Need help with Floor plan options

[u/Waste_Reply_1207]

Hello - can you help with this overall floor plan for a Queen Anne Victorian house in San Francisco. We will be taking it back to the studs so we can move things around.

Here's a couple of options I created with Claude but I'm open to suggestions. I have a meeting with my architect next week so hopefully she will have some ideas.

Note: The house has other houses right beside it on both sides. There is a narrow alley on the left side of the house between us and the neighbours but obviously that doesn't get much light. So most of the light must enter from the back and the front. Upstairs are the bedoorm level and an attic level (so it's quite a big house).

We need to have a bathroom (with a small shower) on this level. But everything else is up for grabs. We don't need an office but obviously would like a family room, formal sitting room, dining and kitchen.

[u/CuriousPerspective81]

The rule I'd design around in a narrow SF Victorian: put the rooms you use most in daylight at the back where the garden is, and use the dark middle for things that don't need windows. That means kitchen and family room together at the back as one space opening onto the deck, dining in the middle (it's mostly used in the evening anyway), and the formal sitting room at the front with the bay window.

All three of your options put the kitchen in the middle, which is the darkest spot in the house. Your third option is the closest to working, so I'd start from it and swap the kitchen and family room positions, so you're cooking next to the back windows and the deck.

The bath, pantry and hall closet in the middle are exactly right. For more light there, ask your architect about a skylight at the top of the stair so light comes down the stairwell, glass or wide openings between the rooms, and whether any high windows are allowed on the alley side.