Whether you’re building a custom, semi-custom, or production-built house, the kitchen is likely to get the lion’s share of your attention. And for obvious reasons—you have to make more decisions about the kitchen than you do for any other room. But every room, including the garage, deserves a close look. If the garage is too narrow to get both your cars in or too short for your Suburban, you’ll be unhappy even if the kitchen is fabulous.
Attention is especially important for rooms that you may not have in your present house, such as a home office. Just because an office or den/study has been included on a floor plan or is in the furnished model doesn’t mean it’s workable for you. Most floor plans are geared to that elusive “average family,” but every family is different. In some instances, minor modifications such as moving a window or a door will make a room more functional. But in others, especially a home office, you may find that another room is a better fit than the builder’s designated spot. A spa-sized master bathroom can be a real kick, especially if the one you have now is the size of a closet. But you’ll be frustrated if there isn’t a place to put your toiletries or enough counterspace to go with that double sink.
As with planning the kitchen, the more precisely you can nail down exactly how you would use each space and act this out in the builder’s model, the more accurately you can assess how well the space will work for you. Make a list of what you like and hate about each room in your present house. If you have unusually large or oddly shaped pieces of furniture, measure them and take the dimensions with you when you visit models.
thefamilyroom
This is the modern version of the Victorian era’s back parlor—the inner sanctum where family members congregate. In the old days, the family gathered around the fireplace, but today they’re more likely to gather around the television. Unfortunately, many builders and floor plans still follow the Victorian model and put the fireplace front stage center—when you look at the family room in most models, the fireplace is the focal point and the television is nowhere in sight.
Since you will put one there if you buy the house, try to see how you would fit it in. More than likely, you’ll find that the only way to get a comfortable furniture arrangement is to move the fireplace to the side or a corner, and make the television the focal point. Easing such a potent symbol off to the side may seem unnatural—after all, every homeowner sums up his dream with the phrase “hearth and home,” and no one ever says “television and home.” But the truth is that you look at the fireplace only when there’s a fire going, and even then only from time to time. A fireplace has a comforting presence, but it can be anywhere in the room. On the other hand, you do watch the television, so making the television the starting point in planning the family room and organizing the seating is more sensible. Moving the fireplace is not that difficult structurally, because many builders now use a direct-vent gas fireplace that does not have a chimney; it vents directly outside through the wall.
When the fireplace and television are in some proximity to each other and even on the same wall, the furniture placement is easier. Many production-builders already do this, but often in a way that is still problematic—they put a viewing niche for the television above the fireplace. This looks good, but in a small room you will be craning your neck to see the television and you may feel like you’re in the front row at a movie theater.
A better alternative is to move the television to one side of the fireplace, and to put it in a cabinet with a swivel base and pocket doors. The television will be closer to eye level, so you’ll be much more comfortable when you are watching; when you aren’t, it will be neatly out of sight. Another plus to this arrangement is you can get additional cabinetry for a handy place to put the rest of your entertainment paraphernalia—a VCR and video tapes, a CD player and CDs, a turntable and all those old record albums you can’t bear to get rid of.
Televisions and fireplaces are not the only points of contention in planning a family room. There’s also the view outside: When you incorporate it into the room, you will not only enjoy the space more, but also feel you are in a bigger space. The view to the backyard will be obstructed, however, if the fireplace or a built-in entertainment center are centered on the rear wall. You may also have a view to the side of your house. In either case, you don’t want to cover it up, so move the fireplace and television to another wall in the room.
While the television should be an important factor in the planning of your family room, it’s only one of many activities that occur there. In most floor plans, the family room shares the same space with an adjacent eat-in kitchen. How well a family room works for you can also depend on how these functions are merged together as well as the makeup of your household. For example, if you have young children who must be constantly supervised, you need an arrangement that allows you to keep a watchful eye while you’re fixing meals. You also need this area to be a “contained space” that can be closed off from the rest of the house. If a house has a very open plan with all the main living areas opening onto one another, supervising very young children becomes a very daunting task.
