I actually just browed the pre-designed floor-plan websites and took the structure i liked and showed it to my architect. From that reference my architect designed a similar plan that was set to our building requirements and budget. I would just say look at tons of plans online that way you can just combine what works for you. Also when you get something you like, posted it here and im sure people would have no problem critiquing it for you.

Ask the architect, that's what he/she does for a living.

Ask the architect, that's what he/she does for a living.

Well, gee, thanks. No need to be rude. I think perhaps you misunderstood the gist of my post or perhaps it wasn't clear. Thanks anyway.

We designed and drew our own and I have to say, we never looked at a single floor plan before doing ours.
I pretty much knew what I wanted and started drawing.

In hindsight, I definitely would have added a larger closet in the master....well, I still could but I prefer the larger bedroom space. It would have been nice to have made the house a few feet wider to allow for that.
I knew I wanted a very open floorplan on the main floor - kitchen, dining, and living rooms - and that is what we did.
I knew I wanted a cathedral ceiling.
Had to have tons of windows in the kitchen.
And one of the biggest things was designing the house around our amazing, 360 degrees of views.
Blending the exterior design with the interior was a fun challenge. I didn't want a typical front and center main entrance so we had to design the rooms with this in mind as well. Oh, and I can't forget the pond. We wanted to be able to see our fish from the dining room as well as our master, so we made sure that was accomplished. :)

It is quite a lot to think about. We may not have got ours perfect, but it is pretty close to exactly what we wanted.

It's kind of unusual, but when you do it yourself you can be different. :)

I actually enjoyed the process, but there are lots of numbers to crunch. DH and I were constantly measuring things such as tables, etc., to make sure we were making the spaces big enough.

Mamabirrd wrote:
"We designed and drew our own and I have to say, we never looked at a single floor plan before doing ours.
I pretty much knew what I wanted and started drawing."

This was true for us, too. There has been a LOT of tweaking along the way and we still aren't *quite* finalized! I think it is a trial and error process. Once you find something close to what you are looking for, spend a lot of time with that floorplan. I think after just playing with it a lot, looking at it a lot, talking about it a lot--it starts becoming more of a real space to you. If you are having trouble spatially, take a measuring tape to your living room, kitchen, etc., and figure out how the dimensions compare. We've done a lot of that: trying to relate the floorplan to real space and seeing how it "feels" to us.

Good luck! :) It is a fun process, but very consuming, isn't it?

We did the initial drawing of ours because we already knew how we wanted the rooms positioned. Then we brought that rough drawing to an architect and he fine tuned it for us.

In all the zillions of house plans I've since looked at, I can honestly say I've never found one that would suit our needs.

I think you need to draw up your initial thoughts. You don't have to be an artist. Just get a rough drawing down on paper and go from there.

I feel if you are building a house it should serve every single need you want and can afford in this house. So take advantage of that and decide exactly what you want and were you want to see it.

We did the initial drawing of ours because we already knew how we wanted the rooms positioned. Then we brought that rough drawing to an architect and he fine tuned it for us.

In all the zillions of house plans I've since looked at, I can honestly say I've never found one that would suit our needs.

I think you need to draw up your initial thoughts. You don't have to be an artist. Just get a rough drawing down on paper and go from there.

I feel if you are building a house it should serve every single need you want and can afford in this house. So take advantage of that and decide exactly what you want and were you want to see it.

I think the first step is to think how you live or how you want to live. Do you want an open plan in which the kitchen is open to the family room and breakfast room? Or do you want rooms that are more closed off? If you have kids, think in terms of how much seating space you need, say, in the family room. If you plan to use an interior designer, bring that person into the design process or at least have him/her reveiw the plan or give input to assure your furniture layout can be accommodated. Do you want all the bedrooms to be on the same level? If you have a parent or in-law, how much privacy can you afford them and yourselves? Think about how you entertain. If you grill out (BBQ) if you live up north, think how you will go from kitchen to grill and back. That is a huge consideration in the south.

The hardest thing for people to do is to visualize a floorplan in 3D. Try picturing yourself seated in each room. Think about daylight awareness, ceiling height, etc.

Good luck. It is an exciting process.

I knew the sq ft I wanted because of prior homes. I knew the layout somewhat based on the morning and evening sun and the available views, as well as what would go upstairs. From there I just developed the plan.

I think you have asked a VERY important question and I would hate for anyone to trivialize it.

