Big houses are exhausting. Honestly, you've probably felt it—that weird, hollow sensation when you’re standing in a massive, echoes-included "great room" that doesn't actually feel great. It’s just... empty. Back in 1998, architect Sarah Susanka tapped into this collective frustration with her book, The Not So Big House. She didn't just suggest we live in smaller boxes; she basically staged a quiet revolution against the "McMansion" era of American architecture.
It wasn't about being cheap. Far from it.
The core of the not so big house sarah susanka philosophy is a trade-off. You take the money you would have spent on those extra 1,000 square feet of "atrophying" rooms—like that formal dining room you only use to pile up mail—and you dump that cash into quality. Better windows. Built-in bookshelves. Hand-crafted tiles. Real wood. It’s the difference between a giant, dry hamburger bun and a smaller, perfectly seasoned Wagyu slider. One fills space; the other actually feeds you.
The Death of the "Formal" Room
Most people build houses for a version of themselves that doesn't exist. They build for the one night a year they host a 12-person Thanksgiving dinner, even though the rest of the year they eat cereal over the kitchen island. Susanka noticed this "phantom" living early in her career in Minneapolis. She saw clients begging for more square footage than they could afford, only to end up with "big dumb houses" that felt sterile and cold.
Basically, her approach is to kill the formal living room and the formal dining room.
In a not so big house sarah susanka design, the kitchen and the living area become a "Living Center." It’s where life actually happens. Instead of a separate room for guests who never come over, you create an "Away Room." This is a smaller, acoustically separate space where you can go to read, watch a movie, or just hide from the noise of the main house. It’s functional. It’s used every single day. That's the metric that matters: do you actually use this square footage?
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Quality Over Quantity: The Math of Comfort
Let's talk about the money, because that’s usually where the friction starts. There’s a persistent myth that building a smaller, high-quality house is cheaper than building a big, basic one.
It’s often not.
If you’re building a not so big house sarah susanka style home, your cost per square foot will be higher. Why? Because you’re trading raw volume for craftsmanship. Think about "Ceiling Height Variety." Susanka argues that a house with the same ceiling height everywhere feels like a warehouse. By dropping the ceiling over a window seat or a kitchen nook, you create "shelter around activity." It makes you feel tucked in and safe. But guess what? Varying ceiling heights costs more in framing and drywall labor than just slapping up a flat 9-foot lid.
Key Design Principles She Uses:
- Light to Walk Toward: Placing a window or a light source at the end of a hallway so you aren't walking into a dark tunnel.
- Diagonal Views: Orienting the house so you can look through rooms to a window on the far side, making a small footprint feel expansive.
- The "Settle-Down" Place: Creating nooks, window seats, or alcoves where the human body feels physically supported.
- Doing Double Duty: A guest room that’s also a home office, or a laundry room that doubles as a craft space.
Why Some Architects (and Banks) Hate It
It’s not all sunshine and built-in benches. There’s a reason you don’t see these houses on every corner. For one, the "comparables" market is a nightmare. Banks like to lend money based on square footage. If you build a 1,500-square-foot masterpiece with $100,000 worth of custom millwork, the bank might still value it less than a 3,000-square-foot drywall box down the street.
It’s frustrating.
Critics also point out that "rightsizing" requires a level of self-awareness most homeowners lack. It’s hard to tell your spouse you don’t need a fifth bedroom for "just in case." Plus, as some industry skeptics note, cutting square footage doesn't save as much money as you’d think. The "expensive" parts of a house—the kitchen, the bathrooms, the HVAC—stay the same whether the bedrooms are 10x12 or 14x16.
The Lasting Legacy of the Not So Big Movement
Even with the hurdles, Susanka changed the way we talk about home. You can see her fingerprints all over the modern "cottage" movement and even the tiny house craze, though she’s quick to say she isn't advocating for living in a shed. She wants you to have enough room to breathe, just not enough to get lost in.
In 2026, as energy costs climb and the "stuff-cation" of our lives feels more suffocating, the not so big house sarah susanka ideas feel more like a survival manual than a design trend. It’s about being the curator of your own space rather than a janitor for a bunch of rooms you never visit.
If you’re looking to apply this to your own life, don't start by tearing down walls. Start by observing where you actually sit. If you find yourself gravitating to the same 400-square-foot radius every day, you’ve already found your "Not So Big" home. The rest is just storage.
How to Start "Rightsizing" Your Life Today
- Audit Your Rooms: For the next week, track which rooms you actually enter and stay in for more than 10 minutes.
- Prioritize "Jewelry": If you’re remodeling, pick one "jewelry" item—a custom handrail, a stone backsplash, or a window seat—instead of adding a few extra feet to a room.
- Control the Sightlines: Look for ways to open up a view from one room through to another. This creates the illusion of space without the heating bill of a giant hall.
- Invest in Lighting: Move away from "recessed cans everywhere" and toward layered lighting (lamps, under-cabinet lights, sconces) to define different zones within a single room.
The goal isn't to live in less. It's to live in more of what you actually love.
Next Steps:
If you're ready to dive deeper into the architectural specifics, I can breakdown the specific floor plan strategies Sarah Susanka uses to create "Diagonal Views" or help you draft a "Room Audit" checklist to identify which parts of your current home are actually wasted space.