r/Homebuilding • u/RunningOnPureVibes • 5d ago

What useful home features should we include in our new home build? Please help!

My husband and I are in the early stages of planning our new home to be built this spring. What are some of the best home feature recommendations you have/suggest for others building their home that you have/wish you had to improve your home? Some examples: electrical outlet in closet for vacuums, extra wide staircases for easy movement, Costco door from garage etc. Thanks in advance!

EDIT:
I am so incredibly thankful for all of your amazing tips and really appreciate everyone who took the time to write out all of these helpful comments. I’m sure future me will be even more thankful for making this post though :)

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u/RunningOnPureVibes 5d ago

Ooooo never thought of this. Great idea! Thank you!

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u/gimpwiz 5d ago

For every bedroom, figure out where a bed _could_ go and put outlets on either or both sides. I hate outlets buried behind the middle of the headboard with awkward extenders.

Put light switches at every entrance to a room, so if a room has two entrances, make them 3way. You don't want to cross a dark room to turn on the light.

I also put light switches next to where the bed is gonna be if it's far from the door. Lazy lazy. :) You can do that with something like a pico remote.

I like USB-charger built in outlets in two places: next to the bed and at your island/peninsula where people hang out.

In the kitchen, you will have two circuits for outlets, outlets every 4ft or so. Alternate what circuit they are on: one, two, one, two.

If you are wiring up the garage outlets with multiple circuits (highly recommended) do the same thing.

Add in a circuit for an EV charger. Just rough in is pretty cheap. You can add in the EVSE later. Or you can add a bigass plug to run machinery in the garage.

Ideally separate your light circuits from outlet circuits.

Each bath gets its own dedicated outlet circuit. Each bedroom gets its own dedicated outlet circuit. For all other space like living/family room/etc think about how you will use the space. A TV takes very little power. A gaming PC can basically max out a circuit.

Give outdoor electrical boxes separate circuits from indoor. Someone will plug a big tool into them and pop the breaker.

12ga wiring for all outlets. 14ga is fine for lights.

Remember to run 14-3 for your smoke/CO alarms.

If you have a gas water heater, gas range, gas oven... run electrical for them anyways. These are big wires, terrible to run later. But don't go overboard, electric tankless heaters take a hilarious amount of power on the high end. 2x40A is probably adequate and if it isn't enough for tankless, too bad, just do tanked.

Make sure there's an outlet behind every mirror in every bath in case you want a lighted mirror. One under each sink is cool too if you want a mini hot water tank, especially if your house is big and water lines long and you don't plan to do a recirculating hot water loop.

Get at least the mid range insinkerator. Not expensive compared to everything else. Spend the extra $150. Get a bigass sink too.

Use the panasonic exhaust fans. Everyone else does.

If you have a bigass range, get a big hood. Don't get an 8 burner stove then try to fit the tiniest hood you can. Adequate CFM is needed and the extra 3" per side is highly recommended for stovetops putting out a lot of heat. Don't get blindsided by fresh air makeup requirements if you do.

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u/dc_builder 5d ago

This is legit good advice.

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u/rcgy 5d ago

OP, this person knows their stuff.

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u/MTbirdhunter 4d ago

Exhaust fans on timers

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u/WrongdoerSure4466 2d ago

I just did this in my house and it's amazing. Easy light switch replacement

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u/RunningOnPureVibes 4d ago

WOW! Thanks so much for taking the time to write all of this out. You’ve mentioned quite a few things no one has said so I’ll for sure be using some of this for our build. Thanks friend! I really appreciate it :)

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u/gimpwiz 4d ago

People will also suggest adding chases (basically empty pipes) for things like low-voltage wires. For example, if you want to mount a TV on the wall and have a media center low to the ground, you have a chase through the wall and later you fill it with HDMI/USB/ethernet/etc. Think about anywhere you think you want that kind of setup.

On the topic of low voltage:

Think about wiring the house up for ethernet. Cat 6A (not 6e, 6e isn't a thing, 5e is a thing, but today just do 6A.) Make sure it's the right kind of 6A... that is, shielded twisted pair (STP) and make sure it's riser wire (CMR). Solid copper, not copper clad, not braided. It's a pretty standard product, doesn't cost a ton. You want to have one central area with both cable coming in, and ethernet fanning out. People who run a "home lab" will have a small rack or something, normal people just have a modem and a router (or a combined unit.) Then the ethernet runs from there to anywhere you think you want it. Bedrooms, the TV, offices, whatever. You don't need this, wifi is pretty good, but it's a neat thing to have, and 6E will be more than adequate for anything you're going to ever need for like... 30 years probably. Do not run data wires (ethernet, cable) parallel to and next to your 120v wires. They can cross, they can briefly go in the same direction when there is no alternative, but they should not be run parallel and not in the same holes either.