It is true that architects are paid to design a plan that suits you. But your architect will not be a mind reader. He has to guess at what you want from your descriptions and then draw plans based on those guesses. You then tell him how close his first guesses are to your ideal and he makes changes until you agree that the plan - which describes his vision - matches your ideal. Unless your architect works with a computer program that generates 3D images - and unfortunately many architects still are semi-literate when it comes to computers - he has no way to communicate his vision to you except via his blueprints and any artist-renderings he has done for you. Most architects don't bother with artist renderings and even when they do, they are almost always drawn for the architect by some third party. So the artist renderings are sort of a visual version of the "telephone game"!

Thus, if you can't read the language of blueprints and VISUALIZE the living spaces from the floorplans, then there is no way for you to truly understand the architect's "vision" until the house is actually built. You could wind up quite unhappy with the finished product and have no recourse whatsoever because, after all, you approved the plans!

Frankly, it is beyond me how anyone can ever approve architectural plans if they can't visualize the final product that those plans describe.

But it is not hopeless. I think you learn to visualize from floorplans by seeing lots of examples of floorplans translated into homes. If you have any new subdivions being built in your area, stop in to the sales offices and walk through whatever show houses they have available. Many times the sales office will have copies of the floorplans (albeit simplified versions) of all the show homes that they hand out to potential buyers. Get those floorplans and walk around with them in hand. Study the floorplan as you look at the houses. Make notes about what you do and don't like.

It really doesn't matter if you're looking at low budget spec houses or high dollar "Parade of Homes" showplaces. After you look at a few dozen homes with their floorplans in front of you, you'll start getting a sense of how those lines and boxes translate into real living spaces. And the more you do it, the better you'll get at it.

When I was a kid, instead of window-shopping my mother and I used to go look at new homes all of the time. It was our mother/daughter thing to do. We couldn't afford even the lowest priced houses we looked at - but we could dream. We would study the plans and the houses and talk about how, if this were our home, we would have made it better by "moving this wall over by a foot" or "moving that door over to here" or "adding another window on this wall" or "widening the kitchen by two feet" or "dropping that 16 foot ceiling down to 10 ft in the powder room so you didn't feel like you were in the bottom of a well" or even "flipping the entire house left/right so that the morning light would come into the kitchen".

In the process I think I developed a pretty good eye for floorplans. I look at them and immediately see a full-blown house. I can walk around in my mind's eye and "live" in the resulting space. I know intuitively where the light switches need to be, whether a hallway is going to feel claustrophobically narrow, whether a bathroom is going to feel luxuriously large or is so big it'll just feel cold.
After we bought our land, I looked at about ten jillion floor plans and decided none of them was even close to what I wanted. So I drew my own plans and can tell you that - except for some problems caused by my builder not following the plans as drawn - the house is shaping up to look exactly like I pictured it in my mind's eye.

On the other hand, DH (who is a very smart and well educated man) can't visualize anything from blueprints. He admits he never looked at a floorplan before we started talking about building and he used exactly your words to describe his reaction to my asking if he liked this or that floorplan. Quote: "It is all just lines and boxes to me." Early on he refused to look at any more plans that didn't have accompanying photographs of a house that had been built from them.

Once I decided I was going to have to design my own house, I wound up using a CAD program that created 3D "walk through" images to show DH what I was designing. Even with the 3D images, I think DH ultimately just decided to trust that, after 30 years of marriage, I knew him well enough to know what he would like. Your architect is not going to have 30 years to get to know you! You have to be able to communicate with him and floorplans are the language he uses.

Another thing you can do to learn that language is, when you're in a house that "feels right," compliment the owners and explain that you're trying to choose a floorplan for your new home. Then ask if they would mind if you roughly sketched out their floor plan. Or if you're too shy to ask, duck into the powder room and make a rough sketch of all the parts of the house you can see while it is still fresh in your mind. Get enough of those rough sketches together and you'll start getting a better idea of what makes a plan appeal to you.

Also, get a 25 to 100 foot measuring tape and start carrying it with you everywhere you go. Every chance you get, measure the rooms you're in and notice whether they feel too big, too small, or "just right". You'll start getting a feel for just how big/small you want each of your rooms to be. (Your friends may think you're a little odd when you ask if you can measure their living room - but when you explain why, they'll probably offer to hold one end of the tape for you... but only if you ALWAYS tell them that their room feels "just the right size" to you even if its not. LOL! Be sure and measure the ceiling height too because that can make a huge difference in whether a room feels right.

When you're in a space that feels "right" to you, pay attention to how the rooms are connected to each other and especially how much of the next room over you can see when the doors are opened. Pay attention to how much window space there is compared to the total size of the room. Pay attention to how doors swing and what is behind a door when it is open. Pay attention to how much room there is to walk around furniture and whether the amount and size of the furniture is similar to your own. Pay attention to how many lights there are and where they are located. (Lighting has a huge effect on how a room "feels.") Pay attention to which direction the windows face in each room, how high off the floor they are situated and how far down from the ceiling.

