How To Draw A House Blueprint

Make Your Ain Design

How to Describe Floor Plans past Hand or with Abode Design Software

This Make Your Ain Design tutorial will walk you through the detailed steps of how to draw floor plans for your new dwelling house blueprint. This process can be followed by those drafting their blueprints by hand or using home blueprint software.

For this tutorial, we are assuming that you have already completed your firm design sketches. If you lot are just starting out with your home design, check out our free Home Design Tutorial.

Page Sections at a Glance

Drafting Options
Tools to Brand Your Own Blueprints
Using an Architect'southward Calibration
The Blueprint Page Itself
Depict Outside Walls
Depict Interior Walls
Locate Doors and Windows
Describe Electrical Symbols
Label Floor Surfaces
Dimension Your Plans
Add together Furniture
Create Window Schedule

Drafting Options

At that place are basically two ways to brand your own blueprints.

Using home design software
Drafting past hand

At that place is also the option of doing a bit of both.

Some may ask why would anyone brand their own blueprints by hand when we take many relatively inexpensive home design software products available.

Hither are some practiced reasons:

It takes a long time to truly acquire how to employ the house design programs to completely generate the cross sections, framing and other pattern details that yous need to become your building plans approved.
Near of the inexpensive programs (less than $250) do non generate the kind of details required for full structure drawings.

Nearly of the home design programs can produce accurately dimensioned flooring program drawings of the quality required for your building let. But for some programs this is as far as yous can go with the construction drawings. What views remain are the cross-sections, elevation views, and any necessary framing plans. This is where you may have to brand your own blueprints by hand or utilize a more full-featured (and more than expensive home design program).

I am non suggesting to stay away from domicile design programs entirely. Rather a skillful arroyo if you desire to keep costs down is to do some drawing with design software and some mitt drafting.

The home design programs are great for allowing you to draw floor plans in 2D then visualize them in 3D. You tin can easily move walls as you lot refine your design. The pattern programs allow you to quickly generate views of your ideas and designs. You can then easily modify the drawings as you lot drag and drop piece of furniture, appliances and fixtures into the blueprints. Often, you'll realize non plenty space has been immune for certain areas once the fixtures are in or perhaps you are wasting infinite in some areas.

Whether you lot are using abode pattern software or drawing your blueprints by hand, the first drawings to start with are your floor plans. Using your own floor plan sketches or your results from the Depict Floor Plan module of our house design tutorial, start by drawing the exterior walls of the main story of your home. (The sequence detailed beneath for drawing floor plans by hand is a good ane to follow if you are using design software likewise.)

Your local art supply shop should accept all the of drawing tools yous volition need to make your own blueprints. You tin can also society most of these supplies online. A good supplier is Utrecht Drafting Supplies.

Architect's calibration
T-square
Adaptable triangle
Mechanical pencils with leads
Felt tip pens
Erasers
Erasing shields (for authentic erasing of merely specific parts of your drawing)
Compass
Symbol template
Long metal ruler or straight edge
Tracing paper
Masking tape
Utility knife
Big flat working surface (table)
White poster board as a base for your working surface
Optional only nice:
Parallel ruler (for cartoon parallel lines — alternatively you can also use a T-foursquare)

How to Use an Builder'south Scale

To make your own blueprint to calibration you will use an architect's scale. Builder's scales are very simple to utilise, no math required.

For business firm plans, you should exist using a scale of ane/4 inch to a pes for the floor programme drawings. This is written every bit 1/4":1'. This means that every quarter inch you draw on your folio represents 1 human foot for the existent business firm as it will be built. So i inch on your drawing would represent iv feet of the built house.

Detect the side of the triangular scale which has 1/iv":ane' marked on it. The numbers on this side of the calibration correspond feet for your built house. So if y'all needed to draw an outside wall 36 feet long, y'all would:

Lay the calibration down on the newspaper
Make a small pencil marker on your paper past the goose egg mark on the scale
Make another modest pencil mark on your newspaper by the 36 mark on the scale
Use your metal directly edge to draw a straight line connecting the ii marks.

This line would measure 9 inches on your cartoon and would represent 36 feet for the built house.

When finished your drawings must have all room dimensions accurately marked. But building trades people volition oft use an architect'south scale (or ruler) while they are building to bank check various dimensions on your drawings. So for this purpose make certain that yous use you scale accurately for every line you draw.

The Design Page Itself

To make your own blueprint floor plans, use a sail of paper 24" by 36". Lay the canvas down on your working surface with the longest edge running horizontally.

The lower correct mitt corner of your cartoon you will save for your title cake. This is where you will write the name of the view you are drawing (flooring plan, acme, cross section), the scale of the drawing, the name of the house (could just be the family unit proper noun), designer'southward name and appointment. The date is very of import peculiarly when yous brand changes to your plans. Everyone on the building site needs to know what date version of the plans they should exist using.

We ran into this upshot when our physical footings and post pads were being poured. Luckily I was watching the pour when I noticed the pads for the structural posts were being poured in the wrong location. I talked with the coiffure and found they had an one-time set of drawings. We moved the wood framing for the pads and so hand shoveled the poured concrete over to the correct location.

