Design tips & trends
What you need to know about living on acreage
An acreage home means you don’t have to choose between indoor amenity and outdoor space. If you're looking for the best of both worlds, an acreage home offers both spacious indoor living and private and peaceful space to play.
But is acreage living all fun and games? What are the pros and cons of acreage living? We’ll outline the main benefits and disadvantages to help you decide whether living on acreage is right for you.
What is acreage?
Also known as a ‘country home’ or a ‘homestead’, an acreage home is a larger house built on land that is close to or bigger than one acre.
In the metric system, an acre equates to 4,047 square meters. How big is that? Think of nine basketball courts or 16 tennis courts! And, of course, that’s just one acre. Many acreage homes are built on land covering many acres in size.
The Lansdowne home design with Rural façade, on display in Bungendore.
What to consider when building a home on acreage
By definition, an acreage home will be located outside a city centre, meaning that you will enjoy country vistas from your house as well as a sense of relaxed community life with neighbours nearby but not right outside your window. Of course, that location can also mean increased travel, whether to work or school.
In terms of the house itself, the main consideration is whether you like the idea of a larger home, as most acreage homes take advantage of the extra land space available. There’s also important practicalities like checking water, power and sewer connections.
You’ll be looking through expansive windows that allow plenty of natural light into the home and enhance the sense of indoor-outdoor life. Al-fresco living and entertaining areas will be a feature, with options to expand these to suit you and your family once you’ve settled in.
Acreage homes are usually single-storey, thanks to the ability to spread out a larger home all on the one-level, making them ideal for multi-generational living. The extra space available allows for flexible floorplans, wide hallways, grand entrance ways and more spacious rooms.
Let’s look more closely at the pros and cons of acreage living.
The Yanderra home design with Majestic façade.
What are the benefits of living on acreage?
- Space to move, live and play: Whether you’re keen on more bedrooms or larger living spaces, an acreage home will have you covered. Depending on your family’s needs and wants, there will be options for a larger kitchen, perhaps completed by a butler’s pantry, or enviable options such as a cinema room.
- A natural outlook: Forget looking out onto your neighbour or fencing! An acreage home allows you to enjoy big windows with views onto both your own garden and greener pastures beyond, as well as taking advantage of Australia’s big skies.
- Peace and privacy: Your country-style acreage will mean you can live your life with less noise from traffic and neighbours. And, you can enjoy entertaining and watching your kids play outdoors without any worry of disturbing others nearby.
- Indoor-outdoor living: Larger, light-filled and more open-plan rooms combined with plenty of space outdoors means that you can take indoor-outdoor living to a whole new level. Enjoy al fresco dining and undercover outdoor entertaining spaces, as well as having plenty of room for the option of a pool or private tennis court.
- Room to change and grow: An acreage home gives you enormous scope to flex your set-up for different stages of your life, including accommodating a growing family.
What are the cons of acreage living?
While there are so many advantages to living on acreage, it’s important to consider any downsides:
- Increased travel: While your extra space will be wonderful while you’re at home, the location of most acreage homes means you’ll be travelling further to work (unless, of course, you’re able to work from home), for children to school (hopefully there’ll be a great school bus stop nearby) and for leisure activities (though, of course, you’ll have more of these available right at home).
- More maintenance: Larger land means more mowing (unless your acreage property is more bush-block style), weed-management and other gardening. A larger home can also mean more cleaning and maintenance. You might also have infrastructure like water tanks, pumps and sheds that will need looking after. The benefits of this maintenance, of course, is continued pride in your home and garden.
The family room in our Lansdowne 31 display home in Bungendore.
Where does Rawson Homes build acreage properties?
Keen to find out more? If you like what you’ve been reading and want to further explore the delights of acreage homes, please check out our acreage house designs and/or book a time to visit our brand new acreage home display, the Lansdowne, located in Bungendore, just 20 minutes from central Queanbeyan and around 30 minutes from northern Canberra.
