Turn an entire floor into your bedroom

Architectural drawing showing how the entire floor can be designed into a single bedroom.

This luxury four bedroom house plan is for the middle income earner who has a liberal budget and a taste for the finer things in life. The double storied plan’s main feature is the master bedroom that takes up the entire first floor.

Mathias Omona, an engineer with ACQ Consortium , says the master suite is designed to provide a comfortable, private retreat that fits a client’s exact needs and lifestyle.

Ground floor
The ground floor is the centre for the rest of the family’s living area. It contains a self-contained bedroom (built-in closet and bathroom) and two others that have in-built closets too but share a communal bathroom. These take up one half of the floor. The other half accommodates the living room, dining room, a storage space, a lounge, a kitchen that has its own verandah, a lobby and a main entrance verandah.

First floor
The first floor accommodates the master bedroom which comes with a bathtub, a standing shower, a sitting area, his and hers walk-in closets and a private balcony.

According to Omona, this design does not necessarily have to be exclusive to the wealthier homeowners but they can modify it to suit a variety of budgets.

Do you really need to live so far away from the rest of the family? Wahab Mbabazi, an interior décor expert, discloses that more modern homeowners nowdays prefer this house design because too much closeness can be an issue especially when the household is made up of different generations from different backgrounds.

“More couples feel the need to open their homes to friends and relatives but also want a private place to retreat at the end of the day. A home with a first-floor master bedroom means you can safely do this,” Mbabazi explains.

Apart from the privacy this design offers, it also has a great resale value in case the need to put the home on the market ever rises.
“Since these suites are popular, it will probably be easier to quickly find a buyer,” Mbabazi adds.

Costs
Omona notes that the roofing of this design is different from the common hipped roofs which reduce the construction costs.
“By appearances, this house looks very expensive yet it can be constructed for Shs120m,” he adds.
This house sits comfortably on a 50x100 feet plot, leaving space for a green and a two-vehicle parking lot, according to Simon Nandala, an architectural assistant at ACQ Consortium.
Nandala also notes that this house can be built in phases.
“One can first complete the ground floor, make it habitable before embarking on the first floor,” he says.

Cons
Enoch Mwangale, a construction expert, has reservations about this plan for average families.

“If you are building for a large family, taking up an entire floor for just a master bedroom can appear like wastage of space because it uses half the space. So if you are building a home with a smaller footprint, you might not have the room to create the space you want for other things,” Mwangale explains.

He also notes that this might be inconvenient for families with babies or elderly parents because it means that someone will be running up and down stairs to provide necessary care.
However, Nandala notes that in case the home owner does not have the strength to climb up the stairs anymore – due to surgery or old age. The guest room can be converted into the master bedroom.