I think you have been watching too many reality TV shows that paint women as territorial princesses. A relationship is a partnership too, it is not just about love and trust, it is also about respect and consideration and having empathy for the other person's feelings and needs, two people living and working together for the good of each other. Each partner will have strengths and weaknesses and complimenting each other in this regard makes for a good relationship provided respect, empathy and consideration is shown, so no one partner should dominate in any aspect to this degree or even think about it. Even the most design challenged person should have some say in the environment they live in.

Some great comments and thoughts from you all. Trends are a consumer marketing tool to encourage you to continually spend and buy their products... A home should be a living curation of things you love that work for you and nobody else. Yes there are some design principles you can follow but these are a guide and should be considered along with the space, it's purpose, the light, the people and much more. Instead of buying more, consider what you have and carefully select things to complement them - update by changing things around and making sure YOU love the style and it suits the way YOU live!

My house is also built at the top of a hill, the summit and is cut into a cliff. We bought it, it was built in the 90s and the orientation is entirely wrong. The living areas face west and all bedrooms are in the east. The master is exposed to the western and the northern sunshine. It’s nice in the winter and entirely unbearable in the summer. The same goes for my living room. We take extra long holidays in the summer to avoid being at home. The home had no insulation in ceilings, and raked ceilings. So the first thing we did was remove the roof sheeting install battens to create a cavity and installed R3.5 insulation. We are also upgrading installing new windows to upgrade the glazing on the western windows and looking to put insulation in all the walls It also gets really windy, so windy. So I understand your concerns. When it gets windy the entire house shakes. So the next thing will be to improve the bracing. There is a 3-4metre clearance under our home for storage. We could do a build in under. Even with the positioning of our shed and close proximity to the home it does little to shelter from the wind. We are considered the building an “outdoor room” which would act as an alfresco with skylights, lounge, pool and kitchenette that could act as an outdoor entertainment area when weather permits. I just did a sustainable design for a client nearby. I am so jealous of her amazing home. Her land is smaller then my land and her land cost the same price as my house and land. So I am grateful for what I have.

Sorry to say but I'd suggest it's worse in some aspects. The doglegged entry flow (still) from front/street is not ideal and entry position blocks prime light into the sitting. Generally the planning still could be more streamlined. It's not ideal having the main access flow from the stair through the upper level living space. A more centralised stair would be far better, for both levels, now it involves moving into the secondary formal sitting space to access upstairs. I'm actually working on a project at the moment where the previous architect did exactly this rendering the front sitting space pretty much useless (slap forehead), and so now the new owner clients are faced with having to unpick/pull it apart to get the stair properly configured and positioned so the associated spaces flow and function properly. Imagine here wanting to move from the pool to your master bedroom - you'd have to move through essentially the whole house - it's not efficient movement configuration. You have in some areas of the design arguably oversized and undersized areas/spaces for the function, which means the balance is not right in the planning. For example there's an abundance of voids upstairs and massive swing room in the master bedroom, but then downstairs the laundry is tiny and there's unusable flow space between the dining and the living space. You still have issues with overlooking from the alfresco, which would mean screening on the north. Site restrictions are not an excuse for obviously compromised planning, rather they need to be negotiated cleverly so they're not obvious or noticeable and the design is not forced.