The more aware you become of the living spaces around you and how they would be drawn on a floor plan, the better you will become at visualizing finished spaces when you look at a floorplan.

I hope this helps. But do remember, there is probably no perfect floor plan out there nor can the best architect design a house that meets your every desire. (Well, maybe if you have unlimited funds but few of us do!) Even with the plan I drew for myself, I had to make some compromises. One guest bedroom is longer and narrower than I would have liked (17'8 x 10'2") but that was the space I had available for it over my kitchen and redesigning the bedroom would have screwed up my kitchen design which I LOVE and wasn't willing to change. Since the guest bedroom is a workable size, I decided I could live with the long narrow shape. A compromise? Sure - but my choice. My guests will probably never know that I agonized over it. LOL! My library doesn't get at much natural light as I would have liked because it faces north and there is a wrap around porch that blocks much of the light to the library windows. But I LOVE that wrap-around porch which is a major design element of my home. And my library needed to be where it is so that I could open it up to the great room when we have large parties. I can always put a few more lamps in the library. So again, I compromised on the library but it was my choice.

I do hope all this helps.

I bought several books on house design and construction and spent hours and hours studying the plans in the plan books and on the commercial plan mill websites. I learned what makes a house work and what doesn't. Perhaps most importantly, I learned just how bad some of the available plans are.

Next, I bought some home design software and started playing with it. After some false starts, I had a pretty complete design for a country style house that was to be built on our property. Then we decided to buy property elsewhere.

The design would not fit our new property, which had a different exposure. Before I could start a new design, we stumbled onto a passive solar design that we liked a lot. The main floor was pretty much what we wanted, but the basement wasn't even close. We bought a study copy of the plan.

I took the architect's floor plan and redrew it using my software, stretching the house four feet, and completely redesigning the basement. I also enlarged the garage and added an attached workshop. When my wife and I were satisfied, we sent it back to the architect, who produced finished drawings for us. In the process, a few minor changes had to be made to accommodate structural and aesthetic issues.

jenswrens
My advice was sincere but I don't feel comfortable elaborating on this site because it draws a lot of sniper fire but since I have apparently offended you I will say more.

Many people think that it is best to already have a plan selected before meeting with an architect and that's fine with me. But it has been my experience that such an approach limits or at least slows down the design process. I believe that if you want to get your money's worth out of an architect you should first choose a good one, then give him/her the relevant design parameters, discuss it in detail and then let them do what they're good at. I also believe that the floor plan is not the best place to start when designing a house.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to know the value of a stranger's opinion on the internet and I find that some of the strongest opinions, even though well meaning, are based on the least experience. The need to control all aspects of a design process is understandably prevalent on the internet so it is necessary to seek other opinions.

So, follow your own instincts or the advice of internet chat rooms or that of a professional as you see fit but please don't throw away an opportunity to see what a professional can offer without some careful thought; it's the first and possibly the most important step in a long and difficult process. I and others here will try to help but we cannot know you or your project as your architect can. Good luck with the project. I need to armor up and get low.

Lots of great advice!! I will add, once you have a floor plan that you think you love and is perfect for the way you and your family live, just be sure you can afford it before you sign any contracts!! Get several/many bids and have as many of your finishes picked so that you can understand that finishes can make or break your budget among other things.

Side note: Did I miss something? Mavc are you really Mightyanvil? Just wondering!

I spent months looking at floorplans online and also bought a few magazines (often times saw the same ones in both places). I could never find one that was EXACTLY right but after awhile I started printing out the floor plans and cutting various rooms from them and roughly putting them together on a large sheet of paper.

For instance, I knew I wanted a certain layout of a master bedroom and when I found it -- or something close -- I'd cut the bedroom from the plan and try to piece it in my own plan.

Eventually I had everything pretty much the way I wanted it and then took it to an architect who put it all together.

However, right at that time, a newly-built home came up for sale and we ended up buying it and our building plans were no longer needed. (We do have the property for sale where we were originally going to build and we are including the plan to the buyer if they're interested...)

I didn't have a computer program to put everything into for a 3D view, but my teenaged daughter had a SIMS game and she would put the layout into her game and we actually got a pretty good view of the house that way! LOL!

Now we are building a "carriage house" across the street from our new house. It's a garage with a small house. (We have to build a home because it's zoned for residential and we couldn't build just a garage.) That was so much easier to find a floor plan and we ended up purchasing one online with no changes that worked perfectly for us. Was originally about a 700 sq ft living area but our GC modified the plan with the engineer and added another bedroom where attic space was supposed to be.

