The look and feel of a residential building/home are a real-life replica of the housing plan designs followed. Nothing could be worse than simply picking a house plan online and starting to build. There is no limit to the benefits of a good, customized housing plan design.

When searching for a place to call home, share countless memories with loved ones, strengthen family bonds, that is future proof to support a productive posterity, and provide a retirement-friendly space when you grow old, you have to get it right! A home is a safe haven and the epicentre of a person’s life. A housing plan design is a picture of that home, imagined, tweaked, customized and made perfect, to provide all the functionality and creature comforts needed to live a good life.

Choosing the perfect plan for your home can be a daunting task, given the wide variety of options, and the human propensity to forget important things! There are two ways you could go with your search for a new home or a renovation plan. A ready-made plan can be obtained from various sources, even online. In most cases, the building constructed will house more than one person, and they may have different ideas about even the tiniest details, such as the kitchen floor plan. Sitting down with an architect, and describing to them the home you want can result in a design that is perfect for you and your family. You have the flexibility to ensure the specific needs and tastes of everyone are met. It’s even great that you can take the plans home to get everyone’s input before making a final decision.

3D Home Designs are ideal for this approach because they present realistic 3D visualizations of the housing plan design in full colour, allowing you to refine even the tiniest details. A good designer will not only come up with a housing plan design customized for your exact needs, current and future but will include things you had never thought of. Architecture Consultancy Services by Green Arch World are some of such good options for getting your home right. These firms have adopted modern design trends and provided high efficiency housing plan designs for urban and suburban residential estates in India.

After reading this blog, you will have a good idea of what constitutes good housing plan designs, and how you can make the right choice for your home.

There are so many aspects to designing a good housing plan. It should not only meet the residents’ needs but also conform to international guidelines for new homes. You can think of green strategies and building energy efficiency as some of the said guidelines. Cost-effective and high efficient residential buildings efficiency residential buildings built are upon these and other standards that make a home sustainable and of low-cost maintenance. Looking at a housing plan design, one is able to see clearly how the property will sit in its environment. The design allows for estimating the cost of construction as well as an estimate of maintenance costs.

Choosing Housing Plan Designs For Your Lifestyle

It all starts with who you are, your lifestyle, and what makes you feel connected and balanced. Joy, as it is. The building will house you for a considerable length of your life, and should therefore be a place that helps you feel vibrant and alive. While financial considerations are a must, a better decision may be made if you first allow your imagination to run wild, and think of your perfect home and all the functionality you would want from it. At this point, you will be armed with a mental visualization as you start looking at designs, and you will have better chances of spotting a design that includes most features within your budget. Communication with your designer becomes easier and cost estimation will be most accurate, avoiding costly modifications during development.

Every aspiring homeowner has a vision of their home-to-be property, and what they expect from it. To comfortably accommodate its residents, here are some of the critical aspects of design that must be considered.

Construction Styles

There are as many styles of housing plan designs as there are locations to build them. From classic farmhouses to modern villas. The cultural and natural environments play a key role in choosing the style of a home you want. Personal preferences and lifestyle must be reflected in your choice, and the designer should employ modern approaches to design. The style of a building has a large impact on its resident’s physical health and mental orientation. Future generations, and how they may use the building, should be given enough thought. There are many styles as there are ideas. Urban settings enjoy a large number of maisonettes, apartments and villas, while suburban and rural spaces may be proliferated with farmhouse type of styles, wooden structures and elaborate farms, long driveways etc.

Housing Design Plans – Bathroom, Kitchen, Lounge

Floor plansare technical diagrams that are drawn to scale, depicting the arrangement and dimensions of rooms. They are the blueprints that map out how space is going to be utilized, and are at the core of the architectural design. One should play around with them until the most suitable floor plan is arrived at.

Bathrooms

Modern life has brought a new meaning to bathrooms. The way we use them nowadays has changed, and the number per home has increased over time. Their sizes demand to be increased to house more functionality and appliances, but space is limited. The situation demands careful thought about your bathroom floor plans to ensure you get them just right.

The Kitchen

While kitchens have traditionally been kept a bare minimum functionality, contemporary lifestyle gives great value to elaborate kitchens, many adopting the open floor design patterns. Kitchen Floor Plans should aim at maximum functionality, efficiency and aesthetics. To get a kitchen that will always be a joy to be in, and probably accommodate a sizable family, one should assign more space and play around with the design until it’s perfect.

Lounge & Living Rooms

Open floor plans are very common in modern housing plan designs. They combine the kitchen, the lounge, and sometimes the living room, into one large communal area. Walls that partitioned these rooms are either removed completely or built partially, creating open and free movement. Lounge floor plans should accommodate the whole family, have an array of appliances, and have enough power outlets. Modern life is heavily dependent on electric gadgets like smartphones and laptops, which need to be changed often.

 

Lighting must also be carefully considered, partly due to these gadgets. You don’t want light from the window flooding your flat-screen TV, forcing you to shut windows and lock out the cool afternoon breeze, just to watch a movie!

 

Site Plan, Landscaping, Environmental Context, Security

Every building rests on a piece of land that is limited in size, unfortunately. The environmental context of location, society/community and history play a role in the design of a housing plan. Its impact on the environment, usage of locally available materials and pollution effects are to be considered in a good housing plan design.

