Many people start tackling projects on their wish list without thinking much about the future, resulting in homes that don’t meet their family’s needs, lack any cohesive look, and cost more over the long term. As the old saying goes, if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. A better approach is creating a long-term plan, or master plan as it is called in the construction industry, that encompasses work you are doing now but also looks ahead to your future needs and wishes. Here are some common considerations to help you start your master planning process.

Benefits of Master Planning
Master planning is essential for projects that are being built in stages due to financial constraints. It allows for additional stages to be completed cost-effectively with as little disruption as possible.

People’s circumstance change over time and never is this truer than in the case of a young family. A home design that suits younger children is often less than ideal as they enter their teenage years. Master planning can cater to these different needs, making the home adaptable to the changing requirements of those that live within its walls. As a result of this, master planning can save significant amounts of money by factoring in now the changes that are most likely going to be required in the future.

Master planning also results in a more organized and comfortable home that suits your lifestyle needs, both short-term and long-term. And most importantly of all, developing a master plan allows you to enjoy living in your home longer, assured that it is pre-planned to always serve your needs as your lifestyle changes over the years.

The Master Planning Process
If you’re working with an architect, you’ll want a master plan drawn out capturing your now and future needs. This is typically a drawing or drawings that look comprehensively at the “big picture”, focusing on the relationships between the parts of the whole rather than the details. In this sense “master plan” refers to the entire house and site, rather than any single space. Rather than dealing with cosmetic upgrades to fixtures and finishes, a master plan helps you keep the big picture in mind, so you create a house that’s cohesive and comprehensive rather than a hodge-podge reflecting various, non-integrated building cycles. A master plan is therefore essential if you intend to move things around and make changes to your floor plan, over time.

Prioritize Your Improvements
You recognize that several areas of your home need improving, but also that its impractical to do all these various projects all at once. Where to begin? Use your master plan to map the possibilities and assess your priorities. A master plan can be used as the source to quantify the costs associated with different project areas in your home, allowing you to proceed from a well-informed picture of your overall budget. Maybe you prioritize the new master bedroom project, putting the kitchen remodel on the back burner. Or the kitchen first, and the master bedroom will have to wait. Either way, having a roadmap of the big picture means that everything will work efficiently and inan organized fashion from the get-go.

Achieving Flow
If you intend to invest significant resources in a particular area of your house, looking at the comprehensive context will help ensure that the new space flows in an integrated fashion with your existing spaces, both functionally and stylistically. “Flow”, in terms of space planning, means having clearly defined and organized circulation paths. This, together with appropriate spatial relationships between the volumes, are the keys to successful planning.

“Flow” can also refer to stylistic considerations i.e. whether you want parts of your house to feel traditional or contemporary, or to consistently embody a particular architectural style. Some prefer to carry one style throughout, others to introduce an entirely different aesthetic to a remodeled area or addition. For example, a modern makeover can certainly work with an older home, but it will be most successful when it is thoroughly and thoughtfully integrated as one part to the overall whole.

Plan for Your Site
If your master plan includes a horizontal expansion at some point in the future, plan for your home’s increased footprint. It’s counterproductive to invest in an extensive landscaping program in one area of your yard only to tear it out after a few years to make room for a bump-out addition or backyard ADU.

A comprehensive master plan will also give consideration to exterior aspects including views, solar orientation, grading, and landscape features. Keeping an eye on the big picture isn’t about considering your home as a stand-alone object but, instead, thinking about your entire site as a whole. How does the site constrain or enhance the features you value in your remodel? Maybe you’re planning a future detached ADU but also considering a lap pool as well. Looking at your entire site holistically means determining the layout that anticipates future possibilities comprehensively.

Avoid a Costly Addition
You think you need that extra square footage that only an addition can provide, but have you really explored every option for using the space you already have? Sometimes it takes looking at the problem from 30,000 feet to see the big picture. Underutilized spaces, especially if they are close to spaces that you want to add on to, are an underutilized resource. For example, by perhaps strategic removal of an intervening wall a rarely-used dining room can be combined with a too-small kitchen to create spacious kitchen/dining room combination. Perhaps there are plenty of bedrooms but not enough bathrooms; a spare bedroom can become a luxurious master bath.

Maintaining a Cohesive Look
If your goal is to space out your renovation projects over several years, make sure to tie the overall design together. You don’t want a hodgepodge. Determine if you want to maintain the original style throughout or introduce more modern elements in certain sections. Often, kitchens and baths receive more modern designs, while original period details are preserved in bedrooms and living areas. Introducing a new style is most effective when you carefully integrate it with the original style.

Conclusion
If you are at the decision fork whether to move or stay long term and improve your home, take a step back and look at the master planning process to evaluate your options. Good decisions, like good relationships between spaces, never happen by accident. Taking the time before you make major lifestyle decision to give thought to and review the big picture can eliminate a lot of regrets down the road, ensuring that your efforts will result in a carefully considered, cost effective, and aesthetically superior solution.