Home Design

Lesson 3: House Design - The Nitty Gritty

Techniques For Visualizing House Plan Designs

Revive the tradition of Sunday drives, find homes with similar character and "feel", hip roofs, dormer styles, how the house sits on the lot to the design you are working on. “See” the similarities and look for the differences. “Plug in” the elements of your design.

When using plans draw site lines onto drawings, anywhere you can connect two points without walls between is a "view."

The most valuable, although time consuming tool to visualize accurately your design is to make a model. During the design process it may also help to make quick "massing" models (no window or door openings) to see character of house. Build models by Xeroxing or blueprinting a scale drawing, floor plans and elevations, glue (stick) to foam core (paper on two sides of 1/8" Styrofoam core), cut stair/floor openings on plans, window openings on elevations with razor blade type knife, construct interior walls to scale.

Here are some exercises you can work on, visualizing is like creating a memory in your mind, remember a house close your eyes and visualize/remember the room your in, now paint in green, now cut a different window into it, imagine a dormer or sloped ceiling in it. An excellent technique is to practice photographing homes or scenery or flowers, going for the best shot, most artistic view.

Things to Ponder:

1. Have you been patient enough with yourself to spend the time trying to develop this skill, or building models, or visualizing site lines?

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