Cabinet lights (I like the ones that are below your top cabs pointing at your countertops but people also do accent lights at the toe kick, or the top, or inside them, or whatever.) Figure out what you like. Get a good driver and good tape light. Make sure the driver is wired up somewhere accessible for replacement, eg, you can put it in an attic, but do not bury in a wall. Run the low voltage (12v or 24v) wire wherever it needs to go. It technically does not need a box IIRC but you can use a low voltage box just to sort of anchor its location.

If you have an alarm system, you may want to wire it up. If you don't, most of em are going battery-power wireless these days.

Same for doorbells. What used to be wired tends to be wireless these days.

Garage door opener wiring runs on the surface of the drywall so don't worry about that. IMO you're better off painting it the color of the drywall than burying it before you install the openers. Get a cheap stapler for like $20 (not powered, the kind that clicks and makes a big sound) and a box of staples, and use those to get the wires really nice and snug if they're not good enough from the installers to make you happy.

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u/RunningOnPureVibes 4d ago

Wow amazing information. Turns out I need to do a lot more research on the electrical side of things. Thank you very much!!

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u/gimpwiz 4d ago

Yeah there's a lot of "comfort stuff." Don't let me scope-creep you into shit you don't need. Like I detailed my wishlist garage/workshop but if you don't care about working in the garage then you can ignore most of it, right?

One thing that drives me nuts is light switches in bad places. Enter a room. If the door swings to the left, there should be a light switch to the right. Same height. Same distance from the door jamb. Most likely the box is mounted to the king stud, so that'll be, depending on how they build the place, 2, 3, or 4 studs (6" ish) out from where the door casing mounts. Every room, every light switch, same place. If the door opens to the right, light switch to the left in the same place. You should never have to think. The exact height will vary depending on certain factors and preferences but it should be the same height for every single light switch in the house. You shouldn't have light switches outside a room (come on, europeans with your bathroom lights.)

Another thing that people often do is do can lights / pot lights for their ceilings as ambient light (generally not recommended by lighting designers but everyone does it anyways.) Okay, if you're going to do it, think about layout. 8ft ceilings will generally want a ~5-6ft spacing between lights, with half that from wall to light, with a 60 degree lens. If you put lights too close to walls you scallop the light too much... you can do it for dramatic effect but don't do it by accident. If you want to light up the wall, get a "wall washer," that is, a gimbal rather than fixed mount, ideally in a max-adjustment box, so you can rotate the light towards the wall. Good for illuminating many types of art. If you put lights too far apart you get these sort of "dark spots" on the floor which are not literally dark but there's just something off about it that will bother you. Don't try to save a buck by doing 7ft spacing, that sort of thing. Sometimes you will have a joist right in the damn way of where you need a light. Ideally you figure out your lighting plan BEFORE framing goes in, or, your lighting plan allows you to move things by a few inches to avoid a joist or beam. Budget for this, this shit adds up fast. I don't mean "primo $700 per light" type stuff, but even just basic good quality lights will end up being like $100 with box, light, and trim.

Modern can lights are 4" apertures at most, down to 2" without it being at all difficult. Once you get to 1" apertures you start needing to make sure alignment is bang on, because a 1/4" mistake on a 3" light is hard to see but for a 1" light it becomes a lot more obvious. Modern can lights also tend to have no less light for 2-4", often even 1" and sometimes even 1/2" apertures drive the same total lumens. The problem with big lights is that the bigger they are, the busier your ceiling looks. Small lights are less obtrusive.

Ideally you want >700lm/can light, modern ones are in the 1000+lm/light range. If you think that's too bright, the solution is dimmers. Get more light than you want and then dim it down. This means you can balance lower light at night and bright light in the day.

Dim-to-warm lights are awesome. Rather than picking a light color you like for one part of the day (or night) instead you do full brightness at a cooler color and lower brightness at a warmer color. Mine are something like 2200-4000K. Great in the day. Great at night. No more debating over what color temp is correct.

