Having your home custom built is one of the most exciting projects which you can possibly embark upon. Once finished, your home will have your fingerprints all over it and it will be designed in such a way that it will fit perfectly with your lifestyle. Before you even get started looking for custom builders, however, you need to have decided on your floor plan. This will be the nucleus of the custom design and it is here where everything starts.
Thinking up a floor plan seems like an incredible opportunity yet working from a blank page can seem pretty overwhelming. For this reason we want to share with you some tips on where to start when designing your own floor plan.
Start With Space
This process will start off as something very loose and gradually you will hone in on the finer details around exactly what the floor plan will look like. To kick things off, start thinking about how much space you would like, think about what you’d like to have inside each room for example, and which room will be bigger than others. Perhaps you’d like a principal bathroom with a freestanding bath, or an island in the kitchen, an en suite for the master bedroom. These ideas are exactly where to start with your plan.
Get Inspired
The next step is to do some research and take some inspiration from what others are doing with their floor plans. Perhaps take a look at how people have found creative ways to partition off spaces, or perhaps some have spoken about mistakes which they have made, creating a dining room which they never used for example. This research is particularly important, because one of the factors that can influence the time it takes to build a custom home is the creation of the floorplan. The quicker you establish exactly what you want means the quicker the house can be built, so heed the advice of others to make sure nothing will need changing at a later date. To also help you do this, you can go back to your loose ideas and start firming up a walkthrough of your new home, thinking more deeply about how the rooms could flow.
Speaking With Experts
There is nothing wrong with picking the brains of some custom home builders to see what they think of your ideas, and what experience they have. These teams build custom properties all of the time and they see a wide range of floor plans, they can certainly offer some advice to guide you in the right direction.
Envisage Your Life
As rudimentary as it may sound, picturing yourself living in this property is one of the best ways to gain an understanding as to what you want to see regarding the floor plan. Picture an average day, waking up, walking to the bathroom, getting dressed, heading down for breakfast, coming home, entertaining guests, playing with the kids etc. Whatever your day looks like, picture it and this will help you to spot little details which you may miss if you are just planning with pencil and paper. Do you really want to walk 20 feet from bathroom to bedroom, dripping water on the carpet? What if you are cooking and the kids are playing, how far away are they? The floor plan is about fitting in with your life, not current trends or styles.
This floor plan is about your own personal requirements and the overall functionality of a home, think, be inspired, plan, envisage and take advice to get the perfect plan in place.