Conflicting activities in the family room can be a problem when children reach school age. They still want to be in the bosom of the family, but they now have homework and need quiet to concentrate. If another family member wants to watch television while they’re struggling with algebra at the breakfast table, no one is happy. A floor plan with a den/study adjacent to both the kitchen and the family room—not uncommon in many production-built houses today—will solve this problem. With French doors for the den/study, the child doing homework will still be connected visually to the rest of the household, but will have the quiet needed to concentrate.
When children become teenagers, their needs change again. They don’t want to be in the bosom of the family, but most parents want them to stay in the family orbit rather than sequestering themselves somewhere else in the house. This is more likely to happen if the kitchen–family room is separate from the rest of the first floor, so that the teenagers can “have their own space” without retreating to their bedrooms. On the other hand, a very open floor plan with all the living spaces opening onto each other will not accommodate their need for privacy.
When the teenagers have taken over the family room, you’ll need some space for yourself. One solution is to convert the potentially under-utilized living room into an adult refuge where you can watch television or read quietly while your teenagers hold forth in the family room.
thehomeoffice
If you plan to work at home in the evenings and occasionally on the weekend, your home-office needs are modest. You’ll have many choices for a place to hunker over your laptop: the rarely used dining-room table, a corner of your bedroom, or even the builder’s designated den/study, to name a few. But if you plan to make a home office your primary work space, be prepared to set up shop in a second-floor bedroom or the basement, because the builder’s den/study most likely won’t be big enough.
The den/study will certainly be bigger than the cubicle you have at corporate headquarters. But to meet your needs at home, it has to be a lot bigger. First, there’s your office furniture. If you spread out papers or drawings while you work, a desk or a computer work station won’t be enough. You’ll also need a table or counter. And you’ll have those other essential items that were “just down the hall”—a fax machine, a copier, file cabinets and bookcases with reference materials. Some of the file cabinets can go in a basement or a garage, and some of the reference materials you need may be available on CD-ROM, but you’ll still need to allow for some storage. Your equipment won’t take up too much floor area if you get a combination printer-fax-copier.
You’ll also need some breathing room. “Only a cave dweller could be happy in a room that’s less than ten by ten feet. And to feel really comfortable, most people need a space that’s at least twelve by twelve feet,” explained architect Ivar Viehe-Naess of Washington, D.C., who specializes in commercial interiors and office design.
Noise may also be an issue with the builder’s den/study, even if the size works. The favored location in many floor plans is next to the family room, usually the busiest and noisiest room in the house. This is fine for children doing homework, but most adults find the hubbub distracting.
If you can’t decamp to a quieter room, you can reduce the noise significantly by installing a solid-core door (most builders install hollow-core ones) and batt insulation in the walls and ceiling (which is the same material that is put in exterior walls to reduce heat loss in winter). Some manufacturers now make an “acoustical batt insulation” specifically for sound-deadening purposes.
If these modifications do not eliminate the irritating noises, you can get a white-noise machine that masks them. Even if you’ve solved the noise problem, you may still want the white-noise machine to provide innocuous background sound, because most people find that an office space that is too quiet is also uncomfortable (for more on this, see Chapter 14).
Then there’s the daylight issue. Most people want plenty of daylight in their home office, especially if they worked in a windowless office; and no one wants to shut out the view. But too much daylight can be a problem if you work with a computer, because daylight can be five times as bright as the monitor screen, observed architect Murray Milne of Los Angeles, whose home office overlooks the Pacific Ocean. His suggestion: Purchase drapes or blinds. If the room exposure is southern, you can use horizontal blinds. If it’s eastern or western, you’ll need vertical blinds that you can adjust as the sun moves across the sky.
Since home-office workers will inevitably become more technically sophisticated in the future, you should install multiple phone lines and high-speed Internet access in your home office for their resale value, if not for your own use (for more on this, see Chapter 14).
