Get a Sense of Scale for Your New House Design

The Problem:

Nothing is harder than trying to decipher blueprints to understand how everything in your home design will ultimately come together. Getting a sense of scale and proportion can be a huge challenge because home plans tend to have varying amounts of roominess.

For example, a bedroom can legally be as small as 7ft wide, but we find that bedrooms are best suited to be 10-18ft wide which gives plenty of room for a queen bed frame with side-tables and room to walk around. But 10-18ft can be a significant range - some people may find that 10ft is too tight while others find it is just right.

As a solution, we came up with a creative way for you to get a sense of exactly what you're looking for before you build.

Floor Plan Scale

What to Bring:

  1. Some Fluorescent Flagging Tape

  2. A Tape Measure

  3. A bag of Bamboo Skewers

This should take about an hour total and will be a great return on investment when you get the perfect scaled house plan design for your family. Plus this is a great activity with kids or family!

Charles (our proud builder) laying out his playroom
  1. Print out your work-in-progress, dimensioned house plan (bring a clipboard and pencil). We can provide you with high quality PDFs.

  2. Find a flat open grassy field. If you have your land already, you can do this on your proposed site.

  3. Lay out your skewers at the corners and doorways of each room using the tape measure. No need to be precise - just get it close!

  4. Tie the tape off then run it around the skewers (doing a loop or two on each). Run it low to the grass so you don't trip.

  5. Once you've finished the floor plan, start walking around the rooms. Imagine your furniture in each room and try to get a sense of what rooms are working and which feel too tight.

  6. Markup your dimensioned print-out with your proposed changes and submit your scanned markup to us to customize your house plan. From there, we can have your 100% updated, completed drawings out to you within 5 days!

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