Draw Exterior Walls

Start by drawing the outside walls of your design. Yous will want to roughly middle your outset flooring programme view in the space on the paper bachelor excluding the championship block. And then before yous draw your first wall, utilise your scale get a rough thought of how much space on the page your commencement flooring plan will need.

For this tutorial nosotros will move in a clockwise direction starting at the upper left hand corner of your drawing. You lot can choose how y'all will orient the home on the folio. Information technology is fairly standard to have the front end door at the lower side of the horizontal sheet simply depending on the design or shape of your home y'all may want to modify this.

For the floor plan drawings you will draw the framed walls, interior and exterior. That is you will non be drawing the finished dimensions of the rooms once drywall or other finished wall surfaces are installed. Other drawings will detail finished surfaces of exterior and interior walls as required.

The structure drawings for the floor plans need to be properly dimensioned for the framing crew. The room size departure with the drywall installed is very small and will simply make almost an inch of difference for any given room (a half inch of drywall on either side of the room). But at that place may be parts of your blueprint where being out by an inch volition crusade problems (for example if you are pre-ordering custom or stock cabinetry).

First from the upper left hand corner of your floor programme design. At this signal exercise not worry about doors and windows, we will draw them in later.

Use a pencil, your architect's calibration and a straight border to depict what the full inside dimension of the start wall volition be until it meets some other wall (your exterior walls could be anywhere from several inches to a couple of anxiety thick—for a straw bale dwelling house for instance).
Employ your T-foursquare (or a protractor for a wall not at a square angle to the previous wall) and builder'southward scale to draw the adjacent wall.
Go on in this fashion, clockwise effectually your cartoon until the within framing side of all of you outside walls are drawn.
Finally, draw the outside of the exterior wall framing. If you are framing with 2 by 6s, your outside framed walls will be five 1/ii inches thick (2 past 4s and 2 past 6s are run through a planer that takes a half inch off both their width and thickness).

Draw Interior Walls

For your interior walls:

Depict both sides of each interior wall. If you will be using 2 by 4s to frame your interior walls, the actual thickness of each framed wall will exist 3 1/2 inches (as explained above at the end of the cartoon exterior walls section). Initially, simply describe each wall, we'll locate doors and any openings later.
Draw walls effectually any stairwell areas. This helps visualize the stairwell area as a room. If at that place will not be a physical wall around the stairwell just draw a faint dotted line.
Describe staircases and any mid-stair landings within these walls.
Describe an arrow labeled "up" in the upwardly management of the stair.

Describe Doors and Windows

The adjacent step every bit you brand your own design is to depict your doors and windows onto the flooring plan. For each door, window or wall opening on your floor plan:

Use your scale to locate its position.
Draw the appropriate door or window symbol from the blueprints symbols glossary to properly identify it.

Characterization Rooms

In the center of each room, conspicuously characterization the room proper name. Include closets and open spaces such every bit entrances.

Locate Appliances, Plumbing and Fixtures

Using your scale, symbols template and direct border, describe the correct symbols for:

All appliances
Built in furniture such as kitchen and bathroom cabinets and counters
Plumbing items such as sinks, toilets and tubs
Fireplaces
Equipment such equally furnaces, air conditioning units and water tanks.

Draw Electrical Symbols

All electrical symbols should now exist added to your plans.

Place the appropriate symbols along walls for the following electrical items:

Plug outlets
Wall switches for lights or switchable plugs
Wall light such as sconces
Doorbells

For ceiling mount items, draw the following fixtures on the floor simply beneath the spot where the item would be installed.

Ceiling lights such equally pot lights or track lighting.
Smoke alarms

Label Floor Surfaces

Item the plans by indicating for each room how the floors will be finished and any required sub-flooring. For case your plans may read:

3/4" hardwood floor
ane/4" tile over ane/ii" plywood sub-flooring
Carpeting over v/8" plywood sub-flooring

Dimension Your Plans

The next step on your flooring plan drawings is to describe authentic dimension lines. You will need to draw dimension lines for:

Each room
Closets
Chiffonier depths
Distances from wall to dorsum of toilet (know equally the rough in dimension)
Sizes of tubs
Distances from walls to edge of any appliances or fixtures.

Note that not all required dimension lines are shown in the plan below—this is for ease of viewing. One more dimension line should run forth each exterior wall to locate all window and door openings.

Add Furniture

Piece of furniture should not be included in your construction drawings but for your own pattern purposes information technology is a proficient idea to employ scaled furniture cutouts during the blueprint procedure to ensure y'all have designed adequate space for all rooms and circulation paths. See our tutorial module Draw Flooring Program for more information and furniture blueprint symbols.

Create Window and Door Schedule

The final stride to brand your own blueprint is to create a window and door schedule.

On your floor plan:

Label each door and window with a number or letter.
In a blank expanse to the right of the floor plan, create a iii cavalcade list.
Put all the labels for your door and windows in the outset column.
List window and door types in the second column (casement, canopy, fixed, single hung, etc.)
List the exact window size in the third column.