#Online house plan drawing how to
Some great ideas will come up when you're not worrying too much about how to build it. The sanity check for your designs should always be, “Can we build this?” (Along with, “Do we want to build this?”) But don't let that question stifle your initial design efforts. A change in flooring, ceiling height, paint color, a rug, partially open shelves or a half height wall may define one space or "room" from another. Oftentimes other design features will take the places of walls. For an open concept home these "walls" will be more figurative than real. I mentioned firming up the walls of your indoor bubble diagrams. We went back and forth with many different designs where the eating area was right in the kitchen, across a peninsula or island or, as it turned out in the final design, adjacent and open to the kitchen. I'm a big fan of the farmhouse kitchen where the eating area is in the kitchen and there is no formal separate dining area. One of the big variants in our designs was the kitchen and the dining area. We also had other bubble diagrams for which we did rough sketches. This was one of many rough sketches during the draw floor plan stage of our home. (It is rotated to match the orientation of the bubble diagram above.) The second is a simpler and more economical option.īelow is my sketch that ended up forming the basis for our main floor house plan. The second floor plan has a simple rectangle for its exterior shape. The first plan is a rectangle with three bump outs. Next are two rough sketches, with the walls firmed up, for possible floor plans. Do lots of these.īelow is the main floor bubble diagram for the 1 1/2 story house from our bubble diagram exercise. By doing them as simple sketches you can sketch them wherever you are using a notepad (or a paper napkin), indoors or out.
You don't have to be an artist for this stage. Whether you will end up drawing blueprints by hand or using home design software, I suggest that initially you draw floor plans as simple hand sketches.