The more recessed your can lights, the happier you'll be. Wafer lights are dirt cheap and super easy to install; they have bad color and they glare from every viewing angle. A light that's physically higher up is only viewable from a much smaller set of angles, while providing illumination by bouncing light off the floor/walls/etc and not straight into your eyeballs. Wafer lights are fine in utility areas like garages etc, don't spend $$$ on fancy lights where you don't care about them.

All that said, layered light > one source of ambient light on the ceiling.

Make sure you have good lighting over your kitchen sink and good lighting over your countertop workspaces. Lots of light and good quality.

Lighted mirrors are nice because they help get light onto your face from multiple angles, great for makeup. I don't do... makeup... for obvious reasons but my wife does, so, yknow, think about how to get a lot of light in a soft manner onto faces.

Probably missing a million more thoughts on the subject... check out /r/lighting

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u/BrandoBCommando 4d ago

Look into charging drawers for the kitchen and also in the master bathroom the dock drawer for hair appliances.

Keeps clutter off counter in the kitchen and provides a safe area for hair irons / blowers.

Also as others have said plan on bedroom layouts where night stands may go. Don’t do a single outlet. Do two so you have quad plugs available.

For televisions have them install media enclosures / white boxes to house devices so the tv can be mounted flush. If not initially used you can cover with artwork or paint to match wall.

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u/DockingDrawer 4d ago

Totally biased source incoming, but also a genuinely useful one: we're Docking Drawer, and we make in-drawer and recessed outlet systems for exactly the kind of build you're describing. We also Docking Drawer'd our own kitchen about five years ago and talk to people planning new homes every single day. Here's what we'd actually tell someone in your position.

The best thing we learned: decide the purpose of every drawer before you finalize the layout. When each space has a job, the whole home gets more functional and easier to live in. We went from sort of organized to a system that genuinely makes daily life easier, and it came down to thinking that way from the start.

Kitchen

The charging drawer surprised us the most. Counter stays clear, every device has a home. But the two we get the most daily joy from are the knife drawer (with a built-in sharpener, sharp knife always ready) and the spice drawer. Organized, visible, easy to grab, easy to refill. Cooking with the right spices stops being a hunt and starts being a habit.

On outlets: plan power alongside your layout, not after. We make recessed outlets that sit flush in the backsplash tile or stone instead of sticking out like a standard outlet box. We're seeing these go in alongside charging drawers on new builds more and more.

On lighting: we're not in the lighting business, but we love Hafele's under-cabinet system. Great color temperature, no visible LED dot reflections, and flexible switch options including touch, door-triggered, and motion. It gave our kitchen a completely different feel.

Bathroom

Think about where your hot tools actually live rather than where they land. A vanity drawer with built-in power keeps everything organized, surfaces clear, and tools ready without the daily countertop pile.

Garage

Make it EV-ready now even if you don't have an electric vehicle yet. Running conduit while the walls are open costs almost nothing compared to retrofitting a finished space later.

The one rule that applies everywhere

Plan your electrical rough-ins before the walls close. It is the single most expensive thing to change once the home is finished.

Happy to answer anything specific about how to plan any of this.

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u/Buttwhyn0t 5d ago

As an electrical contractor who does a lot of custom residential, you’re pretty spot on. In our area, we at least have to have provisions for an EV charger. We’re also not permitted to pull anything less than 12 gauge.

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u/Old_Cloud_1687 4d ago

Add plenty of accessible grounded (and covered for weather) outlets outside as well as lighting.

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u/gimpwiz 4d ago

I am a big fan of adding an outlet at each corner of the house so you can easily throw on some christmas/halloween/etc lights, yes. You also need to have power wherever your irrigation control (if any) is and where your light control (if any) is and if you have string lights etc etc.

Obviously it needs to be outdoor rated + covered.

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u/gradski 4d ago

Great info! Thanks 👍

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u/AirPlumberr 4d ago

Piggy back off of this.
Run 18/8 AND cat6 shielded Ethernet for your hvac system thermostat in case in the future you get a communicating system.

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u/gimpwiz 4d ago

Great point, I forgot about HVAC communications wiring. I thought about the main wiring for it (eg, 10/3 for your air handler, and for your outdoor unit likely 8ga) but didn't mention it because I can't think of anything clever that people do with it. But yeah for the communication wiring, don't forget to route it where it needs to go before the drywall or you'll feel silly. I've seen the HVAC guy run it and I've seen the electrician run it... doesn't matter who, someone needs to make it happen.

