Behind the Design: The Big Impact of a Small Decision

There is not a single part of a design that exists on its own; every decision has a ripple effect. It’s a bit like changing one player in a hockey lineup. One substitution changes the chemistry and positioning between the players and will ultimately affect how they play.

In design, it can sound simple and easy enough to do on paper. Move a wall, add a window, extend the length of the island, or even raise the ceiling height, but each one of those decisions starts a chain reaction that influences many other things around it.

Sometimes it's obvious. You move a kitchen sink window to the left and you know that you need to move the plumbing to the left as well to keep it centered below the window.

Other times, it may not be so obvious or simple. One example I see often is raising the ceiling height (to 9’-0”, 10’-0”, 12’-0” etc). This is the perfect example of something that is super simple to change on paper, but suddenly you’re considering the new (larger) window and door proportions, cabinet heights, lighting placements, and trim details. You’ll even need to consider how efficiently your HVAC system will run and how the space’s acoustics will be affected. It's one small adjustment with surprisingly big impacts (and that’s not necessarily a bad thing!)

I recently posted a reel on Instagram talking about many of my clients’ biggest wish-list item is lots of natural light. What a lot of people don’t realize is that windows aren’t only for bringing daylight into the home. They also frame perfect views to the surroundings, they create balance on the exterior of the home (if planned for correctly), they affect furniture and millwork placement, and they affect how sunlight moves through your spaces from morning to evening depending on the orientation of the home.

A south-eastern facing room can feel perfectly warm and bright at 8am for your morning coffee and feel cool and dark by the time dinner rolls around.

After designing and/or building enough homes, these are the kinds of things you think about as second nature when a client requests x, y, z.

Then, there are certain interior decisions that make everyday life just a little easier. And I consider these with every single floor plan I design and/ or review for a client:

-          Sight lines. What are you looking at from various points throughout the house? I use this example often: if I can see the toilet in the powder room from the living room sofa or when you first walk into the foyer – it’s an immediate NO.

-          How is someone entering the home with arms full of grocery bags? How far do they need to travel before they can set them down?

-          Where will kids’ backpacks, dog leashes, sports equipment, or winter boots naturally end up?

-          Will there be enough room to comfortably pull chairs away from the dining table and have someone still walk around them?

-          Can two people simultaneously work in the kitchen and not be tripping over each other?

-          How will the kitchen to living room to dining room spaces flow when clients are entertaining large crowds during holidays?

This list could go on forever, but these are the major issues I see commonly when clients come to me with a plan they found online. And there’s nothing wrong with finding a floor plan online to use as inspiration! It may check a lot of boxes, but 99.9% of the time it needs to be re-worked.

All of this to say that this is one of the reasons that good design takes time. You're never making one choice in isolation. Every small adjustment has a large impact on the cohesiveness of the final design.

I’ve always said that creating a floor plan is a lot like solving a puzzle. You’re making sure all the pieces fit in their proper place to achieve a beautiful result. This is why I love creating floor plans for clients so much because I love solving problems. It challenges both the creative and technical sides of my brain.

Interior design is about asking questions, exploring possibilities, and slowly connecting all those “small decision” building blocks that work together to eventually shape a home into something that works for the people who live there for years to come.