Single-storey house design solutions - Grand Designs magazine

Single-storey house design solutions

There are distinct advantages to living on one level, as these amazing self builds demonstrate

By Anna Winston |

Sometimes, a single-storey house design is more than enough to create a generous home. And building with one level can be particularly useful when working on an unusual site, if you want easy access or are wrestling with restrictive planning conditions. Take a look at five projects that each makes the most of its single-storey form.

Meeting planning requirements

This low-energy house in Devon hides behind a brick front that completes a 200-year-old garden wall. McLean Quinlan won permission for the building under Paragraph 79, thanks to its simple, sensitive design. The original boundary walls once encircled the kitchen garden of a Georgian house. They were inspiration for both the single-storey height and the shape of the flat-roofed, 365-square-metre home. Black render on the garden-facing facade helps the building recede from its surroundings. Inside, a courtyard with a glass roof creates an indoor oasis and draws light into the interior. The four-bedroom single-storey house doubles as a gallery space for the owners pottery and artworks. As a Passivhaus, the building creates more energy than it needs.

Exterior of a simple single storey house built in red brick that stands out against the green landscape

A path leads to the simple entrance. Photo: Jim Stephenson

Legal height restriction

Cocoon House is on Long Island, USA. It’s a design by New York-based architect Nina Edwards Anker of Nea Studio. Its name came from the house’s distinctive single-storey house design. This came about in response to legal restrictions that the building keep a specific distance from the surrounding wetlands. It also had to be no taller than 4.8 metres. The 161-square-metre, three-bedroom house cost around £1,190 per square metre. It features rounded walls that curve along the northern and western facades. In contrast, floor-to-ceiling glazing on the south and east sides provides expansive views to the ocean. While skylights use hues to reflect the uses of the spaces below, creating a rainbow-like effect.

A expansively glazed single-storey house deign with curved walls and roof

Skylights are tinted in different hues. Photo: Caylon Hackwith

Sometimes, a single-storey house design is more than enough to create a generous home. And building with one level can be particularly useful when working on an unusual site, if you want easy access or are wrestling with restrictive planning conditions. Take a look at five projects that each makes the most of its single-storey form.

Meeting planning requirements

This low-energy house in Devon hides behind a brick front that completes a 200-year-old garden wall. McLean Quinlan won permission for the building under Paragraph 79, thanks to its simple, sensitive design. The original boundary walls once encircled the kitchen garden of a Georgian house. They were inspiration for both the single-storey height and the shape of the flat-roofed, 365-square-metre home. Black render on the garden-facing facade helps the building recede from its surroundings. Inside, a courtyard with a glass roof creates an indoor oasis and draws light into the interior. The four-bedroom single-storey house doubles as a gallery space for the owners pottery and artworks. As a Passivhaus, the building creates more energy than it needs.

Exterior of a simple single storey house built in red brick that stands out against the green landscape

A path leads to the simple entrance. Photo: Jim Stephenson

Legal height restriction

Cocoon House is on Long Island, USA. It’s a design by New York-based architect Nina Edwards Anker of Nea Studio. Its name came from the house’s distinctive single-storey house design. This came about in response to legal restrictions that the building keep a specific distance from the surrounding wetlands. It also had to be no taller than 4.8 metres. The 161-square-metre, three-bedroom house cost around £1,190 per square metre. It features rounded walls that curve along the northern and western facades. In contrast, floor-to-ceiling glazing on the south and east sides provides expansive views to the ocean. While skylights use hues to reflect the uses of the spaces below, creating a rainbow-like effect.

A expansively glazed single-storey house deign with curved walls and roof

Skylights are tinted in different hues. Photo: Caylon Hackwith

Image: Caylon Hackwith

Reusing an old building

An old stone building in Little Chapelton, Aberdeenshire, forms the foundations of a new single-storey, three-bedroom home clad in Siberian larch. The owner, who is a music teacher, was keen to reuse the original building. But TAP Architects knew this would leave it vulnerable to flooding. Instead, the granite structure became a plant room and a plinth for the new steel and timber house, which partially replaces the old pitched roof. The existing walls could only support a single level above, so the house is an L-shape with two bays. One projects out over the granite mill walls. The other sits on new concrete foundations and is oriented to provide shelter for outdoor areas on the south and west. The construction cost £310,000.

A single-storey house perches on top of an old stone building.

The house rests on old stone walls. Photo: David Barbour

Outdoor access in all areas

This 350-square- metre barn-style home in Hampshire provides its owners, a young couple with four children, with space for friends and family to stay. The design, by Madrid and London studio AMPS Arquitectura y Diseño, is built from prefab, laminate-timber panels for ease of construction. The single-storey design allows every room to have access to an outdoor space. It also reduces the impact on the views of the surrounding countryside. Pale tactile materials inside the house contrast with the exterior, with limestone and lime-based mortar on the floors and chestnut panels and Mortex – a mineral coating with a waxy finish – on the walls.

A long, low house seen from the exterior with dark timber cladding

The exterior is clad in Accoya wood. Photo: Alberto Marcus

Local restrictions overcome

On a site in the New Forest, Hampshire, The Barn is an efficient, modern reimagining of an agricultural building. The 180-square-metre home sits within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, a conservation area and an area of special scientific interest. Strict planning restrictions meant the design had to be single-storey with a limited footprint. To further reduce the impact of the energy-efficient, three-bedroom house, Pad Studio used recycled materials that could cope with the sometimes harsh weather of its coastal setting. Timber from an old barn was used for the exterior, while the north and south gable ends feature Douglas fir boards with a rough, wavy edge. Their bark to adds texture and a connection to the landscape.

Inchmary House Barn by PAD Studio - self build homes - grand designs

This house nestles in the landscape. Photo: Ståle Eriksen

Which is your favourite single storey build? Let us know by tweeting us @granddesigns or posting a comment on our Facebook page.

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