When you are down to selecting furniture, flooring, and paint, some interior designers suggest that you strongly differentiate these from the style and color scheme in the rest of your house. A home office offers endless opportunities for diversion and procrastination. Changing the look and the style helps to underscore the idea that it’s a room for serious endeavors, not paper-clip basketball.
bathrooms
Over the last twenty-five years, no room has changed more than the master bathroom. Not only has it ballooned in size, appurtenances have been added as well. The separate stall shower, large soaking tub, double sinks, and vanities that once were found only in high-end houses have become the norm for nearly all price ranges.
All this razzle-dazzle, however, tends to distract most people from any functional considerations beyond the basic idea of a bathroom as a place for personal hygiene. The large soaking tub inevitably commands the most attention, but the sink area is where design and detailing make a telling difference. Before you buy the house or approve a floor plan, give it a careful look.
In many households, both people who use the master bath get ready for work at the same time, so the second sink does have practical value. But to be really useful, each sink needs some adjacent counterspace and a place to put, for example, the mousse, hair drier, and comb and brush when fixing your hair. Since a second sink provides only so much utility, a single sink with sizable his-and-her counters to either side is more useful if the total counter length is less than sixty-eight inches. This arrangement will also provide each person with a set of drawers for storing all those products and appliances when not in use.
Besides the drawer storage, a medicine cabinet for makeup and medicine bottles is a must. Otherwise, you have to burrow through the drawers to find the small items. Many home builders provide either the medicine cabinet or the drawers; you should insist on both.
If you’re honest enough to admit at the outset that you’re a shower taker who will never use the soaking tub, and want to put those option dollars somewhere else, how about a big, jazzy shower with two showerheads and dual controls? Or a single, large, six-to-ten-inch-diameter shower head that produces much more water? Or you can re-create the sensation of being in a car wash with multiple body sprays.
Certified bathroom designer Carolyn Thomas of Bethesda, Maryland, often gets such requests from clients who are eager to convert the large soaking tub or a standard-sized bathtub into something they will use and enjoy every day. With the body sprays, Thomas usually installs two sets of three sprays each. Each set has its own controls and, if desired, variable sprays. When installed, each set should be positioned according to the height of the user, with the highest spray head directed at the top of the shoulder, and the middle and lower ones at the user’s mid- and lower-back regions. If two people use the shower and they are not of similar height, adjustable sprays are required. Thomas has found that these showers appeal to men more than women.
The size of the pipes supplying the water to your jazzed-up shower will have to be increased from the standard one-half-inch size to at least a ¾-inch or even larger, depending on the size and number of fixtures that you want. Also, with all that water, the size of the drain may need to be larger. Before you buy the fixtures, have your plumber check the output of each fixture and the local codes on the drain sizes. The maximum size mandated by some jurisdictions may be insufficient to drain the water output of all these fixtures. If the drain is too small, you’ll be standing ankle deep in water every time you turn all the fixtures on full blast.
For the truly self-indulgent with an extra twenty-five hundred to forty-five hundred dollars to spend, the shower can also have a steam-bath feature. The shower must be completely enclosed, with walls going up to the ceiling and a hinged door with a transom overhead. The boiler unit that generates the steam can be housed in an adjacent space, even another room or in an insulated attic. To get enough steam for a steam bath usually takes about fifteen to twenty minutes, but many units are programmable and can be preset so that the steam bath is ready to go when you get home from a stressful day at work.
The steam itself comes out of a small cylindrical pipe that is plated to coordinate with the other shower fixtures. The temperature of the steam bath ranges from 100 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The units have automatic turn-off timers that can be set anywhere from five to thirty minutes. If you opt for the steam bath, a seat is a must, because standing up in steam for any period of time is uncomfortable.
To get all these features, the shower must be at least three by four feet, but four by five feet is optimal, Thomas said. When showers get larger, different possibilities arise for enclosing them, the most intriguing of which is glass block: The translucent material makes the shower area much brighter and more pleasant. A glass-block wall can also be curved to create an enclosure and eliminate the need for a door or shower curtain. If you like the look of block, Thomas suggests you checkout the European styles as well as the American ones. The glass-block enclosure is more expensive, but once installed less maintenance is required. Since the shower area is bigger, the glass block hardly gets wet, and there are no droplets to clean off.
