Size the home forhow you gather.
Two questions size a Sarawak home more than any floor plan does: how many people it holds at once — open house at Raya, CNY or Gawai, the full family on a Sunday — and how many generations live in it every day. Most homes have the floor area; they lose it to an entry that can't absorb the crowd, circulation that bottlenecks at the kitchen door, and seating no one planned past the household. This is not about a bigger house. It's about where the space goes. ELS designs and coordinates; ALUMAX supplies and installs its products.
The households where hosting scale and who-lives-in decide the plan, not the finish.
Size it before you build
A home feels tight not because it is small, but because it was sized for the average day. Use these rules on the peak.
| If | Then |
|---|---|
| You host thirty or more at open house | Size the entry, shoe storage and serving line for the peak arrival, not the average day — the pinch is the first hour, at the door. |
| Three generations live in | Plan reach and thresholds for the oldest and youngest — step-free where it counts, generous door and passage widths, a grab-point that reads as design. |
| The gathering spills outdoors | The indoor-outdoor threshold and the wet/dry serving split carry the crowd — not the living room alone. |
| Everyone removes shoes at the door | Treat the shoe-off threshold as a designed zone, not a mat — seating, closed storage and a dry-to-clean transition. |
| A helper lives in | Give the room its own access, a wet point and storage near the laundry — private and serviceable, not carved from a shared space as an afterthought. |
What a gathering actually sizes.
An open house is the day the home is judged — by the most people, all at once. Five things carry it, and none of them is the size of the living room.
Sizing for several generations.
When the oldest and the youngest use the home every day, they set the dimensions — and accessibility done early is invisible, while done late it's a retrofit.
What the sizing design covers
ELS turns your hosting scale and household into a sized, buildable plan. It's a design lens across the home, not a room — and the numbers are confirmed against your actual space after the survey.
- A capacity brief — peak hosting numbers and who lives in
- Entry, shoe storage and serving sized to the peak arrival
- A gathering circulation plan — loops, not bottlenecks
- A flexible-space plan for everyday vs full
- Multi-generational reach, thresholds and privacy lines
- Storage sized per household under the roof
- A live-in helper's room — separate access, wet point, laundry-adjacent
- Roof-space storage assessed for access, heat and load
- Structural extensions or adding floor area — a builder's scope
- Loose furniture supply — specified, then sourced separately
- Statutory accessibility certification — where a project requires it
- Guaranteed capacity numbers before the site survey
How to prepare for the Pre-Check
A few honest answers make the sizing faster and the plan truer to your home.
- Your biggest gathering of the year — how many, and where they end up
- Who lives in — and who visits often and stays over
- The oldest and youngest daily users of the home
- Whether the gathering spills outdoors
- Where it already fails — the pinch point today
- A floor plan or rough sketch if you have one
Based in Sibu — across Sarawak by appointment.
Soalan lazim
Isn't this just designing a bigger house?
No — it's a smarter-sized one. Most Sarawak homes already have the floor area for how they host; they lose it to circulation that bottlenecks at the kitchen door, an entry that can't absorb thirty pairs of shoes at once, and seating that was never planned past the household. Sizing is about where the space goes, not how much you have — so the day the house is full, it works, and the other 360 days it still reads calm.
We only host a few times a year — is it worth designing for?
Those few times are exactly when the home is judged, by the most people at once — Raya, CNY, Gawai, a wedding or a funeral. Designing the flexible space and the entry threshold costs little on top of an everyday layout, because it reuses the same rooms; it just decides in advance where the crowd goes. The alternative is a house that feels tight on the one day it matters most.
How do you design multi-generational without it feeling like a care home?
By making the reach decisions read as design. A bench at the door is also the shoe store; a wide passage is simply generous; a grab-point is a well-detailed rail, not a hospital fitting; the ground-floor room for a grandparent is the best room, not an afterthought. Accessibility done early is invisible — it's just a home that happens to work for everyone in it. Done late, it's a visible retrofit. ELS plans it in from the start, sized to the oldest and youngest who actually live there.
Can you tell us the numbers before a site visit?
Only indicatively. Real circulation widths, seating counts, shoe-storage and thresholds are confirmed after the site survey, against your actual home and the way you actually gather — never presented as fixed before it. The Design + Specification service starts from RM1,500 (excl. SST); the sizing work sits inside it, and the fee is creditable on a qualifying project. What you get is a plan sized to your peak, not a rule of thumb borrowed from someone else's house.
Related ELS services
Every path starts the same way — the free Pre-Check tells you which one your project needs.
How You Live
Heavy cooking, open house, multigenerational, shoes-off — how you live decides which decisions matter most.
OpenRoom Decision System
Every decision in a room — air, water, power, surfaces, storage — shown three ways: use, cost direction, look.
OpenRenovate in Phases
Agree the whole masterplan once, then build in the right order so no phase demolishes the last.
OpenNot sure which you need? Start with the free Renovation Pre-Check — two minutes, and your next step is clear.
Start ELS Pre-Check