How well will you actually live in this house, on this block?
The ILR is a 0–10 rating of the lived experience a specific floor plan delivers on a specific parcel — winter sun where you spend your days, stepping straight out from living to the backyard, a home that sits naturally on the land's fall. Every half point is backed by deterministic, published math. No opinions, no AI guesswork.
Livability, not energy. NatHERS energy stars are a separate, regulated rating.
One real plan, 32 orientations — only one is the best way to live.
We take a real single-storey plan from our builder catalogue — a different one each visit, shown anonymised — and score it at all 16 lot bearings, for both the standard and the mirrored plan, on a Melbourne demonstration lot with survey-backed levels. That is 32 scored orientation candidates of the same house on the same lot; tap any dot to see what that orientation rates. The engine picks the winner deterministically — the same inputs always produce the same rating.
Dot colour is relative to this plan’s spread — red is the worst of these 32 orientations, green the best. The rating seal is coloured on the absolute 0–10 scale, so the two deliberately disagree: a dot can be the best here and still not be a strong rating.
- Solar orientation× 0.55
- 80.0
- Setback & transition× 0.25
- 97.6
- Floor levels× 0.20
- 90.8
Across all 32 orientations this plan does best E mirrored — 9 out of 10 at 92.6 / 100, 6.0 points ahead of this one.
Mirroring the plan moves the garage — and the living-zone glazing — to the other side of the lot, so the best left-drive and right-drive orientations can rate differently. Tap a side to rotate the dial to its best orientation; the carousel above follows to whichever format that orientation belongs to.
This worked example scores orientations on a fixed demonstration lot; it never sites the house. Rate a real address to see the plan placed inside that address's setback envelope, with a fit verdict and the full review behind the rating.
Rate a real address — right now.
Pick any Australian street address. We resolve the actual cadastral parcel, read the land's contours where our mirror has coverage, and score a randomly selected anonymised catalogue plan at all 32 orientations through the real deterministic engine — no sign-up, no AI guesswork.
Then the winner is actually sited: the placement engine derives the buildable envelope from this address's setbacks, searches for one real position for the house inside it, and draws that single placement on your lot with an honest fit verdict. The dial on the result opens the full review behind the number.
Three things that decide how a home lives.
These three are scored 0–100 each and weighted into the composite. The weights are fixed and published: solar orientation 0.55, setback & transition 0.25, floor levels 0.20. They are what the site decides — how this plan meets this block.
North light where you spend your days
Winter sun in the living room, a kitchen that is bright at breakfast, bedrooms that are not west-facing ovens in February. This is the single biggest driver of how a home feels to live in.
The math: The existing deterministic livability engine scores every room from its glazed walls, window provision and the lot bearing — 0–100, climate-zone aware, unchanged by ILR.
Walk out level from living to the backyard
Kids running straight from the meals area onto the grass. No awkward flight of steps between the couch and the barbecue, and enough separation from the northern fence that winter sun still reaches the yard.
The math: Three subcomponents: transition quality (−12 points per riser, halved by an alfresco platform), northern-boundary separation against idealSeparationM(lat), and private-open-space utility with the northern-neighbour level trade-off.
A home that works with the slope, not against it
On a sloping block, the right split levels feel effortless — and a slab benched into a hill with a retaining wall and a staircase to the lawn never does. On a flat block, a single level is the honest answer.
The math: Earthworks balance (cut ≈ fill scores 100 × (1 − |net|/(cut+fill))²), entry-transition risers (−10 each), split-level expectation round(fall / (7 × 0.19)), and internal accessibility (100 − 6 per riser).
How good the floor plan is in the first place
The three factors above measure fit between a plan and a block. They cannot tell you whether the plan was any good to begin with — so the plan's own design grade, an address-free assessment scored against comparable plans, caps the rating we will issue. A mediocre plan sited perfectly cannot bank a high rating on site fit alone. It never enters the weighted composite. See the ceilings and why it works this way ↓
ILR and PILR — honesty about the evidence.
How a home meets the ground decides how it lives on a slope — so the quality of the elevation evidence decides the rating's designation. Ratings built on built-outcome survey or LiDAR floor levels are a full ILR — a dial whose sweep fills the band to full depth. Contour-derived (or no) elevation evidence yields a Preliminary ILR (PILR) — a dial whose sweep fills only the inner half of the band — never silently upgraded, always labelled with its source and confidence. Preliminary describes the strength of the elevation evidence, never the quality of the home; the shallower sweep carries that difference in greyscale and in print, not colour alone.
A partially-assessed rating: an engraved seal, and the 8.0 ceiling cut into the dial band.
Withheld: a band is only issued when solar orientation and at least one site factor could be assessed. Below that the composite score still stands, but the dial stays empty rather than showing a fabricated zero.
Livability, not energy. NatHERS energy stars are a separate, regulated rating.
Insitive Livability Rating™ by Insitive
Elevation sources follow a strict precedence — survey > LiDAR > contours. A missing source degrades confidence; it never fabricates data.
| Elevation source | Designation | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Built-outcome survey | ILR (full sweep) | High |
| LiDAR | ILR (full sweep) | Medium |
| Contours | PILR (inset sweep) | Preliminary |
| None | PILR (inset sweep) | Low |
Confidence is additionally bounded by factor coverage: if any factor is unassessed, confidence cannot exceed preliminary, and the rating is capped at 8.0.
Every rule is a closed-form function you can check.
