Ten years ago, the wish list for a luxury custom home in Utah was predictable: big kitchen, big master, big theater room. We built a lot of those. Some of them are still perfect. A fair number have a 12-seat theater nobody has sat in since 2019.
After 400+ homes across Salt Lake, Summit, Wasatch, Utah, and Davis counties, we can tell you exactly which rooms clients ask for now — and, more usefully, which ones they actually use two years after move-in. Here’s what’s changed and why it matters when you’re planning square footage.
1. The wellness suite replaced the home gym
A home gym used to mean a treadmill in the basement next to the water heater. What clients ask for now is a real suite: rubber or cork flooring, 10-foot ceilings (mirrors and overhead lifts need the height), dedicated mini-split HVAC, a floor drain, and increasingly a sauna or cold plunge just off the room with its own waterproofing detail.
The mistake we see most: putting the gym in a windowless basement corner because it’s “cheap” square footage. People don’t use dark rooms. The gyms that get used daily are the ones with a window and a view — even a modest one. In our mountain builds, that’s often a walkout lower level facing the canyon.
Budget reality: a proper wellness suite with sauna and plunge runs meaningfully above standard finished basement cost, mostly from mechanical, waterproofing, and electrical. Plan for it in schematic design, not as a change order after framing.
2. The scullery (or “messy kitchen”) is now near-standard above $2.5M
The open-concept kitchen has one flaw: everyone can see the mess. The fix that’s caught on is a second working kitchen behind the main one — second dishwasher, second sink, prep space, small appliance storage, sometimes a second range.
What makes a scullery work is not size, it’s path. It needs a direct route from the garage or mudroom so groceries never cross the show kitchen, and a direct route to the dining table. If you have to walk through the island to reach it, it becomes a pantry with a sink.
- Good size: 60–100 sq ft is plenty for most families
- Non-negotiable: real ventilation if you’re putting a range back there
- Skip it if: you entertain rarely and cook simply — the money buys better main-kitchen appliances instead
3. Two offices, not one
Hybrid work didn’t go away, and in dual-income households one office is a source of friction. The version we build now is two rooms with sound separation — not two desks in one room. That means insulated interior walls, solid-core doors, and offset door placement so video calls don’t bleed.
The smarter move on a tight footprint: build one true office near the entry (clients and deliveries) and one flex room upstairs that can be an office now and a bedroom later. Frame it with a closet or the space for one, and you protect resale.
4. The theater shrank into a media lounge
Dedicated tiered theaters are down sharply in our project mix. What replaced them is a lounge: big screen, sectional, wet bar, good acoustics, and lighting you can dim — but it doubles as a game room, a place teenagers hang out, a spot to watch a game with ten people.
If you’re deciding between the two, ask an honest question: in the last year, how many times did you sit in the dark for two hours with no phone? For most families, the answer argues for the lounge.
5. Bunk rooms and real guest quarters in mountain builds
In Promontory, Tuhaye, Victory Ranch, and the rest of the Park City corridor, the home is often a gathering house. Bunk rooms — four to eight built-in beds with individual lights, outlets, and curtains — sleep the cousins without adding four bedrooms of square footage. Cost per sleeping spot is a fraction of a full bedroom suite.
Paired with that: a guest suite with its own entry, mini kitchen, and laundry. It’s what makes long visits from parents or in-laws work, and it’s the single most requested addition on our Summit and Wasatch county projects right now.
6. The mudroom got serious
Utah is a gear state. Skis, bikes, hunting, dogs, mud from April through June. The mudroom that works has: a dedicated dog wash, a heated floor (gear dries), individual lockers rather than one long bench, and a boot dryer circuit. Add a second washer/dryer if the family skis — sending wet base layers upstairs is how you end up with a laundry pile in the kitchen.
7. Garage bays as living space
Four bays is the new three, and the extra bay is rarely for a fourth car. It’s for a workshop, a golf simulator, a boat, or a conditioned toy garage. If a sim is even a maybe, tell your builder before framing: you need 10 feet of ceiling clear of any lights or ductwork, plus a deeper bay. Retrofitting it later means structural work.
8. The pantry-adjacent “command center”
Small room, big impact: a 40–60 square foot nook off the kitchen with a desk surface, a charging drawer, a printer shelf, a calendar wall, and a door that closes. It’s where the household actually runs — permission slips, mail, keys, the stuff that otherwise lives on the island.
Clients almost never put this on the original wish list, and it’s the room they mention most often when we check in a year after move-in. If your plan has a coat closet you don’t need, this is what it should become.
A note on square footage vs. finish level
Here’s the tradeoff nobody enjoys hearing. On a $2M budget in Salt Lake or Summit County, adding 600 square feet of secondary rooms is roughly the same money as moving your entire home up one finish tier — better windows, better millwork, better mechanicals throughout. Both are legitimate choices. What isn’t legitimate is pretending you can do both and finding out at framing.
Our general rule: build fewer, better rooms. A 5,200 square foot home finished properly outperforms a 6,400 square foot home with builder-grade windows and thin trim, both to live in and at resale. The rooms on this list are worth it when they replace square footage you weren’t going to use — not when they’re layered on top of it.
What’s fading
- Formal living rooms. Almost nobody asks anymore. The square footage goes to the great room or the scullery.
- Jetted tubs. Replaced by large walk-in showers with steam, plus a freestanding soaking tub if there’s room.
- Wine cellars as rooms. Still popular, but shrinking into glass-front conditioned displays near the dining area instead of a 200-square-foot cave.
- Oversized formal dining. Trending toward one large table adjacent to the kitchen that does both jobs.
How to decide what makes your plan
Every one of these rooms costs money, and square footage is the single biggest lever on your budget. Our advice, in order:
- Track your actual life for two weeks. Where do you spend evenings? How often do guests stay? How many nights a week does someone work late from home?
- Rank rooms by weekly use, not by aspiration. A gym used four times a week beats a theater used four times a year, even if the theater sounds better at a dinner party.
- Decide before schematic design ends. Ceiling heights, drains, and structure are cheap on paper and expensive in the field.
- Model the cost. Run the numbers with our custom home cost calculator before you fall in love with a floor plan — it will tell you fast whether your list fits your number.
The homes that age best aren’t the ones with the longest room list. They’re the ones where every room earns its square footage. If you want to walk through your wish list with someone who’s built 400+ of these across Utah — including the ones where the theater never got used — get in touch with our team. We’ll tell you straight which rooms will pay you back and which ones won’t.
