What is a great room and how do you design one in a custom home?

Instead of a small separate living room, a closed formal dining room, and a walled-off kitchen, the great room combines all three into one connected space where a family lives, cooks, eats, and gathers together, usually under a tall ceiling. In Arizona custom homes the great room is almost always the heart of the house, the room that opens to the covered patio and the desert view through a wall of glass.

Designing a good great room is about proportion and control. A space this big can feel grand or cavernous, comfortable or loud, cool or hard to cool, depending on a handful of decisions. Below is what a great room is, how to set its ceiling and proportions, how to handle the glass and patio connection, and how to keep it quiet and comfortable in the heat.

What a great room is and why it anchors the home

A great room is the open central space where the main daily-use rooms combine, and it anchors the home because everything else connects to it. Walk in the front door of a typical Arizona custom home and you arrive in the great room. The kitchen sits on one edge, the dining area in the middle, the living seating beyond, and a wall of glass opens to the patio and yard.

The great room grew out of the open-concept plan, where walls between the kitchen, dining, and living rooms come down. For the full comparison of open-concept layouts and how bedrooms split off from this core, see open-concept vs split-bedroom floor plans. The great room is the most generous version of that idea: open, tall, and central, often two stories or with a vaulted ceiling.

It anchors the home in two ways. First, it is the room everyone uses most, so it gets the best light, the best view, and the connection to the outdoors. Second, it organizes the floor plan around itself. The bedrooms wing off it, the entry feeds into it, and the patio extends from it. Get the great room right and the rest of the plan falls into place around a strong center.

Ceiling height and proportions

Set the ceiling height and room proportions first, because they decide whether the great room feels grand or cavernous. This is the single biggest call in designing one.

The 2018 IRC R305.1 sets the legal floor: habitable rooms must have a ceiling at least 7 feet high. That is the minimum for any room, not a target. A great room is the place you go well above it. Common great-room ceilings run 10 to 14 feet for a single-story volume, and a two-story or vaulted great room can rise to 18 feet or more. The taller the ceiling, the grander the space, but also the harder it is to furnish, light, and cool.

Match the ceiling to the floor area so the room feels balanced. A tall ceiling over a small footprint feels like a well; a low ceiling over a big footprint feels heavy. A rough guide is to scale the ceiling up as the room widens, so a 20-by-25-foot great room carries a 12-to-14-foot ceiling well, while a smaller open area is happier at 10 feet. Vaulted, beamed, or coffered ceilings add character and break up a large flat plane, which is why exposed wood beams are so common in Arizona great rooms.

Plan the vertical space, not just the floor. Tall windows or clerestory glass high on the wall bring light deep into the room. A two-story great room can borrow a loft or a catwalk above. And remember that every extra foot of height is more wall to finish, more air to condition, and taller scaffolding to build, so height is a real cost, not a free upgrade.

Glass, light, and the patio connection

Design the glass and the patio connection together, because in Arizona the great room is the room that opens to the outdoors. This connection is what makes the space feel twice as large and ties the house to the desert.

The signature move is a wide opening along one wall: a multi-panel sliding glass door or a pocketing glass wall that disappears into the framing, so the great room and the covered patio become one space. For how to design that whole transition, see how to design indoor-outdoor living flow. The wider the opening, the more the patio reads as part of the room.

Orientation controls whether all that glass helps or hurts. The U.S. Department of Energy advises that windows meant to collect light should "face within 30 degrees of true south," and that in cooling climates "an overhang or other devices, such as awnings, shutters, and trellises will be necessary to block summer solar heat gain." For an Arizona great room, that means favoring north and south glass for soft, even light, shading it with deep patio overhangs, and protecting any west-facing glass from the brutal afternoon sun. A great room that opens west without heavy shade turns into a greenhouse every summer afternoon.

Specify the glass for the heat. Low-E, low-SHGC glass cuts solar heat gain through these big openings. The covered patio itself acts as a giant overhang, shading the glass for most of the day. Done right, the great room gets the light and the view without the heat penalty, and the indoor-outdoor connection works nine months a year.

Acoustics, cooling, and the kitchen

Plan the acoustics, the cooling, and the kitchen placement last, because a great room's open volume amplifies both noise and heat load. These are the details that make a big space livable rather than just impressive.

Sound is the first problem. Hard floors, tall walls, and big glass bounce noise, so a great room can echo and feel loud when full. Tame it with soft surfaces: area rugs, upholstered furniture, drapes at the glass, and an acoustic ceiling treatment if needed. A two-story great room is the loudest version, so plan soft materials from the start.

Cooling is the second. A tall open volume holds far more air to condition, and heat rises to collect at the top of a vaulted ceiling. Three moves keep it comfortable in Arizona. A right-sized, often zoned air conditioning system handles the volume. Large ceiling fans push the warm air back down and move air across the room. And where walls or floors use block, stone, or tile, that thermal mass buffers the temperature swing. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory notes that thermal mass "causes a time lag in the transfer of heat as well as a dampening of peak temperatures," which works well in the dry desert. See our thermal mass glossary entry.

Kitchen placement ties it together. In most great rooms the kitchen sits on one edge, with a long island facing the living and dining zones so the cook stays in the conversation. The catch is mess and smell traveling across the open space, so many Arizona luxury homes add a back kitchen or scullery, a small hidden prep-and-cleanup room, to keep the main kitchen clean and the great room calm. A strong range hood vented outside handles the rest.

The takeaway is that a great room is the room your home is built around, so design it deliberately. Set the ceiling and proportions to feel grand without echoing, plan the glass for light without heat, control the sound and the cooling, and place the kitchen to anchor the space without dominating it. Walk the proportions and the glass wall with your builder on your real plan, since the ceiling height and the opening width are structural choices that are expensive to change later.

How Jematell Homes helps

Setbacks, overlays, and ADU rules shape our design work from day one. We would rather answer your questions before you build than after, so get in touch any time.

Sources

• U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Saver: Passive Solar Home Design
• 2018 IRC R305.1 (Minimum ceiling height)
• PNNL Building America Solution Center: High-Thermal-Mass Construction