Your home is a unique expression of your lifestyle, your priorities, and your style, but often homeowners will take certain features for granted simply because every other house in the neighborhood has them. Before you finalize your new home plan with Signature Homes, consider these new home trends:

Semi-open floor plans
Completely open floor plans that integrate the kitchen, dining, and living areas have been all the rage for the past 10 – 15 years. Recently homeowners have been choosing more compartmentalized spaces, while keeping the visual appeal of the open floor plan.

Separating the kitchen from the living room and dining area improves safety by routing traffic flow in a more defined pattern. Young children and pets aren’t prevented from entering the kitchen area, just encouraged to choose an alternate path as they race through the house.

Half walls with breakfast bar seating are the most common way to separate the kitchen from the rest of the living area, while maintaining a visually open space.

Raised ceilings
Raising the ceilings by as little as one or two feet can make a home feel more spacious, without the heating and maintenance difficulties of a two-story great room. 9 to 12 foot ceilings are becoming more common in first floor rooms. These raised ceilings are tall enough to give a feeling of spacious luxury, without heating an extra 8 feet or so of empty space before the living area below feels comfortable.

Spa features in bathrooms
The garden tub used to be the height of bathroom luxury, but today’s upscale bathrooms fully mirror the spa experience. Shower rooms with a variety of water delivery options including rain shower and body massaging showerheads are a great complement to the soaking tub. Saunas are becoming a more common feature as homeowners create an in-home retreat.

Spa bathrooms also take maintenance into consideration, since unlike a day spa most homeowners don’t have a full time cleaning staff! From built in storage to low maintenance floors, keep cleaning chores in mind when designing your home spa retreat.

Energy efficient, environmentally conscious features
Advances in environmentally friendly building materials, alternative energy sources, and energy efficiency have made it easier than ever to build a Green house.
Reflective roofing materials deflect heat away from the house, lowering air conditioning costs. Energy efficient windows, with double panes that trap inert gasses also improve insulation, reduce drafts and lower heating bills.

Your Signature homebuilder representative will also be able to work with you to build alternative energy sources, such as geothermal heating and solar panels, into the design of your new home.

While home design magazines and websites can be a great resource for ideas and inspiration, the deciding factor on any feature on your new Signature home should always be your family’s lifestyle.