If you’re planning a new home construction in Honolulu, one of the many questions you should ask yourself is whether you should build a single-story home or a home with multiple stories. 

Each style has its own benefits and drawbacks. However, single-story homes, in particular, are quickly growing in popularity. There are several reasons for this growth, including:

• Planning for the Future

Today, many homeowners are getting ready to age-in-place. It’s easy to see why people prefer to grow old in the comfort and familiarity of their own home over moving to a retirement community or home.

By choosing a single-story home, you ensure that you are prepared for any eventuality. If in the future, you develop mobility issues, you don’t need to worry about the challenge of stairs. Similarly, you don’t need to worry about spending money on costly modifications to fit your changing needs.

However, this is not only useful for older individuals. The lack of stairs can be an advantage for many people, including people with disabilities and younger children who are not yet completely comfortable using stairs safely.

• Ease of Expanding the Living Space

If you need extra living space, it’s easy to add to a single-story home. You can easily add a deck, patio, or sunroof to your home plan. On the other hand, with a multi-story home, you will need to conduct a structural analysis before expanding. 

The ease of creating outdoor living spaces in a single-story home means that many such homes have a strong indoor-outdoor connection.

• Affordability

Single-story homes tend to be more affordable to build and maintain. 

• Plenty of Floor Plan Options

Single-story homes offer more floor plan options than multi-story homes. Most floor plans offer several open floor plan options where the living room, dining room, and kitchen are merged into a single, large, open space.

Single-story floor plans also offer more flexibility with floor plans. There are more variations in ceiling heights and skylights that you can choose from. Furthermore, an open floor plan in a single-story home gives you a flowing feeling throughout the house, and you don’t need to worry about being boxed in by another story.

• Increased Energy Efficiency

Single-story homes are easier to heat and cool. This is because they often feature an open floor plan, which is more affordable to heat and cool due to the design allowing for air to flow naturally through the space.

However, you can often need to invest in costlier heating and cooling systems in single-story homes. This is because the system will need to extend the length of the home. 

• Saved Space

With a single-story home, you often have more living space per square foot to use. This is because you don’t need to worry about square footage being wasted on staircases. 

Furthermore, with single-story homes, you usually need fewer bathrooms. This is because they are all on a single floor, so you don’t need to account for extra ones on other floors. 

If you’re planning to start a new home construction in Honolulu and are looking for a home builder to help you with it, contact R. Clary Builders at (808) 263-4463. You can find out more about us at https://rclarybuilders.com/  – we would love to answer any questions that you may have!