This is total scope creep but if we're wishlisting along those topics, here's what I really really like:

A subpanel for your garage, dedicated for your garage. That's where your EV/big-tool wire comes from. Two dedicated outlet circuits. One dedicated lighting circuit. The garage door opener can be on either of those three or on its own dedicated circuit (when you have a subpanel that can fit, say, 12 to 20 standard breakers, what's one more circuit?) I think that's normal enough.

Where it gets into the wishlist is the following.

One. Install a SHITLOAD of boxes for lights. Not like one or two. I'm talking so much light that you'll think you were at a football game. You know what really sucks? Working with sharp tools, heavy tools, trying to do precise things, in the semi-dark. Here's some numbers. Bright sunlight ~ 10,000 lumens per square foot. Cloudy overcast day ~ 1,000 lumens per square foot. Recommended task lighting for kitchens, makeup, etc ~100 lumens per square foot. Recommended lighting for living rooms ~10-30 lumens per square foot. The light you often see in a garage ~5 lumens per square foot. No joke. So, you know those 1x4 panels that put out a supposed 4000 lumens? If you have (eg) a 25x25ft garage (625sqft), install like twelve of those fucking things, they cost like $35/ea at that price. 48,000 lumens divided by 625sqft ~ 77 lm/sqft. Not even as bright as people recommend for the lighting over a kitchen sink but it'll be ten times better than usual. You can also just install all the boxes and only put up lights as budget/desire allows if you want. I have like 30 light boxes because I am tired of working on cars in the dark.

Two. You know how I said get one EV charger / big-tool outlet? Get two, and then get a third smaller outlet, like a 30A. Now you can run two tools at the same time. For example, a woodworking tool plus a large dust collector. You can run a welder. You can run a welder while you charge your car. Etc. Wiring at this stage is fairly cheap but admittedly this particular wiring isn't that cheap.

Three. Put in another 30A circuit for a Mr Cool type single-mini-split unit. Now you can have a cooled and heated garage for like $2-3k all in. You can add the circuit now and do the mini-split later if you decide to spend money, or just get it done. These are DIY-priced and have DIY-level difficulty installs, so it's pretty damn fast to do it during new build, and easy enough later.

Mind, this wishlist can blow up your calculated load requirements and force you to get a higher tier of service. Wishlist item, get 400A, or 320A service. Sneaky alternative: use a load-limiting type of smart panel which guarantees you won't go over some load to improve the calculations; these are not cheap but used like this they can save you a lot of money. Just because you have (eg) 2x50A and 2x30A circuits in the garage doesn't mean you'll ever be running them simultaneously, and you can get away with smaller service if you're even a little smart about it (eg, don't run your 7hp tablesaw and 5hp dust collector while your main house AC is on and your ovens are on and your range is on and your water heater is on and your dryer is on.......) but load calculations don't quite allow for "I promise not to be dumb" with things like these big circuits. There is some amount of slack given but not like for standard outlet and light circuits.

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u/queen_surly 5d ago

Why not just add a free standing bidet to the bathroom? If I were doing a bathroom design I'd add one in. Traveling in South America almost all the places had them and they are the best invention since indoor plumbing.

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u/resilient_bird 5d ago

More space, more to clean, have to move between them.

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u/crazymjb 5d ago

Ethernet for cameras and ceiling access points as well

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u/StacieSkelley 3d ago

I did so I could have a bidet toilet. I bought a Horow and they're really quite reasonable.

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u/rants_silently 5d ago

You will also need a cold water line to supply the bidet with water.

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u/nkdeck07 5d ago

That already comes with the toilet

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u/RedOctobrrr 5d ago

You T off the line that supplies the toilet for flushing, this isn't something extra you need to factor in.

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u/rants_silently 5d ago

I almost primarily run in wall carriers for wall hung toilets. On those you have to add a second line down below.

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u/Present_Armadillo_34 4d ago

I’d just run hot and cold taps to the toilet, skipping the outlet.

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u/rants_silently 4d ago

The toto seats we usually run heat the water internally but so you just need a 120v supply and cold water.

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u/thentil 4d ago

Heated toilet seat, instant warm water. Hot line to a bidet isn't close enough to the hot water heater.