What Your Contractor Can’t Tell You, Amy Johnston.

What Not To Build, Sandra Edelman.

Get Tour House Right, Maryanne Cusato.

Designing Your Perfect House, William Hirsch.

Residential Interior Design: A Guide To Planning Spaces, Maureen Mitton.

NKBA Kitchen and Bathroom Planning Guidelines with Access Standards, NKBA

The Codes Guidebook For Interiors, Sharon K Harmon.

A Field Guide to American Houses, Virginia McAlester.

Complete Book of Framing. Scott Simpson.

I have "Designing Your Perfect House" by William Hirsch. I really enjoyed it!

Thank you for the other recommendations!

Mazria's book is a classic reference for passive solar design.

@The Cook's Kitchen -- Do any of the books you listed discuss how to "layout" a kitchen to be functional? Like the triangle work spaces?

I would recommend A Pattern Language if you can find it. Patterns of Home is supposed incorporate some of the principles but is not nearly as good.

@Katie S. -- I *think* I found it (Murray Silverstein?), but it's a bit pricey for me.

Haley, one of the best things to read for planning your kitchen is this at the Kitchen forum, and then going through its archives,

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/4306041/new-to-kitchens-read-me-first#22627577

A mention of this thread and a link to it is included in the "New To Kitchens? Read Me First!" thread, but here it is on its own,

Looking for layout help? Memorize this first

@beckysharp -- I saved them to my bookmarks! Thank you!

"The Passive Solar Energy Book" was one of my textbooks in college. A great book, I even bought the hard cover book with the sun path overlays in the back. I had an active solar textbook too, but I don't remember that one.

Before recommending books that are appropriate for you to read, I'd like to understand your objective. Is it to be sufficiently competent to design your own home or to build it or both or neither?

We plan on sitting down with an architect to actually design it, but I am interested in learning more about design and flow of the rooms. I figure it will help to make better decisions like not having extremely high ceilings because you will feel like exposed, making sure windows are not heavily west facing, not having the master bedroom with windows on the front porch, knowing that if you take advantage of the site you can lower electric costs, etc. Without understanding these things, it could turn into a very long process of trying to understand why the architect is recommending something different than what we think is best. What we may want might be a terrible idea and it might take the architect hours to explain why; especially since we're going to be working remotely with them. At least this way we can go ahead and filter out some of the terrible ideas that sound great but actually aren't lol. *cough* Like a cooktop in an island. *cough* (I have learned this from many posts on here.)

Edit:
If my husband had the time, he probably would be GC and do some of the work himself. But it's very unlikely that will happen.

It probably wouldn't hurt for us to be able to decorate to some extent either. As it stands, paint is going to be a nightmare. We know what colors we like, but making sure we don't go overboard with gray and shades of brown (beige, brown, etc.) is going to be a challenge lol.

Well I like gray and some other neutrals, so that's part of the problem lol. I doubt it would be a good idea to put it everywhere. And other than for ceilings and trim, I really do not want white. Specifically I was thinking of gray/gray-ish cabinets in the kitchen with black countertops. I'm (or DH) not a big fan of overly bright colors, so we're worried we'll end up with an extremely dark house. Black and gray everywhere! We're kinda like Lego Batman, "I only wear black and very, very dark gray" lol.

I will check out the blogs you listed and hopefully they will help us avoid that particular fiasco.

Hi, Becky,

I certainly applaud you doing some "homework" before setting out to design and build your new home. It will help ensure a better outcome. The challenge is to distill the universe of reference materials down to a couple that will give you appropriate insights and which don't require you to learn everything your architect, engineer, builder, and interior designer have learned from the time they graduated from high school. To that end, I'd recommend the following three (if a sermon should cover everything in three points, then your reading list should, too) :

Patterns of Home (The Ten Essentials of Enduring Design) by Max Jacobson, Murray Silverstein and Barbara Winslow (yes, I know this is the one you're having trouble getting through.)

The House You Build (Making Real World Choices to Get the Home You Want) by Duo Dickinson, AIA

The Brand-New House Book (Everything you need to know about planning, designing, and building a custom, semi-custom or production built house) by Katherine Salant.

I'd also recommend a homework assignment before meeting with your architect. Your home should be designed for the way you live. Spend time documenting your daily activities, where you spend your time doing them in your home, and those features of your current home that either enhance or detract from your ability to do so efficiently.

Best wishes for a success project.

Charles, I think you have me confused with Haley : ) .

But your post reminds me that Haley might find some of Virgil's recent posts helpful.

[What's A Well-Designed House?[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/whats-a-well-designed-house-dsvw-vd~5370217)

Tips for Buying Land, Designing and Building A Custom Home Part 1 of 3

Tips for Buying Land Designing & Building Custom Home Part 1 Continued

[Tips for Buying Land, Designing and Building A Custom Home, Part 2[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/tips-for-buying-land-designing-and-building-a-custom-home-part-2-dsvw-vd~5079485)

[Tips for Buying Land, Designing and Building A Custom Home, Part 2 continued[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/tips-for-buying-land-designing-and-building-a-custom-home-reposted-dsvw-vd~5213136)

[Tips for Buying Land, Designing and Building A Custom Home, Part 3[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/buying-land-designing-and-building-a-custom-home-part-3-dsvw-vd~5213150)

and also

What are you doing to make your house enrich your life?

Hi, Becky,

My apologies, the 60+ syndrome strikes again!

One of the best things we did was write out what we wanted in a house. Then we described each room, how we would use them, what rooms we thought would be nice to have nearby, which rooms would be nice to have a great view, etc. We wrote it all up. Then we left it alone. Didn't touch it for a week or more. Then we read it together to make sure we didn't miss anything or were waaaay off in what we wanted.

Charles, not to worry : ) . I have the same problem most days, but it's related to menopause and bane of multitasking!

Charles,
I do have "Patterns of Home". I've been working my way through it, but I will check out the others! As it stands, our current dwelling isn't exactly conducive to how we would like to spend our time, so it'll have to be how we would like to spend our time or how we would like to live.

Becky,
Thanks for the other links! I know I have come across a couple of those from Virgil, but not sure I've seen all of them.

Doc,
I have started working on a list of rooms I would like and what they would be used for (or at least attempting). DH doesn't seem too interested in it right now, but he'll eventually get around to it.

I haven't made it all the way through "What's a Well-Designed House?" yet. However, I have made it far enough to want suggestions on books to help determine style; be it house or decorating. I like aspects of many different styles, but I don't know how to define it/them or determine if one is more dominant than another.

Haley, if you're talking about determining styles of architecture, the book most often recommended here is "A Field Guide to American Houses: The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture" by Virginia McAlester.

As far as interior design/decorating, do you want the same look you have in your current house? Are you just having trouble figuring out if it has a name or ??

I've added the McAlester book to my cart! As well as the Versaci book that was listed in Virgil's post.

We didn't decorate our current residence and it has probably had the same decorations since it was built (early 1950s) lol. Definitely not our style. So probably more of trying to figure out if it has a name or how to categorize it? And making sure that if it's a combination of styles, they all flow together...I guess?