A home requirements brief: what to decide before finalising the floor plan

Start with activities, not a list of rooms

Write down who will live in the house and what they will do there during a normal week: work from home, cook every day, host visitors, store bicycles, dry laundry, care for someone or go out into the garden. Then turn those activities into spaces. Annex I of Spain’s Technical Building Code includes the requirements programme in the project description; it is not a decorative list, but the starting point that explains what the home must enable.

Separate essentials, preferences and future needs

Place every need in one of three groups. An essential is something without which the house will not work for you; a preference improves its use but allows alternatives; a future need covers foreseeable changes, such as working from home, a larger family or living on one floor later. This hierarchy supports sound decisions when the available area, plot rules or budget require the first scheme to be adjusted.

Map relationships before square metres

Make a simple diagram with circles and arrows: kitchen near the dining area, pantry connected to bringing in shopping, laundry close to the drying area, bedrooms away from noise and storage beside the places where belongings accumulate. Mark which rooms need outdoor access, privacy or a direct connection to the garden. The aim is not to design the floor plan yourself, but to give the designer clear relationships that can be resolved technically.

Clarify the performance level you expect

Spain’s Building Act links functionality to the arrangement and dimensions of spaces and to the services needed for their intended functions. Beyond regulatory compliance, you can agree objectives above the minimum with the designer when they matter to you: acoustic privacy, ease of maintenance, the possibility of adapting a room or greater storage capacity. State them as verifiable objectives rather than vague adjectives.

What to prepare before requesting quotations

To contact professionals, gather the location and available plot information, who will use the home, the prioritised list of needs, relationships between rooms, a desired usable-floor-area range and any special elements —garage, porch, study, plant room or pool—. Add which decisions are fixed and which are open to proposals. A final quotation will require a technical project; this preliminary brief gives the first conversations the same basis and makes offers more comparable.

Sources consulted

• Technical Building Code — Part I
• Official State Gazette — Building Act 38/1999