Then there is the sink height. Despite increasing public awareness of ergonomics, most home builders still install bathroom sinks that are thirty-one inches high, which is awkward for most adults. A thirty-six-inch height, which is standard for kitchen counters, is more comfortable because you don’t have to lean over so far; higher counter height in the bathroom also increases the storage area below. Since most cabinet manufacturers now make a thirty-six-inch-high vanity, your builder can very likely get one as an optional upgrade. If you’re over six feet tall, you should not only consider getting the thirty-six-inch-high vanity, but also raising it another six inches.
Separate vanities on opposite sides of the room can be an added plus when neatness between spouses is an issue. The source of irritation is usually the sink area, and separate vanities will defuse it. If this isn’t possible, raising one vanity and sink to a thirty-six-inch height will clearly demarcate his and hers.
Lighting can also be an issue in the sink area. The easiest, cheapest solution is a ceiling-mounted fixture above the sink. To make this look more upscale, many production builders put a recessed fixture above the sink. But overhead lighting is uneven and creates shadows, making it nearly impossible to put on makeup. If you wear it, a row of strip lighting above the mirror is essential.
Another place where the details make a difference is the shower The separate stall shower is certainly convenient, but make sure that’s it’s big enough to eliminate the showering-in-a-phone-booth sensation. Thirty-two by thirty-two inches is a minimal dimension; forty-two by thirty-four inches will be more comfortable. You also need a place to put soap, shampoo, and conditioner. A twelve-by-twelve-inch niche in the wall of the shower should be adequate. This may sound excessively large, but in many households spouses use different products.
Though the niche will likely be an extra, it can easily be added when the shower walls are framed in, and the niche can be finished with the same ceramic tiles used to cover the shower walls. Another shower convenience is a built-in seat, also covered with ceramic tiles. This can be a handy place to rest your foot while washing it or, for women, shaving your legs.
If you get a stacked washer and dryer to free up floor area and get a laundry tub, you will have to get a front-loading washer to get a full-sized one. Ten years ago, a front-loading washer was a pain in the neck, but modifications have made them much more user-friendly. For example, if you start the cycle and find a sock on the floor, you can open the door of the machine and toss it in without water pouring out. Other pluses with the front loaders: The agitating action of the machine is less wearing on clothes than the agitation in top loaders, so your clothes may last longer. With no central agitator taking up space, the washing drum can hold more clothes. This means fewer loads per week to get the household laundry done. During the spin cycle, the front loader removes more water, so the clothes require less time in the dryer. The front-loading washers are also more environmentally benign and energy efficient. They use less water and, in most cases, less heated water, thus less energy.
Technological developments in recent years have also produced more energy-efficient and user-friendly top-loaders. For example, some of the new top-loaders have no central agitator, so they can hold more clothes. Some include a sensor that matches the amount of water to the amount of wash.
Whether loaded from the top or front, the high-efficiency washers use up to 50 percent less energy and up to one-third less water than conventional washers, explained Howard Newman of the Consortium for Energy Efficiency (CEE) in Boston, which has been promoting high-efficiency washers and rating them since 1993. The most efficient model on the CEE qualifying list is actually a top-loader made by Fisher & Paykel, a New Zealand manufacturer.
U.S. Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency’s jointly sponsored Energy Star Program also rates washers. The ones that carry the Energy Star endorsement use one-third less water and up to two-thirds less hot water than standard machines. Many Energy Star washers also have a high-speed spin cycle that removes more water, saving up to 25 percent of the energy required to dry them in a dryer as well as shortening the time to air-dry them. (See Resources for more information on washers.)
The changes in dryer design over the last ten years have not been as dramatic as those in washers. The biggest difference is moisture sensors, which prevent the dryer from over-drying clothes, potentially shrinking or excessively wrinkling them.
The installation of the dryer vent is critical. You need to make sure that it’s properly vented to the outside, and the shorter the length of the vent, the better, explained Alex Wilson, executive editor of Environmental Building News.
