How To Create A Floor Plan For Your New Home

When moving into a new home, have every detail planned will ensure a smooth transition.  

Planning every step of the move, even after your belongings reach your new home, will allow you to get back to your everyday life as soon as possible. One additional step to help get you prepared is creating a floor plan for your new home before you move in.  

Why create a floor plan? Creating a floor plan gives you a good idea of where you can place each piece of your furniture. Floor plans can also help you envision your space to see what you can do within it, making planning easier to adjust.

This article will break down what you need to know when making a floor plan of your own. We cover vital features of a good floor plan, tips for measuring your space, how to create a floor plan, and more.  

How to Create a Floor Plan

Here are a few basic steps to creating your floor plan:

• Choose What to Include - Choose if you want to create a floor plan for the entire house, a floor, or a single room.  

• Incorporate Measurements - Ensure you gather accurate measures of the walls, doors, and windows. We cover how best to get the measurements in the next section.  

• Draw Walls -  Draw all of the walls for each room in the home, trying your best to draw them to scale using your measurements.

• Add Features - Start drawing in the walls, doors, and windows, then start putting in large furniture that will have a permanent place, like appliances.  

• Add Furniture - Finally, add in all of your furniture and start planning exactly how you want your home to look.  

Tips for Measuring Your Space

To create an accurate floor plan, you will need precise measurements of your new home. Here are some tips for measuring your space:

• Interior Walls - Start by measuring or asking the realtor for the dimensions of your home’s interior walls. These measurements will start the planning phase and give you a good idea of how much space you are working with.  
  
  If your realtor doesn’t have the dimensions, measure along the baseboard of each wall, corner to corner to the nearest quarter of an inch. Also, measure the height of your walls, from floor to ceiling. Then calculate the square footage for each room by multiplying the length by the width.

• Entry Ways & Windows - Get the measurements of all entries and windows’ length, width, and height.  
  
  Entry measurements will let you know how much room an entry subtracts from a room’s overall space and give you a good idea of the size of furniture you can get into the room. Knowing the size of windows lets you see where you can place furniture without obstructing the window.  

• Doors - Measure the door’s height and width and display which direction it will swing when opening on your floor map. Also, measure the doorways’ open arch space and the distance between the ends of the wall and the doorframe.

Three Vital Features of a Good Floor Plan

Here are some additional features that are crucial to creating a good floor plan:  

• Future Proof - When creating your floor plan, make it versatile and flexible, so if needed, you can easily convert the function of a room—for example, turning your home office into a room for a newborn.  

• Functionality - When designing your floor plan, consider how many people will inhabit that space at any given time. Is there enough room to move around freely? Is there ample room for furniture to accommodate any activities that will happen in that room? Be sure to ask yourself questions about the purpose of a room and how your floor plan can reflect that.  

• Priorities & Lifestyle - Make sure you consider your preferences and lifestyle when designing your floor plan. You should structure your home in such a way that makes your life more efficient, so think about your day-to-day tasks and plan your floor plan around them.  

This article is a brief overview of what you should consider when creating a floor plan for your new home.  

Being prepared and having a detailed plan will ensure your move goes as smoothly as possible.  

To learn more about how best to move into your new home, check out our ‘Guide to Moving, Packing, and Storage’ article.    

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