The living requirements of the family must be met within the constraints of the size of the land, and the overall plan of the site must be carefully considered. The direction of the wind and sunlight, the location of the gate, the garage, the shed, external servant quarters, swimming pools and playgrounds for children are pieces that must fit together harmoniously into the design.

Today, every home includes some form of urban farming and permaculture. Today, a home garden is lovely and luckily, a common sight in urban and suburban homes. More people are desiring to get involved in the production of their food, locally, and mostly at home. These gardens contribute productively to the landscaping of a home, boosting the aesthetics.

 

What defines effective Housing Plan designs?

In the traditional approach, design decisions are made one after the other. In the modern ‘whole building design approach, all key design objectives are carefully integrated into every stage of the project. These design objectives are guidelines that result in a housing plan design that will still feel relevant after several decades. These apply not only to the building itself but to the context, environment and landscaping. Let’s look at them briefly.

• Accessibility – The plan should provide an equal living for all, including people with disabilities. Doors and stairs should be wide enough, for example, to allow wheelchairs. The home may be used for different activities and should have facilities to accommodate all.

• Aesthetics – Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder and varies with culture, context and even the climate. Both the interior and the exterior of the building should be adorned with beautiful designs that match the owner’s tastes and lifestyle.

• Cost-Effectiveness – There is no absolute measure of a building’s cost-effectiveness, but a good guide is whether you want an initial low cost, or low operation and maintenance cost. For homes that may serve as home offices, accessibility for visiting clients must be considered.

• Functionality – One of the most important considerations in modern housing plans is the evolution of IT and how we use technology. A housing plan design must meet all the functional needs, and anticipate future requirements and modifications.

• Productivity and Health – The condition of rooms in a home can have serious health effects on persons with a weak immune system, such as kids and the elderly. Proper ventilation and lighting should be ensured, and the building enclosure must work together with other systems to create a healthy home.

• Safety and Security – Today, gated communities are becoming popular, attracting special maintenance and oversight, often with the use of special equipment and personnel. This builds a higher level of security. A housing plan design should integrate security at every phase of the project. Beyond external security, a good housing plan design is guided by ergonomics and aims to prevent accidents, ensure electrical safety and provide a fresh living space.

• Sustainability – A sustainable home is desired and is achieved through the guidance of several principles that minimize the building’s impact on the environment and reduce maintenance costs. Choosing the appropriate site provides the right context. Minimizing energy use(or using renewable sources) enhances efficiency, just as is conserving and recycling water. The use of environmentally friendly materials, and products in the home, is a step towards going ‘Beyond Green^TM’. Overall, maintenance and operational costs should be minimized.

Types of Housing Plan Designs

An architectural design is usually expressed in multiple ways to serve different needs of the various stages of development and the different users of the information. The most common types of house plans include:

1. Site plan – This is what you would call a ‘plot plan’. It is a detailed architectural drawing of the construction site, and a map of the property as a whole. It shows the boundaries of the plot, its landscape, access roads, driveways, power lines, fencing, structures and even the structural elements of the site. A good site plan will show the surrounding environment and how the site fits in the larger space.

2. Floor plan – Just as it sounds, this is a layout of the structural elements and their arrangement within the building. It shows how big each room is, the windows and doors, corridors and every other room or utility. Floor plans are drawn for each floor in multi-story buildings. One should adjust the floor plan until a desirable arrangement is reached. Space must be utilized efficiently to get the most out of the available land.

3. Elevation – this is an orthographic perspective of one side of a building, drawn to show how it would look when completed. Elevations help aesthetic planning by visualizing the space, and helping figure out where to place objects within the building. Since most buildings are 4 sided, it is common to see 4 elevation plan drawings per building. However, you should have as many as the sides of the building. Elevations are drawn both for the interior and the exterior of the building.

4. Cross-section – If you were to slice through a building with a giant saw and looked at the resulting open view, you would be looking at the building’s cross-section. This view brings a different perspective view of the interiors and exteriors of the house and is instrumental to getting the plan right. The level of complexity of the building will determine the number of cross-section plans that need to be drawn to ensure the design is thorough.

5. Landscape plan – Like a floor plan, a landscape plan creates a visualization of the outside space, showing the design of on-site structures like sheds and fountains, natural elements like a home garden and may even include irrigation and lighting. A landscape plan is a must-have to solidify your envisioned home on paper.

House Plan Designs – Green Strategies And Sustainable Building

How efficient a building utilizes available resources and conserves energy is of great importance in contemporary architecture. A building is considered green if it minimizes the use of energy, conserves its water sources, and has a minimal footprint on the environment. A major advantage of green building is the low cost of operations and maintenance. A recent movement of ‘going beyond green’ goes further to require buildings to produce their own energy. Green buildings are sustainable and if all the design objectives are considered carefully, they not only preserve the natural resources but greatly improve the quality of life of the occupants.

Conclusion

Getting the perfect housing plan design is not an option. There are so many things that could go wrong if one simply grabs a ready-made design. Modifying a building post-construction is costly and poses the risk of compromising the building’s structural integrity. It is highly recommended that, on your search for a new home, or if planning to renovate one, you commit the necessary resources to ensure the home with serve your needs now and in the future.

The most appropriate step to take is to contact an architectural designer who will help put your dream on the ground. Architectural services firms such as Green Arch Consulting are not only pocket friendly but have experienced designers who have proven themselves again and again. Don’t take chances with what will be your dwelling for decades to come. Get it right today with Green Arch World architectural services firm, and receive outstanding customer service along the way!

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