How to Make Your Own Floor Plan
Everyone dreams of owning that perfect home. Online plans are generic and not customized to suit your needs. Hiring an architect can be an expensive affair. With a little bit of concentration, research and focus, you can design your own home. After all, who knows what you need better than yourself? Look over home design magazines and collect clippings of things that interest you. Be prepared to devote some of your time towards designing your home floor plan. Does this Spark an idea?
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Instructions
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How to design your home floor plan
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Sit your family down and decide the total square feet you would like your home to be, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms you need, whether your home is to be single or double story and if you want any extra rooms, like a family room, a gym room, a home theater room or a library.
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Begin designing your floor plan. Draw the boundaries of your plot on the graph paper, choosing a scale that you are comfortable with. For example, you can choose one box to represent 10 square feet. The scale you choose depends on the size of the graph paper and the dimensions of your plot.
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Check the setback requirements in your area, and mark the minimum setbacks for your plot. Your home plan must fall within this inner boundary.
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Determine the flow of circulation around your home. Decide where to position your driveway, the ideal location for your garage, and where would you like to enter your home from. Take your surroundings and flow of traffic on the adjoining roads into consideration.
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Design the interiors of your floor plan. Envision where you would like to position the various rooms of your home. You can begin by creating a flowchart or a bubble diagram---represent each room of your home by circles of different sizes, and mark them on your graph paper. Then, draw arrows between the circles, denoting the flow of circulation. This forms the base idea which you can then translate to your floor plan.
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Starting from your entry point, begin positioning the rooms of your home. Each line on your graph paper will represent a wall. Decide on the total square feet area (multiply the width and length of the room) that each room will represent. The easiest way to understand the concept of area is to keep an inch tape handy. You can use your current home or a friend's home as a reference, measuring the rooms with the inch tape to determine what would be the ideal square footage you would need for your home. The size of the rooms of your home ultimately depends on you and your requirements. Here are some basic area guidelines for homes that you can follow:
Dining Room: Between 125-200 sq.ft
Living Room: 175-330 sq.ft
Master Bedroom: 145-300 sq.ft
Bathroom: 40-80 sq.ft
Kitchen: 135-300 sq.ft -
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Mark your doors and windows, and create your furniture layouts. Look at your plan many times, from different angles and see that all your needs are met. Your home is now ready to pass onto your builder.
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Tips & Warnings
Once you have designed your home, there are plenty of online sources that can help you develop your home further (see Resources). When positioning your windows, consider your surroundings. Try to focus your windows on pleasant views.
