Great start, need some specifics... Kitchen and bath layouts are important as are mudroom/laundry room layouts. Do you have those?

I think I'd offset the hall bath door so it isn't in line with the opening to the great room.

There's a current thread running at the moment on "How do you feel about room bleed?", that may offer some insights to consider.

Everything in the large common space will be immediately on view from the front door. If you are an extraordinarily neat and tidy housekeeper, this should be no problem.

Sounds and smells will be readily apparent throughout the large common space. Again, if you never turn the TV loud and/or never burn toast, this should be no problem.

Other thoughts to consider:

--Consider the proportions of the various rooms you have created as a measure of what's truly important to you. It appears that the huge garage is the single most important thing about the house since is dwarfs all other spaces.
--Also consider the exterior appearance of the house. The very simple orthogonal shapes are going to give the house a very rectangular, boxy appearance. The huge garage shape will dominate the front elevation of the house. Your house will be very "roof heavy" in appearance, especially the garage roof required to cover such a large, bulky volume.

Hope this helps. Good luck with your project.

You'll get a couple of big comments up front: (1) If building on 6.5 acres, you don't need to have such a garage-prominent house; (2) where will guests park and will there be a logical way for them to get into the house (circular drive with pull-off spaces in front?); (3) where are the basement stairs?

That out of the way, I like the simplicity of the plan. There seem to be several folks recently who want to arrange the MBR so that an early riser can get ready and go without disturbing the other partner. I think your layout does a good job of this without wasting too much space. A few worries along that line: with the two entries to the Master Bath, you've left yourself no room for nightstands (if you intend to place the bed where the plan indicates). You also show pocket doors for those entries, which can be a bit noisy and could complicate your placement of electrical/recessed storage in the headboard/sink wall (you might wind up making that entire wall thicker to allow room for wiring and boxes as well as the pocket door apparatus). You could eliminate those problems by going with standard doors that swing toward the outside walls of the bathroom. Better yet, go with just one door, probably on the closet side of the MBR. It doesn't give you the centered look for the bed, but it allows for nightstands and additional counter space/cabinetry in the master bath. And although your master bath layout isn't detailed, my take is that you've got the potty closet at the "top", partially in front of the window. If it's meant to be an enclosed potty, you may want to go with two windows ( a small one inside, and a larger one in the bath) or otherwise solve the wall-into-window issue.

You might WANT to consider a pocket door between the laundry and the hall, if only to give you room for a full counter or cabinet on the wall that backs to the MBR.

The mud room/bath/pantry/closet area: Is the small bath (I'm assuming 1/2 bath) meant to be accessed only from the mud room? If so, that's fine. But just keep in mind that guests will then likely be using the hall bath (kids' bath).

At first I thought the square closet was a closet, and the 3'6" wide closet was the pantry, but now I see that it's the other way around. I think the pantry works fine. But the long skinny closet (coat closet?) will be tough to use, I think -- especially if accessed by a single door on the short end (2' for the hangars leaves only 18" for you to slide down next to the coats). Assuming your fridge has to go on that wall against the mud room closet, how about you redesignate some space: make the coat closet only half as deep, ceding the rest of the space back to the mud room so there is room for a deeper walk-in, or space for a bench/coat hooks, in the mud room. That way family coats can live in the mud room and you won't need such a big coat closet.

However, if the fridge doesn't go on that wall and will really be somewhere in the ell of the kitchen, then you free up some options. The pantry can become a second entrance to the powder room, with the pantry moved to the coat closet space, and coats moved to the three "squares" in the kids' hall that will likely be closets of some kind (if not HVAC).

Lifestyle? Children at home? It helps to know something about you. :)

I'm not an architect but we are building a home as well and completely renovated our last. When we renovated,we took down a wall separating the living room and kitchen to make it all open, as yours is, where you walked into the living room/kitchen as soon as you came through the front door. So basically if the kitchen was a mess, you or any guest would see it right away. We did not think of this at first but ii always was stressed about keeping the kitchen clean, whereas if it was a little separated it wouldn't have been as big of a deal. Maybe extend the wall where the dining room is on the left when you first come (I'm assuming that is what that is) in the front door to give a little separation? So you don't see the kitchen right away. Good luck'

Like but don't love. A couple comments:

- The garage is huge and prominent. It's going to overshadow the design. It wouldn't be too hard to shift this backward a bit and have the master bedroom extend into the back yard rather than have the garage extend into the front yard. Remember, too, that a garage is the most expensive choice for storage of those power tools and toys. A separate shed in the backyard would cost only a small fraction of the cost of an extra-large garage.

- I like that the master bedroom closet /laundry are convenient to one another.

- Is that a fireplace facing out onto the back deck, although there's not a fireplace inside? A fireplace on the deck is a nice luxury, but if I were only going to have one, it'd be in the living room.

- What is that long, narrow room adjacent to the foyer? I'm guessing it's a too-narrow closet. I'd move the door to the foyer to make it more accessible. OR make it one walk-through closet with doors opening on two sides -- one to the foyer, one to the mudroom -- and clothes rods on both sides.

