Achieving Minimalist Home Design

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Summary: What is minimalist home design? Author Sarah Susanka describes minimalist home design concepts she learned from Frank Lloyd Wright. The minimalist home design trend will continue to grow says Susanka.

Minimalist home design means considering what you really need, and only build those things. That doesn't mean designing your home like a submarine, with tiny rooms and tons of compartments.

Minimalist home design means asking yourself how many times you'll really use your formal living room. In recent years, the trend in home design has been to build McMansions, or large houses with dozens of rooms for a single family. Recently, with fuel costs high and a concentration on green design, minimalist home design has become more popular.

Architect and author Sarah Susanka favors minimalist home design. She studies the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright, a master of minimalist home design. "[Wright] constantly played with form and there's so much in every Wright-ian building to see. When you start to notice what he's doing, allowing form to speak to you in a completely different way."

Susanka learned this lesson in minimalist home design from Wright: focus on the details. Hiring talented people to work on your home can enhance minimalist home design. In Wright's buildings, elaborate woodworking and the signature stained glass windows enhance the minimalist home design.

It's a mistaken belief that designers can create minimalist home design more easily than a large, elaborate house. Susanka says, "It's actually harder to design something that's small. If you think about a little Chinese puzzle, where everything's got its place and you pull out one piece and another piece and then gradually it all comes apart."

Although minimalist home design appears to be simpler, it can actually be very difficult to fit everything a homeowner needs in a small, organized space.

Susanka sees the trend toward minimalist home design continuing. Homes in Japan, Great Britain and many other countries have focused on minimalist home design for a number of years. Susanka says that the large homes in America are becoming obsolete and that minimalist home design is making a comeback in a huge way as people discover how to separate what they need from what they think they need.

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• home design, 
• sarah susanka

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