BUILDING BLUEPRINTS
Ever wanted to design your own house?
Draw an overview showing each of the rooms of your house. Creating your very own design for a house is easier than you might think. This Blueprint tutorial will walk you through the detailed steps of how to draw floor plans for your new home design. This process can be followed by those drafting their blueprints by hand or using home design software.Have a decent idea of your desired outcome. Before starting on paper, it’s going to help to get a basic idea of what the house is going to look like. It is important to know how many rooms are needed and how many floors are going to be put in the house.
For the perimeter, use a pencil to draw the outside walls of the house. Try to take up the whole grid paper to get a larger scale. Once you make the perimeter, draw a second perimeter one grid away. It doesn’t matter if this is a grid closer or farther away. This adds thickness to the drawing and will make the end result look better. If the house has a second floor, then grab another sheet of paper and place it on top of the first floor paper. This will make the paper see-through so one can trace the walls for the second floor.
The next step is to draw the inside walls, using the same style as the outer walls. *Don’t forget to include all rooms needed for a house. A room many people forget is a utility room where you keep your heater, washer, dryer, water filter, etc.
Start drawing the doors and windows. With the walls complete the next step is to add doors and windows. Window size and door sizes can vary. For example the front door will probably be a bit bigger than the door to the closet.
- To make a window erase the part of the wall that the window goes to. Draw a line in the middle between the walls. To give the windows thickness, add another line, a grid to the outside. A ruler might be needed to help draw a straight line because these lines will be in the middle between a grids. Most of the time, rooms connected to the perimeter will have at least one window but it’s up to the creator how many windows are needed per room.
- The doors are a bit simpler to draw. Simply just erase the wall where you want the door to go and then draw a line in between the walls. It is just like the window but without the thickness.
Find templates to draw the Utilities. This is where you get into detail. The house needs sinks, toilets, bathtub, cabinets, stove and a fridge. There are templates that can help draw these. Without a template, just draw the basic shape of a sky view of these utilities. There does not need to be much detail, just enough to tell what each utility is.
To get an idea of the final result and layout, try drawing in the furniture. This step is optional but it is nice to get an idea of what the house will look like. Some examples of furniture one could use is beds, televisions, couches, chairs and tables. There is a template for this also and you draw these like with the utilities. Keep it simple and try to make everything square or rectangle to stay with the grid paper.
Start working on the Yard. There is not much to add to the yard until the next step. What can be added is a porch or draw out lines for a driveway. The porch is not like the walls because you only need one line. The porch doesn’t have thickness like the walls do.
Add Furniture
Furniture should not be included in your construction drawings but for your own design purposes it is a good idea to use scaled furniture cutouts during the design process to ensure you have designed adequate space for all rooms and circulation paths.
Create Window and Door Schedule
The final step to make 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 area to the right of the floor plan, create a three column list.
- Put all the labels for your door and windows in the first column.
- List window and door types in the second column (casement, awning, fixed, single hung, etc.)
- List the exact window size in the third column.
Use the black sharpie for labeling. In each room write what each room is. One might need to abbreviate rooms like a closet where only CL can fit in the room. Also write everything in capital letters to make it easier to read. To finish up with the black sharpie, go over all of your pencil marks. Using a colored marker, color in the furniture and utilities but make cabinets a brown color. The porch can be brown or gray depending on if the porch is made of wood or cement. Green can be added around the house for grass. Blue is a good color to shade in for the windows and the walls can be black or gray.
