Floor area is capped at 90 square metres, which pushes design decisions toward efficiency. Here is what that looks like on current builds.
Written by Serge, Founder, Kelowna Carriage Homes
With floor area capped near 90 m² (about 970 sq ft), Central Okanagan designs increasingly go up rather than out, using a ground-floor garage or parking bay with living space above. That approach also helps meet the roughly 14% accessory-building site-coverage limit that applies on smaller lots.
Matching the main house’s roof pitch and siding is a recurring choice, less because bylaws demand it everywhere and more because it protects resale value and eases design-review discussions where they apply. A carriage home that reads as a small, deliberate house rather than an afterthought tends to hold value better.
Hardie board fibre-cement siding, wood-look steel panel, and stucco remain the three most common exterior choices in the region, priced within a similar range of each other. Window count and glazing area move the cost more than the cladding material does.
An open-plan kitchen and living space with a separated bedroom, in-suite laundry, and a covered entry distinct from the main house’s entry are now close to standard tenant expectations rather than upgrades. A layout that ignores any of these tends to rent slower or for less, even at the same square footage.
Heat pumps for both space heating and cooling have become the default mechanical choice on new secondary units in BC, helped by the CleanBC rebate of up to roughly $5,500, stackable with a BC Hydro rebate up to $2,000 (BetterHomesBC rebate program). A heat pump also avoids running a second gas line out to a detached structure.
A small private patio or yard segment, physically separated from the main house’s outdoor space, is increasingly treated as a design requirement rather than a nice-to-have, since it is one of the features tenants use to justify rent above the CMHC average for the area. The required parking stall is being folded into the landscaping plan rather than left as bare pavement, partly for curb appeal and partly because some neighbourhoods weigh it in design-review comments.
The 90 m² cap and one-unit-per-lot rule stay fixed regardless of design style, so the real design lever is layout efficiency, not overall size. Two designs at the same square footage can feel meaningfully different in how usable the space is.
See carriage homes for how design fits into the full build process.
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