If the dryer is located in the center of the house, the vent should be made of smooth metal, rather than flexible vinyl or flexible metal, because the longer the venting duct, the more likely lint will collect if it’s not smooth. Even with smooth sides, lint can still clog the vent, and Wilson advised homeowners to clean it out periodically by sticking a vacuum cleaner hose down it.
During the construction of your house, make sure that the dryer vent really does go to the outside. If it is vented into a crawl space underneath your house or, as occasionally happens, into a wall cavity by mistake, you will eventually get mold problems (for more on this, see Chapter 14).
The clear-glass shower stalls shown in models always look terrific, but the glass spots easily and looks grimy if you don’t wipe it off quickly after each use. A less expensive, translucent type of obscure glass is not as attractive, but requires less maintenance.
The soaking tub with whirlpool jets adds the quintessential Hollywood touch. But once the novelty has worn off, most people use these tubs only a few times a year. You should think twice about the whirlpool jet upgrade, which can cost two thousand dollars or more. If you’re troubled by resale issues, leave a cavity for the motor so that future owners can install the jets if they wish. With some builders, the larger soaking tub itself is a “garden-bath upgrade,” and the standard master bath has a standard-sized tub. You should pass on this upgrade as well, unless there is also some other benefit such as a bigger bathroom or the inclusion of a sizable linen closet or a second vanity. If the size of the bathroom will remain the same, the bigger soaking tub could eliminate a linen closet, which would be more useful in the long run.
Some builders offer a large soaking tub made of fiberglass; once the shiny surface material wears off, the tub acquires a dull gray color. Acrylic tubs hold up well and will look fine for many years, though they scratch easily and should not, for example, be used to wash a dog;
The large window that most builders routinely put next to the large soaking tub looks great in the model, but privacy will be an issue once you move in. The simplest solution is to install a window shade that pulls up from the bottom. A classier but more expensive solution is to install translucent glass or acrylic block in the window frame itself instead of standard window glass. A number of manufacturers now make windows with acrylic block that are specifically intended for master bathrooms.
If you have small children, giving them a bath in the larger soaking tub will probably be easier than doing this in a smaller hall bathtub; it will also be more fun. But be forewarned: Once other family members start using the capacious master bathroom, they’ll never want to go back to the other one. You may find yourself in the same situation you face in your current house—five people using one bathroom, just one that’s bigger.
thelaundryroom
Without a doubt, the laundry is the Rodney Dangerfield room of most floor plans. Tucked into a leftover corner, it is almost never big enough to accommodate its designated function. This chore is not just a matter of tossing clothes into a washer and dryer. You need enough floor area to sort out loads, and a place to hang wet clothes that can’t go into the dryer. If your household includes a teenaged daughter who frets that the dryer will shrink or otherwise damage everything, there will be a lot of wet clothes to air-dry. A flat surface, such as a table, that can be used when folding clean clothes is also handy.
An inadequate laundry room is not just a minor inconvenience; it’s a major one in a household of any size, because laundry is not a once-a-week task. It’s an ongoing one that may be done every day if there are small children or newborns. When the laundry room has been reduced to an oversized closet off a kitchen or in an upstairs hallway, loads of wash will be underfoot constantly, and there’s no place to hang wet clothes.
Another laundry room gripe is its location. Most of the dirty clothes, towels, and bed linens are generated in the bedroom areas. When the laundry is one or two floors below, you’ll be making a lot of extra trips up and down stairs hauling loads of wash. The inconvenience may be worth it, however, if it allows a sizable laundry room or one next to the kitchen so you can do the wash while preparing meals.
There’s also the matter of a laundry tub, which many builders do not provide. Not only is this convenient for dumping dirty wash water when washing floors, it’s also a place to work on stained garments and baby clothes before putting them into the washing machine, and to hand-wash delicate items that can’t go into the washer. If the washer and dryer must go into a closet, get a stacked set so you can still have the laundry tub.
thegarage
In theory, a garage is a place to keep your car. In fact, it’s the modern version of Fibber McGee’s closet—a big room that’s filled to the rafters with all the stuff that you can’t put somewhere else, plus recycling bins, garbage cans, sports equipment, bicycles, a lawn mower, gardening equipment, and, if there’s any room left, your cars. Since a move provides a great opportunity to prune belongings and reduce inventory, by the time you move into your new house you may have pared down your garage contents to the essentials. But even that will be more than just a couple of cars.
