Stairs are the first thing to go. What replaces them is a set of design decisions that are easy to get wrong.
Ask a downsizer what they want and “single storey” comes up before anything else. Ask a second question and the real list appears: a laundry you can turn around in, a shower without a hob, and somewhere to put a car that is not a carport.
Getting this right is less about square metres and more about circulation. A well-planned 2-bedroom villa can feel considerably larger than a poorly planned 3-bedroom one.
The details that matter are unglamorous: door widths, the fall on an outdoor area, whether the meter box is somewhere you can actually reach.