Designing or remodeling your home can be a very stressful task for anyone. There are so many things to take into account in order to ensure that your home gets built or remodeled in the proper way. Here are the top 5 lessons from Redditors across the Internet to share their top home design regrets.
Key points
- DIY floor plans lead to awkward room scale, poor light, and misaligned proportions.
- Building overall too big inflates costs, while undersizing garages and laundry rooms causes daily headaches.
- Unpartitioned layouts cause severe noise echo, zero privacy, and lingering cooking odors.
- Overlooking main-floor bedrooms and step-free entries creates major accessibility problems down the road.
- Prioritizing flashy interior finishes over quality windows and siding leads to massive exterior repair bills later.
1. Drawing Plans Yourself Instead of Hiring an Architect or Designer
A common issue during custom builds is attempting to act as your own architect. Homeowners often draw up floor plans to cut costs or maintain control, only to discover too late that they lacked an understanding of proper scale, ceiling-to-window proportions, wall placements, and room flow.
Top Comment:
“This is why you hire an architect or designer or just copy another house. 9′ ceilings make the house feel spacious. Your house just needed taller windows. 🤷” — u/Galen52657 on r/Homebuilding
2. Sizing a House Incorrectly (Building Too Large or Undersizing Key Rooms)
Many homeowners report building homes that are far larger than needed, which inflates maintenance, furniture, and heating/cooling costs. On the flip side, people regret skimping on square footage in high-utility rooms like garages, laundry rooms, and home offices where adding a few extra square feet during framing would have cost very little.
Top Comment:
“Not going smaller. … Smaller house.. the lot is 24 acres on a mountain, but the house is too big.”
— u/Hte2w8 on r/homeowners
3. Open Floor Plans Without Acoustical or Privacy Separation
While open-concept living remains popular, homeowners frequently complain about the lack of sound control and privacy. Everyday noises from television, cooking, or playing children echo across the main floor, creating constant distractions and allowing cooking odors to travel throughout the entire living area.
Top Comment:
“Design-wise I see so many people going for “open floor plans” with the kitchen and living room adjacent from one another without any partition, wall, or acoustical properties. Mainly acoustics but also it creates these yelling type conversations from room to room, rather than someone getting up to go talk to you. And imagine trying to make dinner after a stressful day and your kids have the TV on and are playing. It just creates distraction and often times there is no transition from one room to the other which just looks lazy.”
— u/11B_Architect on r/askarchitects
4. Poor Layout Flow & Functional Placement Mistakes
Small layout choices during framing—such as placing laundry rooms far from bedrooms, ignoring wheelchair accessibility, or putting stairs and exterior doors in awkward locations—lead to daily frustration. Homeowners emphasize that once framing and mechanicals are installed, changing these layout errors is almost impossible.
Top Comment:
“Not me but in laws built a lovely home in their 40’s that they planned to stay in for the rest of their lives. It has 17 steps to get into the house upper floor, and 17 steps to get to the bottom floor inside. Steps all day, every day. Yep, age related mobility issues set in and Shazam, too hard to get around in their own home.”
— u/MonkeyBrain3561 on r/homeowners
5. Prioritizing Interior Aesthetics Over Exterior & Base Structural Quality
When budgets get tight, homeowners frequently cheap out on exterior envelope items (such as high-quality windows, doors, and masonry) to save money for interior finishes like granite countertops or tile. Replacing failed structural components or windows years later ends up costing significantly more than updating interior finishes down the road.
Top Comment:
“As a builder, the most regret I see is not going for higher quality exterior finishes over interior ones. Had a client go to the big box store for window and exterior doors and spent more on marble and granite counters. In 10 years every window has failed and going to cost over $50k to replace. Their big marble kitchen island is covered with work and never used for entertaining guests.”
— u/EvilMinion07 on r/homeowners
Conclusion
If you want to ensure your dream space is as practical and resilient as it is beautiful, Landmark here to help. With over 10 years in the industry, we have been serving Los Angeles’ residential homes and commercial buildings.
Ready to start your project on the right foot? Reach out today to schedule a consultation, and let’s build a home you’ll love living in for years to come.