When you scope out a production builder’s furnished model, it is nearly always impossible to tell if the garage will accommodate either your present or your anticipated trimmed-down requirements, because the builder has converted the garage into a temporary sales office.
You should ask for the dimensions of the garage and then look at one in a nearly completed house. To accommodate a modest assortment—the cars plus the garbage cans, recycling bins, and maybe a bike or two—the garage must be at least nineteen feet wide and twenty-one feet long, or four hundred square feet. If you want to be able to open a car door and not hit the other car, and get your lawn and gardening equipment in, the garage needs to be wider, longer, and bigger: twenty-four feet wide by twenty-four feet long, or six hundred square feet. Since most production-built houses tend to have garages that are narrower than twenty-four feet, ask if you can “test park” your cars when you go to look at the garage in another house.
Other garage dimensions will be important if one of your vehicles is unusually high or long. For example, if you own a Ford Expedition, clearance when the garage door is open must be at least seven feet; otherwise you will hit it when you try to drive in. If you own a Chevy Suburban, the garage must be at least twenty-three feet long, just to accommodate the car.
And then there’s the issue of how the garage is attached to the house. This connection will invariably be awkward, whether the garage is at the front, back, or side, and whether the house is production-built or custom-designed for you by an architect. All owners want to go directly from their car into their house to avoid any contact with the elements. The invariable result is that owners are funneled into the kitchen through the laundry room. The actual entry foyer in the front of the house, whether modest or voluminous, is rarely used.
Finding the aesthetics of this arrangement distasteful as well as impractical—there’s no place to put anything in a laundry room—architect Randy Creaser of Gaithersburg, Maryland, adds a “garage foyer” whenever possible. He includes a countertop to drop a briefcase and sort mail, and a closet. If the space is large enough, he designs a row of large cubbies for family members to put backpacks, coats, and sports equipment.
Perhaps one reason that the garage confounds designers is that unlike other rooms that have been added to houses over the last hundred years, it didn’t grow out of another function. As another architect, Sami Kirkdil of Bethesda, Maryland, put it, “All the images of old houses we know and love, there is no car.”
At the turn of the century, when the rambling Victorian, colonial, and Tudor houses that we cherish today were built, car ownership was unusual. The few households that owned one kept it in a separate storage shed behind the house, and brought it out only for special occasions, said architect Barry Berkus of Santa Barbara, California, who has studied the history of car storage in American houses. In the following decades, car ownership became more common, but most households still owned only one car. Two-car households and two-car garages became the norm, and gardening and sports burgeoned, only in the late sixties and seventies. Today, as buyers press for three- and four-car garages, Berkus and many others observe that the car and the garage “seem to be possessing the house.”
The perfect garage solution remains elusive. But given the ingenuity of architects and builders to bend historical forms to current functional needs or to design something entirely new, this dilemma will eventually be solved.
Architect and author Sarah Susanka, who is known for designing wonderfully livable houses, has spent many hours helping clients sort out the television-fireplace dilemma in the family room, a debate that often becomes contentious. “The husband and wife will argue about what’s more important, the television, the fireplace, or the view. The husband usually wants a big-screen television, the wife doesn’t watch television much and wants a view. Both want the fireplace, but they’re not sure where to put it.”
You can keep everybody happy, Susanka says, by housing the television in a cabinet with pocket doors, so that it can be out of sight when not in use. How about the VCR, CD player, video tapes, and so forth? The simplest solution is to build in a bank of cabinets to hold everything. This can start to sound pricey, but certified kitchen designer Debby Saling of Beltville, Maryland, says that creatively combining kitchen cabinets can make this surprisingly affordable. With a more expensive semi-custom cabinet line, you can get a base cabinet specifically designed for a television, with folding pocket doors and a swivel base, and additional base cabinets with customized roll-out trays to hold everything else.
