How to: Design plans

Designing your home is a very important process of home building; in fact it may be the most important step. You cannot start building your home until you have a workable design. Design planning is exciting but make sure not to let your excitement distract you from the importance of a logical, well-thought design plan.

 The first step of ensuring that you create a good design plan is to make a list of all of your families current and future needs and desires for your home to meet. Things you should consider include the following: how many bedrooms do you need, what size would you like the bedrooms to be, (don’t forget about adequate closet space.) what kitchen floor plan will best meet you families needs. Do you want to include an eat-in kitchen or would you prefer a formal dining room. (Or both) The list can be as long as you need it to be, the most important thing to remember when making your list is include as much detail as you can. More then likely you have never built a home before so it may be beneficial to you to drive around the neighborhood and jot down the details about the houses you see that catch your eye. This should get your creative juices flowing.

Another good option to help inspire your design plan is to flip through the pages of home design magazines and books, your local home improvement store, like Lowe’s or Home Depot has racks full of these. Your next step in creating a good design plan is to draw your floor plans out. A pencil and Graph paper are good tools to get this step accomplished. Your floor plans need to be drawn to scale. To do this, make a block or inch on your graph paper equal to a specific distance. An example of this is 1 inch = 4 feet, or 1 block = 4 feet. If you find drawing your own floor plan to be overwhelming consider using home design software instead.

 The last step to creating your design plan is to contact an architect to draw up the building plans for your new home. If you follow these three steps then you should be able to create a successful design plan for your house.