The Cheapest Square Footage in a South Carolina Home Is Outside

More than two-thirds of new homes built in the United States now include a porch: 67.2 percent in 2024, just off the all-time peak the year before, and 74 percent across the South Atlantic region that includes South Carolina (NAHB, 2025). There is a good reason the number keeps climbing. As construction costs rise, an outdoor room extends a home's living space for a fraction of the cost of heated, cooled square footage. In the South Carolina climate, a covered porch is not a luxury add-on. It is some of the hardest-working space in the house, if the plan is drawn to make it work.

Why outdoor space is the cheapest room you can add

A covered porch, a screened room, or a patio extends usable living space at a fraction of the cost of conditioned square footage, because it is not framed, insulated, heated, cooled, or finished to the same standard. In a climate like South Carolina's, that space is comfortable much of the year.

The demand is real and rising. Patios and front porches rank among the features new-home buyers most want (patios 86 percent, front porches 81 percent), and interest in outdoor kitchens (55 percent) and fireplaces (59 percent) has grown over the last decade (NAHB, 2024). Architecture firms report outdoor living among the most popular special-function rooms in new homes (AIA, 2025).

In South Carolina, the screened porch is the hero

For the Midlands' hot, humid summers, a screened porch is often the most-used room in the house: it opens the home to the outdoors while keeping the insects and the worst of the sun out. A screened porch averages about 200 square feet in new homes (NAHB, from Home Innovation Labs survey data).

A covered or screened porch that opens off the main living space effectively extends the great room outward for much of the year, and does it for far less than adding the same footage under air conditioning. In the South Carolina climate, that is space you will use for much of the year, at a fraction of the cost of conditioning it.

It only works if it is designed in

Outdoor rooms are won on the floor plan, not bolted on later. The roof line, the ceiling height, the door and window openings, the sightline from the kitchen, and the electrical and gas rough-ins are all set by the plan. Add a porch after the house is built and it costs more and rarely flows.

• Place it off the room you actually live in, usually the kitchen and great room, so it extends daily life
• Draw the roof and ceiling height together so the porch feels like a room, not an afterthought
• Rough in power, and gas if you want a grill or fireplace, while the walls are open
• Line up doors and windows so the indoor and outdoor spaces read as one
• Orient it for shade and the view, the same way you would a window

Does outdoor space hold its value?

Outdoor features tend to return well. A new wood deck recouped about 95 percent of its cost at resale in the 2025 Cost vs. Value Report, and homeowners rate outdoor projects among their most satisfying: a new patio earned a Joy Score of 9.9 out of 10 (National Association of Realtors, 2023).

Those are remodeling and resale figures, so treat them as directional rather than a promise. But they point the same way as the buyer-demand data: outdoor living is space people want, use, and value, and it is cheapest to get right on the plan.

How Divine Homestead Design approaches it

We treat the porch and patio as part of the plan, not an add-on. That means placing outdoor rooms off the spaces you use, drawing the roof and openings so they flow, and roughing in what they need before the walls close. Our tiers make it fit any budget: Tailored Stock selects and adapts a plan whose outdoor space already works, Semi-Custom reshapes a plan to open it to the outdoors, and Fully Custom designs the indoor-outdoor connection from the first sketch.

If you are planning a build around Lake Murray, Lexington, Chapin, or the surrounding areas, ask your designer to solve the outdoor rooms on the plan, not after the framing is up. We are glad to help you find the space you will actually live in, inside and out.