carry around with us. 

Then, you need to have a direct, natural progression to the next place you go – whether that’s to the kitchen, the home office, or to the bedroom(s)

When these spaces are connected, the home becomes a unified, social environment and the chair by the front door doesn’t become a junk drawer (if you know you know). 

Wide Pathways from Room to Room 

When pathways between rooms are too narrow, it creates a tense, cramped atmosphere that makes the home feel smaller. And we don’t just mean hallways between rooms – in open floor plans or expansive primary suites, we tend to use the same pathways from place to place. 

Narrow walkways – either within a room or between rooms – make the entire home feel less accessible, creating bottlenecks and giving everyone a cluttered feeling. 

For this reason, it’s recommended to ensure that there’s a natural pathway from (for example) the kitchen to the couch to the backyard and to the bedrooms. You should be able to cross from room to room without running into obstacles, on the phone, with room for someone to pass you going the other way.  

Clear Sightlines Between Rooms

Another way to simplify room to room movement is creating clear sightlines to high-traffic spaces. Clear lines of sight make the house feel more open, accessible, and connected. So, when choosing locations for new furniture and decor, make sure nothing is blocking someone’s view of your home’s central gathering spaces. 

Easy Transitions Between Lower and Upper Levels

If your home has multiple levels, getting from the lower level to the upper level should be as simple as possible. A common solution is placing a staircase near the front entranceway. This creates an easy, natural path to the upper level, which is particularly important if you’re traveling to a bedroom or bathroom. 

Upper levels are also typically reserved for other private spaces, like a home office. Creating a corridor along your upper level allows people to walk back and forth between essential private spaces without interfering with the rest of the family’s activities. 

Are you ready to give your home a massive boost in functionality and flow? If so, the Debowsky Design Group is happy to help. We can make sure your next design project supports an easy transition between your favorite spaces, so you can effortlessly move through your daily routine. Give us a call when you’re ready to design a home that speaks directly to your lifestyle – not someone else’s.