The full methodology is published. Here are the formulas doing the heavy lifting.
Northern separation, from winter sun geometry
How far should the living zone sit from the northern fence so winter sun still lands in the yard? It falls straight out of the winter-solstice noon sun angle at your latitude:
winterNoonAltitude(lat) = 90° − |lat| − 23.44° idealSeparationM(lat) = clamp(1.8 m × cot(altitude), 2.0, 6.0)
- Melbourne (−37.8°): altitude 28.8° → ideal ≈ 3.3 m
- Brisbane (−27.5°): ideal ≈ 2.2 m
- Hobart (−42.9°): ideal ≈ 4.1 m
Continuous in latitude — no hand-maintained city table. Below the ideal, the score falls quadratically: the last metre of separation matters most.
Steps, splits and earthworks
Level changes are converted to 190 mm risers and penalised where they hurt daily life, and rewarded where they are the right answer to a slope:
- Living → backyard: −12 points per riser; an alfresco platform halves the penalty of the flight it interrupts.
- Front door: −10 points per entry riser; a porch landing halves it.
- Split-level expectation: on a fall of f metres, the right number of splits is
round(f / (7 × 0.19))— each split ≤ 7 risers. Deviations cost 15 points each, and every riser beyond 7 in a flight costs a further 8. - Earthworks balance: score = 100 × (1 − |cut − fill| ⁄ (cut + fill))² — a balanced pad beats a scarred site. Under 15 m³ total movement is near-flat: 100 outright.
- Accessibility: 100 − 6 per internal riser; zero steps and at-grade entry earns a +5 bonus.
What your orientation is worth, as a percentage
Every plan is scored at all sixteen compass winds, in both mirror states. That makes two comparisons possible — how far this siting falls below the best orientation available to the plan, and how much the plan cares about rotation at all. Both are a share of the best orientation's composite score, which is the only denominator either figure uses:
gap% = (best − as-sited) ÷ best × 100 spread% = (best − worst) ÷ best × 100 rank = position of as-sited among the winds rated
- Computed on the uncapped 0–100 composite, not the issued band. The band is capped, so a percentage taken from it would report “no improvement” for exactly the plans where a ceiling is binding.
- Compared within one mirror state. Flipping the plan moves the garage and the living-room glazing — a different product decision, reported separately when it would help.
- A property of the plan. The banked comparison runs on a climate-neutral baseline, so it describes how much rotation moves this design — not a prediction for one address.
- When a ceiling absorbs it, we say so. If the composite improves but the issued rating cannot move, the surface says the rating would not change rather than implying an upgrade you would never see.
- No rating, no aspect, no number. A plan with no banked set, a lot with no derived aspect, or an orientation that could not be rated shows as not available — never as 0%.
This is a liveability comparison only. It is not an energy, running-cost or bill figure, and it is not a NatHERS-adjacent claim.
A calibrated 0–100 → rating band table.
The composite score maps to 0–10 in half-point steps — the dial's sweep advances one segment per half point, never as a smooth fill. The bands are deliberately non-linear: a typical well-designed new home lands at 6–7, and every half point above 8 is hard-won. 10 is reserved for the near-perfect outcome on every factor.
When a factor cannot be assessed, its weight is renormalised across the remaining factors, the effective weights are returned with the result, and the rating is capped at 8.0 — a partial-coverage rating is never passed off as a full one. A band is only issued at all when solar orientation and at least one site factor could be assessed; below that the composite score is returned with the band withheld.
The design grade sets a ceiling — it is never a fourth factor
Beside the site-aware rating sits the design grade: a permanent, address-free view of the plan itself, scored against comparable plans and unchanged by where it is built. Site fit alone must not bank a high rating for a mediocre plan, so the design's standing among comparable plans caps the issued band. It never enters the weighted composite — a constant added to every orientation would compress the very spread this rating exists to show.
- Top decile
- Uncapped
- Upper-mid (≥ 50th)
- Max 8.5
- Mid (≥ 25th)
- Max 7
- Bottom quartile
- Max 5.5
Standing is a cohort percentile, so it survives a rubric recalibration. Ceilings stack with the 8.0 partial-coverage cap, and a plan whose design is unscored is declared unassessed and left uncapped — never given a fabricated standing.
Deterministic and versioned. Every rating carries its methodology version (ilr-v2.1). No LLM participates in scoring — every rule is a closed-form, reviewable function — so the same home on the same lot always rates the same, and re-rating under a future methodology never overwrites the earlier record.
| Rating | Score | Rating | Score | Rating | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0–11 | 3.5 | 47–51 | 7 | 76–79 |
| 0.5 | 12–17 | 4 | 52–55 | 7.5 | 80–83 |
| 1 | 18–23 | 4.5 | 56–59 | 8 | 84–87 |
| 1.5 | 24–29 | 5 | 60–63 | 8.5 | 88–91 |
| 2 | 30–35 | 5.5 | 64–67 | 9 | 92–94 |
| 2.5 | 36–41 | 6 | 68–71 | 9.5 | 95–97 |
| 3 | 42–46 | 6.5 | 72–75 | 10 | 98–100 |
Lower bound inclusive. Bands are pinned by golden tests — any change is a methodology version bump, not an edit.
See how a home will really live.
Rate an address here and open the full review behind the number, rate a home on the map, or put the ILR behind your own product through the API — the same deterministic engine every way.
Livability, not energy. NatHERS energy stars are a separate, regulated rating. Insitive Livability Rating™ by Insitive.