Architecture Guide Floor Plan Design: A floor plan is a planning tool that interior designers, pro builders, and real estate agents use when they are looking to design or sell a new home or property. Floor plans help you envision a space and how it will look when construction or renovations are complete. When developing your own home plan or office area (or contracting someone to do it for you), it’s essential to know what you’re looking for in a working or living space.
What is a Floor Plan?
A floor plan is a 2D graph drawing that shows the basic layout of a property in scale from an aerial view. The drawing shows the relationship between rooms and how people will move through them. Floor plans show how different design elements may look in a space or point to any potential flaws in the design, ultimately serving as the starting point before drafting actual blueprints for the building.
The Importance of Floor Plan Design | Architecture Guide
Floor plans are essential when designing and building a home. A good floor plan can increase the enjoyment of the home by creating a nice flow between spaces and can even increase its resale value.
What are the key characteristics of a good floor plan when designing your house?
- Versatile and flexible. Make sure in the future an office can easily be turned into a child’s bedroom whether for your family or a future buyer’s.
- Ideal room layout. Make sure bedrooms are far from entertaining spaces. Bathrooms shouldn’t face common entertainment spaces like dining rooms or living rooms. Most people will like if the kitchen opens to the dining or living rooms so whoever is cooking can still interact with guests or keep an eye on the kids playing.
- Size matters. Whenever designing any room or hallway, think about how many people will be in that space at one time. Do they have room to move around? Is there room for furniture to accommodate all the planned activities?
- Fits your priorities and lifestyle. If entertaining is important, make sure there’s a good flow from the kitchen to an outside space and living room. If you work from home, make sure your office gets ideal light and is perhaps in a quiet location. When you do laundry, is it ok if you have to climb three floors to get from your master bedroom to the laundry room?
- Find the balance between architectural details and practical considerations. Think about the safety of kids, cleaning, heating and cooling bill before falling in love with some majestic staircase or floor to ceiling windows.
Marketing and communicating with floor plans
Floor plans are also key in communicating the flow of your space to potential buyers or renters.
Rightmove released a study in 2022 that suggests that real estate buyers consider floor plans not just nice to have, but essential when looking at properties. One in five said they would ignore a property without a floor plan. They also rated floor plans more important than photos and the description of the property. On the flip side, when sellers consider hiring a real estate agent, Rightmove found that 42% wouldn’t hire an agent that didn’t offer a floor plan.
Adding a floor plan to a real estate listing can increase click-throughs from buyers by 52%.
You can also use a floor plan to communicate with contractors and vendors about an upcoming remodeling project.
How to Draw a Floor Plan
There are a few basic steps to creating a floor plan:
- Choose an area. Determine the area to be drawn. If the building already exists, decide how much (a room, a floor, or the entire building) of it to draw. If the building does not yet exist, brainstorm designs based on the size and shape of the location on which to build.
- Take measurements. If the building exists, measure the walls, doors, and pertinent furniture so that the floor plan will be accurate. If the layout is being created for an entirely new area, be sure that the total area will fit where it is to be built. It is advisable to examine buildings built in similar areas to use as an estimate for this floor plan. Learn more about how to measure and draw your floor plan to scale.
- Draw walls. Add walls for each room of the building, taking care to draw them to scale.
- Add architectural features. Begin adding features to the space by including the unchangeable things, like the doors and windows, as well as the refrigerator, dishwasher, dryer, and other important appliances that must be placed in a specific location.
- Add furniture. Add furniture if the floor plan calls for it.
Floor Plan Examples
The best way to understand floor plans is to look at some examples of floor plans.
Click on any of these floor plans included in SmartDraw and edit them:
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