What to consider with a park home layout/floorplan

There are some comparisons with buying a car when purchasing a park home in terms of the vast range and specification options that are available. For some, the vastness of options can appear overwhelming. Furthermore, these options become even greater if you consider that a park home can be created bespoke.

When I first became involved with the park home industry I remember going to visit my first new park home. I was informed that it would be a 40×20’ size and I made the quick assumption that this would never be big enough for me to live in. 40×20’ just didn’t sound sufficient space.

In retrospect, like most people who walk into a park home for the first time, I was surprised at how accommodating and functional a 40×20’ home was. A lot of people go through a similar process to me and immediately want to scale up their home before seriously looking at a 40×20’ home. Naturally, for some this standard size is simply not adequate but I would urge potential park home buyers not to dismiss it before having a look and contemplating how you intend your residential park home lifestyle to play out. There are of course benefits to having the standard sized park home compared with larger sizes;

• Reduce cost
• More park home developments with available plots
• Less to maintain

As you look through different park homes from varying manufacturers, don’t be surprised if you come across floorplans that look very familiar. Park home manufacturers have tried and tested many different designs. Certain layouts have remained popular throughout and have stood the test of time and so all of the manufacturers have filtered through an array of layouts that look very similar. To avoid issues of intellectual property between manufacturers, each has their own slight tweak on a layout, but the premise between them remains largely the same.

Park home manufacturers will always offer buyers the option to tweak their layout to however they would like. There are of course some cases when creating your own layout is necessary, for example when we designed the Omar Middleton – Special at Parklands, we had to create it from scratch for it to make the best use of its plot.

In most cases however, my advice would be to start with a manufacturer’s layout that has already been tried and tested. The manufacturer has done the hard work for you in exploring the most functional designs, so save yourself the bother. You would most likely end up with a similar design anyway.

When it comes to enhancing an original floorplan, I have some personal views that I will share with you, but I would naturally expect that not everyone will agree with my suggestions.

I should start by saying that a common request I hear from buyers is to get rid of the en-suite in the Master Bedroom to make way for a more generous walk-in-wardrobe (yes, this is a common request by women!). I can see the appeal of this as the main bathroom is often only a few steps away from the bedroom anyway, but if you are to look more long term and the prospect of reselling your home, having an en-suite is a key feature that estate agents will advertise in their marketing and thus helps to resell your home.

From my experience at managing Parklands, second bedrooms are used only occasionally for visitors so it does seem somewhat wasteful that it is unused for large amounts of time. I am always keen to utilize the second bedroom so that it has multi-purpose. The most obvious opportunity is to create a pseudo study that can amalgamate with a dressing table for instance. Providing that there are power points and a phone connection you have all the tools required to station your PC there. The cupboards can then be used to store paperwork. With the Prestige Reprise showhome that we had available quite some time ago, it was in my opinion that the 40×20’ Reprise with study felt too crammed and so we removed it completely and put the necessary connections in the second bedroom so the home still provided the study function.

When prospective buyers are looking through all the different park homes available to buy at Parklands, I always try and assist as much is wanted of me. For some, selecting and design a park home is a very personal process and they do not want any interference whereas others are helpful for the guidance. Either way, I hope that this article has provided some food for thought when it comes to designing your layout.