In my previous posts, I have mentioned that Lifestyle plays a big role in determining the kind of Design theme you should choose. So you should start by accessing your lifestyle, and it often can be revealing and often surprising. In fact, I found a book - Minimum Space Maximum Living by Barty Phillips and one of the areas he covered was how lifestyle determines the way we live; and determinately affect the style of our homes.
To summarize, here is a simple checklist you can run through:
1) Do you live alone or with a partner?
2) Are you sharing the space?
3) Are there any special needs for you or the person you are living with? (i.e. caring for an elderly or sick)
4) Are you at home all day or outside?
5) Do you work from home?
6) Do you have any particular hobby?
For instance, if you are always out the entire day or always away on business trips; there are lesser chances for you to accumulate clutter and things. Hence, you might need only minimal storage spaces. However, if you spend a tremendous amount of time at home or even works from home, you might want to make sure that your home caters to your every needs, like plenty of storage spaces oreven incorporate your office needs into the general style of your home.
Thus, doing a real and honest assessment of how you actually live would help tremendously in planning the design of your home. Do not fall into the trap of designing your home based on how you think it should be (since its your dream home).
I would cover these areas in more detail in my subsequent postings.
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