Layout guidance

AI floor plan tools are very good at producing plausible layouts. They are less good at producing liveable ones. This page lists the design principles that you, as the human in the loop, should check on every draft.

Circulation

Circulation is the unbuilt space that connects rooms: corridors, hallways, the path you actually walk along to get from one place to another.

  • Aim for circulation to be no more than 10-15 percent of the total floor area. AI drafts often over-corridor a layout, especially in homes between 80 and 130 sqm.

  • Avoid corridors longer than four metres without a window or a wider node along the way; long, blank corridors feel oppressive.

  • The path from the front door to the kitchen should not cross the main living area diagonally.

  • A bedroom door should never open directly onto a living or dining area; insert at least a short corridor or vestibule.

Natural light

Describe orientation in your prompt and the model will usually respect it, but verify the result:

  • Every habitable room (bedroom, living, dining, kitchen, study) should have at least one exterior window.

  • Bathrooms, laundries and storage cupboards are the rooms that can sit on internal walls.

  • South-facing rooms (in the northern hemisphere) get the most light; reserve them for the spaces where you spend the most waking time.

  • East-facing rooms work well for bedrooms; west-facing rooms can overheat in summer.

Adjacency rules

A few groupings save money and avoid daily friction:

  • Kitchen and dining should share a wall or be open-plan; long carrying distances are tiring.

  • Bathrooms and laundry should share plumbing walls; this can cut construction cost noticeably.

  • Master bedroom and en-suite should be adjacent, but the en-suite door should not face the bed directly.

  • Children’s bedrooms ideally share a wall with the family bathroom rather than with the master bedroom.

  • Home office or study is best placed away from the kitchen and the main living area to reduce noise.

Door swings and clearances

AI floor plans frequently show doors that would collide with furniture or other doors in real life. Check:

  • Two doors should not swing into each other. If they must be close, hinge them so they swing away from each other.

  • A door should not swing onto a light switch or a radiator.

  • Allow at least 90 cm clear width for main circulation doors and 75-80 cm for bathroom and storage doors.

  • Bedrooms need clear floor space for a bed: minimum 3 metres on the wall that hosts the headboard for a double bed.

The kitchen working triangle

The classic kitchen-design rule of thumb is that the sink, the cooktop and the fridge should form a triangle with sides between 1.2 and 2.7 metres. AI drafts often miss this because the model places appliances based on wall length rather than ergonomics. Sketch the triangle on every kitchen layout the model gives you and re-prompt if it falls outside the range.

Storage

Storage is the single most common omission in AI-generated plans, because the model is optimising for named rooms rather than the cupboards inside them. Always add:

  • A coat cupboard or hooks near the entrance.

  • A linen cupboard near the bedrooms.

  • A pantry or tall larder cupboard adjacent to the kitchen.

  • A broom and vacuum cupboard somewhere central; corridors are good candidates.

If the AI did not include these, add a follow-up prompt that asks specifically for storage in named locations.

Accessibility basics

Even if the plan is not formally for a wheelchair user, applying a few accessibility principles makes a home age better and resell better:

  • At least one entrance with no step, or with the option to retrofit a ramp.

  • One bathroom on the main living level if the home has multiple levels.

  • Doorways of 80 cm or wider for main rooms.

  • Avoid placing the only bathroom up a flight of stairs in a multi-level layout.

When to stop iterating

It is tempting to keep re-prompting until the AI delivers a perfect plan. In practice, two or three rounds are enough. After that, the marginal gain from another prompt is smaller than the gain from sketching corrections by hand and handing the result to a designer or builder. Treat the AI as a brainstorming partner, not the final draughtsperson.