If your budget or your builder limit you to a stock cabinet line, you may still be able to get cabinets with these features because the major stock cabinet makers, including Merrilat, are starting to offer them. Should your builder use a stock cabinet line that doesn’t yet include any entertainment-center features, Saling says you can combine stock base cabinets with open shelving above for the television, books, photographs, plants, and anything else you might want to display. The CDs, VCR, and other less sightly items can be stored in the base cabinets, but you will have to modify them yourself. The builder’s cabinet distributor should have a kitchen designer on staff who can help you figure this out.
If the television ends up on a wall with windows, you may have glare problems if you watch it during the day, because the light coming in will be brighter than the screen. Even when the television is on a wall with no windows, you can still have glare problems if the windows on an adjacent wall face south (this will bother you all day), east (glare will be a problem in the morning), or west (glare will be a problem in the afternoon). The only solution is to install shades or curtains.
Another family-room television issue is the size of the television. The twenty-seven-inch television will work well, but if you’re like many people building a new house, you’re flirting with the idea of a super-sized forty-five- or fifty-inch television.
But a super-sized television requires a large viewing space. As a general rule of thumb, you need to sit back a distance at least twice the diagonal dimension of the television screen. If the screen is fifty inches, you need to sit back at least a hundred inches, or about eight and a half feet. But consultant David Wogsland of Pelen, Minnesota, cautions that this distance will only be comfortable if you want to feel like you’re very close to the screen in a theater. If you’re more of a spectator type who sits farther back in theaters, you may want to sit ten to twelve feet from your giant television.
If you conclude that you have the space in your family room to accommodate the large-screen television, Wogsland suggests getting a surround-sound speaker system installed when your house is built. But, he noted, this will not work well in every space. If the ceiling of your family room is two stories high, for example, the surround sound will not deliver the best audial quality. (You should also note that a large-screen television can look ridiculous next to a normal-sized fireplace. If you want the two in close proximity, you should explore the possibility of housing the big television in a cabinet with pocket doors that will camouflage its bulk when not in use.)
Certain exposures can also effect your enjoyment of a large screen, Wogsland noted. When a family room has many south-facing windows, the daylight level will be too high to see the big screen well, and window treatments will be necessary. To see the large screen easily, the ambient light needs to be lower than it does with a smaller television, just as the light level must be very low in a movie theater to see the screen well. If the family room of your new house will have a high ceiling and lots of glass and sunlight, Wogsland suggested moving the television and sound system to another room. His favorite spot is the basement, away from the general hubbub of family activities, where sunlight is not a problem.
The kitchen is another favored spot for television viewing. If you want to watch it while you prepare a meal, you’ll be listening more than you’ll be watching, so you don’t need a very large screen. Susanka’s solution is a tiny television with a five-by-five-inch screen that is hung under a wall cabinet with a rotating bracket. Just make sure that you have wall and cable outlets close to where you want to mount the television.
Many households watch television in the kitchen while eating a meal as well as while preparing one. In this case, Susanka recommends a larger screen—about nineteen inches—and she likes to put it on a pull-out swivel base in a cabinet with pocket doors above a double oven. With this arrangement, the television can be watched from different places in the room and hidden behind cabinet doors when not in use.
A television in the bathroom is another common request. Most people want to be able to see it from a large soaking tub, but this can be tricky because most building codes require that the television be at least five feet from the tub. When the wall at one end of the tub is next to a closet, Wogsland has installed a television on a shelf in the closet behind one-way mirror glass. He made small holes in the glass to let the sound pass through, and the homeowner operates it in the bathroom with a remote. When the set is on, you can see it through the glass; when it’s off, you see just mirror.
Some bathtub viewing calls for ingenious solutions. In some cases, the only way to make this possible is to place the set so that it is reflected in a mirror that can be seen from the tub. Just make sure that you have a good technician who can reverse the scan on a television so that you can read the words on the screen. Otherwise the printing will appear in reverse.