Why Hallways Are Disappearing From Floor Plans In Many New Homes

"Less is more." You hear it all the time, and when someone's trying to convince you to settle for less, you might have reasons to doubt it. But when it comes to designing (and paying for) our houses, less hallway space is often better. Architects often refer to hallways as "circulation spaces," which hints at their limited utility, yet they're as expensive as other finished square footage. Entry hallways can be cluttered storage spaces, and grand foyers might feel like unnecessary extravagances, while poorly planned interior hallways can present lighting challenges and, at their worst, become maze-like corridors full of closed doors.

Fortunately, the alternatives are pretty good. Without hallways, you can either directly enter common areas from outside or from private areas, or vice versa, or you might move directly from one common area to another. If this sounds like open-concept, you're right. After all, minimizing circulation space is where open floor plans came from in the first place, and it's natural for an entryway to open into a living area like a den, especially when that area is also open to other common areas like a kitchen. Besides, an entryway can be created with styling rather than a discrete space. And entertaining lifestyles (whether real or aspirational) fit nicely with this free-flowing concept.

Per the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (USHUD), the average size of a new home in the U.S. is shrinking (notwithstanding a slight upturn at the end of 2024). As a result, designers and developers have been looking at ways to make square footage more intentional. They've landed on a few strategies to get the most out of a home's cost: Fewer hallways, larger kitchens and outdoor living areas, and more flex spaces.

Start designing a new home by thinking through the purposes of hallways, and making sure those are covered in your hall-less floor plan. Halls are transitional spaces that separate (and therefore organize) functional areas. They preserve privacy for areas like bedrooms and afford natural storage for shoes, bags, and coats. They're even useful for displaying art and aesthetic elements.

Architects and designers inevitably accomplish hallway excisions with open floor plans. Trends like larger kitchens and outdoor spaces are a natural fit, and flex spaces can fill functional gaps that missing hallways leave behind, like buffering common and private areas. A more satisfying way of looking at all this might be thinking in terms of removing transitions between common areas and improving the flow between indoor and outdoor areas. Place rooms strategically; if your goal is to reduce noise between common and private areas, flex spaces, closets, or utility areas like laundry rooms can be used as acoustic insulation. When hard transitions seem necessary between common areas, consider using inventive room divider ideas rather than full-height walls.

For a bit of out-of-the-box inspiration, consider the genius of traditional Japanese architecture, where the major characteristics of minimalist architecture were already the norm, but hallways weren't. Homes necessarily had genkan – entry spaces where shoes were removed and stored. However, the corridor function of hallways was largely replaced with engawa, a sort of covered outdoor hallway that also functions as a veranda, terrace, sunporch, or even workshop. Engawa are generally meant to be all of these things, as well as indoor-outdoor transitions that encourage the viewing of courtyards and garden spaces.