- Definitely bump the living room door /bathroom door so they don't line up.

Some good suggestions already.

If the long narrow box next to the foyer is a pantry, it seems very cramped to me.

Think about putting the master bedroom in the corner so it can have windows on 2 walls, esp if you want any cross ventilation, and make the master bath the interior space. This will also give more separation between the master bedroom and the noisy kitchen/LR/DR space.

Same thing with windows on 2 walls in the other bedrooms for ventilation. Those bedrooms seem very wee for the size of the rest of the house...and I agree about not looking directly into the bathroom from the main living area, and that guests won't want to go through the mudroom to get to the bath.

I'd also play with the furniture arrangement in the LR...esp if you are having a tv in there.

I agree about the noise factor. Our FR is open to the kitchen, and even with just the 2 of us, I have to crank the tv up while he's doing the dishes as it's very noisy.

Some good suggestions already.

If the long narrow box next to the foyer is a pantry, it seems very cramped to me.

Think about putting the master bedroom in the corner so it can have windows on 2 walls, esp if you want any cross ventilation, and make the master bath the interior space. This will also give more separation between the master bedroom and the noisy kitchen/LR/DR space.

Same thing with windows on 2 walls in the other bedrooms for ventilation. Those bedrooms seem very wee for the size of the rest of the house...and I agree about not looking directly into the bathroom from the main living area, and that guests won't want to go through the mudroom to get to the bath.

I'd also play with the furniture arrangement in the LR...esp if you are having a tv in there.

I agree about the noise factor. Our FR is open to the kitchen, and even with just the 2 of us, I have to crank the tv up while he's doing the dishes as it's very noisy.

I love the master bedroom and bathroom. Love it, love it, love it. The plans in my head I have for our "someday" house have that exact setup. Bed centered, pocket doors on either side, and bathroom, with basically wall-sized windows out to the pool area. I want to be able to see/walk directly from the bathroom or bedroom out to the pool deck.

I realize this is an upper level for you, and might be useful to consider extending the deck further so you have direct access from the master bed/bath.

I think the pocket doors on either side of the bed look nice, but from a practical perspective, I'm not a fan. First, there's no room for nightstands-- where will you put your book, your phone, etc...? Second, pocket doors are noisy compared to standard doors. They rumble. If either one of you gets up in the middle of the night, they're likely to wake the other, and if you do get up earlier than your spouse and they forgot to close their door, that's too noisy pocket doors you need to close.

My other thought is that with that huge covered deck, your main living spaces will get little or no natural light. And the deck will block lots of light from your basement too, if the back is the walk out side.

I'm confused that you intend to have a walkout basement, but your plans don't include basement stairs. You can't just tack stairs on in the end, they affect everything.

If you were building on a 1/4 acre lot, I'd say this plan was "mostly okay" tho I don't particularly like it and there are a bunch of small details that need to be addressed if you're going to stick with this basic plan. But, since you're building on 6 acres, and won't have any neighboring houses 12 feet away; why not take advantage of that fact???

Specifically, why not look for a design (or insist that your architect give you a design) that takes advantage of the corners to have beautiful gracious rooms with windows on two walls? Rooms that get natural light from two directions are unbelievably much more pleasant to be in that those that are lit from one side only. The author of "A Pattern Language" says "When they have a choice, people will always gravitate to those rooms which have light on two sides, and leave the rooms which are lit only from one side unused and empty. "

What you seem to have instead is a cavernous central "open area" with no particular design features that I can see to act as focal points or to delight the eye. When they walk into the front door, what , if anything, do YOU hope that guests will notice first?

And speaking of that "open plan", you have spans of over 30 feet in both directions with no intervening walls to serve at support walls. That means you're going to have to have trusses that will span that entire distance without sagging. Those are going to be very expensive.

On another subject, you don't mention anything about the direction that your house will face, where the best views are located, which direction the hot afternoon sun will come from in the summertime or where the cold north winds will blow from in the winter or anything like that. In designing this house, have you taken any of those things into consideration.

Finally, I too very much dislike the massive garage nosing out the front of the house. The only good thing I can say about the garage is that at least you made it a side entry. Still, that feature is going to dominate your house and, despite the windows you've place on the front side of the garage, it is still going to look like you have a GARAGEhouse...that is, a big garage with a small house attached to it almost as an afterthought.

If it were me and I really needed a 30 ft deep garage, I'd design a stand along garage to house the RV or boats or the shop... or whatever it is that requires that 30 foot deep space. Then I'd have a more normal sized attached garage (probably positioned at the back of the house) where I'd park the one or two regular-sized cars that I drove most often. A separate garage can be made to look like a barn or a farm outbuilding and can be built fairly inexpensively as a metal "pole barn" and such a building would look fine on a 6 acre
lot. At the very least, I'd find someway to move that huge garage to the back of the house so it doesn't dominate the front elevation.

Overall, I honestly think you can do a lot better than this plan.