Most people looking at a floor plan for the first time are trying to decide if they simply like the house. That is the right instinct. It is also why people miss the handful of details on the sheet that decide whether they can actually build it.
A floor plan is a drawing, and it is also a set of instructions. Once you know what it is telling you, most of the questions that land in our inbox turn out to be answered on the screen already.
What a floor plan is actually showing you
Think of it as a horizontal slice through the house, taken about four feet above the floor, looking straight down. Cut high enough to pass through the doors and windows.
That one fact explains nearly every convention on the page. The walls are physically cut in this view, so they are drawn with heavy solid lines. Windows and doors are cut, so they appear inside the wall, with the door swing drawn as a curved arc. Counters and islands are cut.
Anything above the cut, a roof overhang, a vaulted ceiling, the edge of the floor above, appears as a dashed line.
So if a line is dashed, it is something real that sits above the level you are looking at. Misreading a dashed line as a wall is the most common mistake people make, and it is usually why a layout looks strange at first glance.
What the numbers mean
On a plan page you will see a size called out inside each room, like 17 feet 5 by 15 feet 4 for The Holly's living room. Those are the numbers to use when you are working out whether your furniture fits and how the place will feel.
The construction drawings carry something different and more important. Running along the outside of the plan are dimension strings, in layers. The outermost gives the overall width or depth of the house. The next breaks that into the major exterior wall runs. The innermost locates individual rooms and openings for the framer.
Those strings always outrank your eye. The drawing is to scale, but a PDF viewer or a printer is never exact, so the printed number is the fact and the picture is the illustration.
The single most useful habit you can build is this. Before you fall in love with a design, find the overall width and depth and check them against the buildable footprint of your lot after your local setbacks. On The Holly those are 30 feet 8 inches by 67 feet 4 inches, printed on the specification sheet as well as drawn on the plan. Two minutes, and it saves you from getting attached to a house that was never going to fit on your land.
Which sheet answers which question
Every construction set we sell contains the same sheets, so this applies to any plan on the site. The full list is here.
| If your question is | Go to this sheet |
|---|---|
| What does it look like from the street | Exterior elevations, all four sides |
| How do the floors stack, what is happening in the roof | Cross section |
| How tall are the ceilings | Specification sheet first, then the section |
| Will my furniture fit | Floor plans with dimensions |
| What sizes do I give my window supplier | Door and window schedules |
| What is this house sitting on | Foundation plan |
| Where do the outlets and light fixtures go | Electrical plans |
| How do the roof planes meet | Roof plan |
| What is my builder pricing from | All of it, plus the notes on the cover sheet |
What is not in the set, and where it comes from
This is the section worth reading twice, because it is where buyers get surprised after they have already paid.
An architectural or engineering stamp is not included in a stock plan. If your jurisdiction requires one, it is handled locally. Site plans are not included either; those come from a surveyor or civil engineer working from your property plat. Mechanical and plumbing drawings, meaning the actual ductwork layout and pipe sizing, are not included, and your local subcontractors design those around the code in your area. Energy calculations, where they are required, are handled locally too.
Electrical is the exception people get wrong. An electrical layout showing outlets, switches and fixtures is in the construction set.
Engineered floor and roof framing is deliberately left out. A structural engineer, an architect, or your local truss manufacturer engineers the framing for your wind, snow and seismic loads, using our construction set as the architectural base.
Because these plans are elevated on piers or pilings, a structural engineer is going to be involved in your project regardless. Their seal goes on their own structural drawings, which is how engineering work gets issued. Whether the architectural set itself needs a seal for your permit is a question for your local building department, and the answer varies by jurisdiction.
None of this is particular to our designs. No stock plan from any online designer includes these local engineering elements. There is a longer piece on exactly what is omitted and who to hire for each item.
Telling a construction set from a study set
You can tell by what is on the sheets, and by what is printed across them.
A study set gives you the main floor plan fully dimensioned, the schedules for that floor, all four exterior elevations, and the specification sheet. It is built so you can check the layout and hand it to two or three local builders for a budget range.
It deliberately leaves out the ground floor and garage layout, the foundation plan, the roof plan, the building sections, the building details, the electrical layout and the cabinetry elevations. A study set is also reduced from the full sheet size, so it is not to scale. It carries no licence to build, and it is marked NOT LICENSED and NOT FOR CONSTRUCTION. Permit offices reject it.
If you are holding a set with those words on it, that is what you have. And if you go ahead, the $75 comes straight off the construction set for the same plan, within twelve months.
What to check before you buy a plan
- Find the overall width and depth and check them against your buildable lot area after setbacks.
- Read the ceiling heights on the specification sheet. On The Holly they are 8 feet 8 inches on the ground floor and 9 feet on the main floor, with vaulted ceilings called out on the plan where they occur. Ceiling height is the thing people are most often surprised by once they are standing in the framed house.
- Use the door and window schedules to count units, rather than counting symbols on the plan.
- Check which foundation the plan is drawn for, and whether it can be converted. Most of our elevated designs can be converted to slab or crawlspace.
- Call your local building department and ask exactly what they require to issue a permit. That call dictates more than the plan does, and it costs nothing.