Small House Plans & Floor Plans (2024)

FAQs

How to design a small house floor plan? ›

Keep an open floor plan. Walls are the enemy in small house design, so keep them at a minimum. Connect to the outdoors. With small house floor plans, even the outside of your home is a functional part of your living space, so make the most of it with a large wrap-around porch to connect the indoors to the outdoors.

What is Considered a "Small" House Plan? On average, small house plans tend to be those less than 1500 square feet (about 140 m2). Yet, depending on where you live, you can find some people who think 2500 sq ft (230 m2) is a small home. Others insist that a small house plan must be under 1000 sq ft (92 m2).

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You can certainly create your own floor plan without being a proffesional as long as you have the right tools and a bit of creative inspiration. Sketching out ideas yourself will help communicate your vision to the architect when you need to have a professional blueprint drawn up.

Size - Since the median size of a single-family home in the United States is around 1,600 square feet, a home that is 900 to 1200 square feet is considered a small home. Overall, small homes are typically larger than 350 sq ft.

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The average size of a tiny house is 400 square feet or less, while a tiny home on trailers is 8.5 x 40 by 13.5 feet or 320 square feet overall. You could expand as large as 1,000 square feet assuming you wanted to. However, this size is more common for smaller houses. It all varies depending on what you need.

The IRC codes require that all homes must be built on a minimum of 320 square feet. The minimum square footage for a house is 120 square feet, and at least one room must be habitable. Habitable rooms meet other regulations, such as needing a closet and at least one window.

The cost to hire a floor plan designer ranges between $800 and $2,700, or an average project cost of about $1,750. Rates start at $50 and go as high as $130 per hour for a draftsperson to draw up blueprints or a house plan.

Floor plans are scale drawings that show the relationship between rooms, spaces and physical features viewed from above. They provide a way to visualize how people will move through the space.

Is there a free app to draw house plans? ›

There are several free floor plan creators available, depending on your specific needs and preferences. Some of the most popular free options include Planner 5D, RoomSketcher, SketchUp and Floorplanner.

Build your own house online

Draw your dream house to life online with home design tools and templates on Canva Whiteboards. Simple to use for newbies and a convenient alternative to home design software, Whiteboards has all the tools you need to create a custom home floor plan with ease.

In general, building up tends to be less costly than building out. When you factor in things like digging and pouring a new foundation, building out typically carries a higher price tag (though this isn't always true, and certainly depends on the size of the room and its purpose).