Eventhecatisaboy,
I think Mightyanvil is Macv.
He did not need to change nicks but it is his choice.
I am glad he stayed in the forum since he offers great help.

Here are my 2 cents (we just finished our build). The lot will likely place constraints on the layout of rooms, window placement, etc. - just keep that in mind. Also, our architect employed a detailed questionnaire that we answered, in writing, before our first meeting with him. It covered how we used each room, our daily habits, etc. It went a long way in helping him and us figure out how to design the house. Good luck.

We found a plan that had a similar exterior and layout to what we like then we made ALOT of changes to make it right for us, then we took it to an architect who made some adjustments to make it all work. We found our plan on House of the Week in a newspaper, they have lots of plans to search through online.

We wanted our master up too, it was hard to find a home that had an exterior that we liked with the master up, so we just kept looking till we found one to work from and went from there.

It is kinda scary to build a house without seeing it ahead of time but after working on our floorplan for so long we practically could do a virtual tour in our heads! Good luck to you!

I also meant to suggest that you consider reading "Designing Your Perfect House - Lessons from an Architect" by William J. Hirsh. It is available on Amazon.com and is very readable.

Thanks to everyone for all the great advice! Bevangel, your post really hit the nail on the head. I've just ordered that book from the library - can't wait to go get it.

I never realized there are so many things to think about - the daylight awareness, ceiling height, the walk from the grill outside to the kitchen (never would've crossed my mind!), the views.

I have started measuring the rooms in this house (so I know what is NOT working for me), and I'm planning to go to a lot of open houses this Sunday just to get a "feel" - and yes, I'll be hiding in the powder rooms sketching the floorplans! LOL!

Also, I downloaded a trial copy of Home Designer Pro and played with it for hours yesterday, putting in plans I thought I liked. That really helped me start making the transition from those "lines and boxes" to a spatial visualization, although it still doesn't really feel the same as a real walk-through.

Thank you, macv, for the elaboration. I'm curious, where IS the best place to start when designing a house?

Anyway, thanks again! Yes, it's exciting, but also very daunting. I was exhausted yesterday, and all I did was sit on my butt reading and drawing. :-)

I designed our floorplan. I think if you get some of the Susan Saranka (?) small home books, they have sections about how to start working on a floor plan... something about putting little circles on a sheet to just show "flow", not worrying about sizes, etc to begin with, then you work from there.

For me, I knew exactly how DH and I live our lives and exactly how I wanted rooms to flow. I knew I wanted to come in from our garage into a mudroom that moved directly to the kitchen to make carrying groceries easy. I knew I wanted the LR attached to the kitchen because I don't like being isolated in the kitchen cooking while DH is watching TV, so I wanted the rooms to be joined.

I knew that we wanted our master BR on the main floor. I knew I wanted the laundry close to the master, and I wanted the laundry/masterbath/mastercloset/master BR to flow from one to the other.

From there the layout was pretty simple. Details were NOT simple, but the general layout was. You really need to think about how you live your life and how you spend your time in your home. Even if you don't want to design your house yourself, only YOU know how you live your life. Where you go when you come home, how you move throughout the house, what rooms you use and don't use. Take a lot of time in this process, it's well worth it. There are only a few minor things DH and I would change, and it's a result of over a year of planning the floor plan. It suits us perfectly.

Also, I downloaded a trial copy of Home Designer Pro and played with it for hours yesterday, putting in plans I thought I liked. That really helped me start making the transition from those "lines and boxes" to a spatial visualization, although it still doesn't really feel the same as a real walk-through.

That's the software I used, although I'm sure you are looking at one or two revisions later than the version I have. Assuming they haven't changed it, the Pro version is actually a downgraded version of Chief Architect. The two are compatible, and Home Designer Pro can use some of the same libraries and custom 3D objects.

A visit to the Chief Architect forum can provide you with links to some of the sites with free 3D objects.

A previous poster was referring to the books by Sarah Susanka. She's got a series that includes "Not So Big House" and others and I also found her books/philosophy helpful, highly recommend. She inspired us to cut spaces we didn't really need - living room (instead office/library that doubles as living room), breakfast room (instead small built-in breakfast nook), etc.

This is defianitely the place to come for advice on building! There are so many insightful people! Dh and I looked at magazines and floor plans online for about 2 years before we built our house. We also took into consideration the placement of the house on the property(rural build) to enhance the HVAC, etc. I agree that it can be very overwhelming and we actually "downsized" and chose a different floor plan from what we first picked out. Money was also a factor and together, with our builder, we came up with a plan that still offered what we wanted plus storage but it was a more "efficient" floor plan. We purchased it off the internet and the builder made some minor changes. It is a huge undertaking but so rewarding!!

Good Luck!