Selecting House Floor Plans

The Home Store offers over 450 standard new house plans. Most of our customers can usually find at least one standard modular home floor plan that comes close to meeting their needs. If you select a standard new home plan, it will save you time and simplify your work, since the design, engineering, and pricing have already been done by us. You will also save money, since our standard modular home plans are engineered to be built economically.

If you don't find a suitable modular house plan amongst the sampling we have put on our web site, please contact us to discuss what type of plan would better fit your needs. We might be able to help you with one of our many other standard plans (almost 400).If none of our standard plans work for you, we'll be happy to help you design a custom home floor plan. If you already have a custom home plan in mind, we'll tell you if it can be built as a modular. Many house floor plans drawn up for stick-built houses cannot be built with modular construction, although we may be able to come up with a very similar modular design.If your house plan cannot be built as a modular home, we will help you design one offering similar features.

All of our standard new home plans typically include a floor plan and an exterior elevation. The floor plan shows the location and size of each room, while the elevation provides an idea of what the finished house will look like on the outside. When looking through our selection of house floor plans, do not be misled by the pairing of floor plans and exterior drawings into thinking that you cannot make adjustments.In fact, each floor plan can have a multitude of exterior looks, and each exterior look can be applied to many different house floor plans. For example, all homes can have a garage and porch, even if the artist has not included them in the drawing. Likewise, you can adjust the slope of the roof, add dormers and decorative gables, and opt for oversized roof overhangs if you choose, regardless of what you see in the drawing.

Remembering this will free you up to consider some interesting new house plans that have been paired with what are unattractive elevations to your eye. It will also motivate you to take a second look at some desirable elevations that are matched with unworkable modular house plans. A practical way to do this when you are looking at house floor plans is to cover up the elevation drawings with a piece of paper. Otherwise you will find your eyes continually drawn to the elevation plans as you turn the pages.

Finding the Right Plan

Before looking through our selection of modular home floor plans, first determine which features are most important to you. Answering the following questions will help you clarify your priorities.

When you find a modular home plan that appeals to you, imagine living in the house. Visualize walking through it, entering first through the front door, and then through the other exterior doors. Think about traffic flow and the location of various rooms. Imagine greeting guests and hanging up their coats. See yourself coming in from the car with a bag of groceries, or your children returning from their play in the backyard. Visualize placing your groceries on a countertop or table before putting them away. Make sure you have ample cabinets and closets in the convenient places; as best you can, count the cabinets and closets, noting their size. Imagine serving a meal at the table, and what you will see when eating. Consider whether the children's or guest's bedrooms are too close to or too far from the master bedroom. Would you have to walk through one main room to reach another room? Are the halls too long? Think about the views through all windows.

Changing Plans

As you examine books of modular house plans, keep in mind that each of them can be changed to fit specific needs. For example, all six of The Home Store’s Whately plans started with the Whately 1, and all seven of The Home Store’s Sugarloaf plans started with the Sugarloaf 3.The optional plans were created by making relatively minor and affordable modifications. You can do something similar to virtually any of our standard new home plans.

The Whately Line

The Whately 2 was created when a few customers said they really liked the Whately 1 except that they needed a great room and four bedrooms. This was accomplished by removing the wall between the family room and the living room, and rearranging the master bathroom and the hall bathroom on the second floor. The Whately 3 was created to keep the second floor bathrooms the same size as in the Whately 1 while adding a fourth bedroom. This was accomplished by closing off the vaulted foyer. The downstairs was also reconfigured to put the dining room next to the kitchen and the family room and living room on opposite sides of the house. In addition, the laundry room was combined with the half bath. The Whately 4 added 2 feet to the length of both floors. It also created an L-shaped kitchen with an island, added a separate laundry room, put the half bath in the foyer, and showed how an optional first-floor master bedroom could work. The second floor combined four bedrooms with a wrap-around vaulted foyer, which created a sitting area. The Whately 5 added 4 feet to the Whately 2, which enabled a larger master bath, master bedroom, and great room. The Whately 6 added 4 feet to the Whately 3 to make a fifth bedroom or study. It also created a bump-out look in the front of the house. Study the plans carefully and you can see several other small changes in each of them .

Simply lengthening a new house plan can help create the home you are looking for. Adding the square footage is often beneficial and sometimes necessary when moving walls around. You can also add bump-outs on the end of a home, as in the Whately 1, 3, and 5. These structures, which can be angled or rectangular and one- or two-stories tall, add a lot of natural light, enlarge the space, and enhance the interior and exterior appearance of a home. In addition, adding a wing to the end of a home, as was done with the Whately 4, can create a first-floor master bedroom suite. With any of the Whately modular home floor plans, you can also add a mudroom wing between the main home and the garage.

The Sugarloaf Series

The Home Store’s Sugarloaf series illustrates most of the same design opportunities as the Whately series. It also shows how you can widen a home to enlarge all of the rooms. For example, the Sugarloaf 3 adds 3 feet 6 inches to the width of the Sugarloaf 1, which makes the kitchen, dining room, living room, and all three of the bedrooms about 2 feet bigger. Conversely, the Sugarloaf 1 shows what can happen when you reduce the width of a home; in fact, the Sugarloaf 1was created from the Sugarloaf 3. The Sugarloaf 5, which was designed for The Home Store by the late Ron Mace, FAIA, when he was the Director of Center for Universal Design at North Carolina State University, was specifically designed to illustrate how to make a standard new house plan, the Sugarloaf 3, into an accessible home based on universal-design principles.The Sugarloaf 5 design was awarded a "Building Innovation in Homeownership Award" by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1996. For example, it has wider halls and doorways as well as a 5-foot turning radius in the kitchen and bathrooms; the actual model home exhibits over 30 other universal-design features.

As the Whately and Sugarloaf modular house plans illustrate, adding a fireplace and making a U-shaped kitchen into an L-shaped kitchen with an island are routine changes, as is adding or removing a whirlpool tub in the master bathroom.Many of these changes necessitate other changes. For example, you might need to borrow space from an adjoining room to make the master bathroom big enough to fit the whirlpool tub.And some changes will not work. For example, you cannot build a 60-foot-long home without any walls in the middle of the house to carry the weight of the roof. Also, some changes will be expensive, such as widening a home from 27 feet 6 inches to 31 feet 6 inches, although the benefit is almost always greater than the cost.

You can also take one type of home and make it into an entirely different type. For example, you can turn a ranch into a Cape Cod by adding a steeper roof, a set of stairs, and rough mechanicals to the second floor. You can also make many Cape Cod new house plans that have an unfinished second story into a chalet by adding beams in the ceiling, railings for a loft, and trapezoid windows. Although it requires a lot more effort and creativity, you can also make some two-story modular home plans into a T-ranch by placing the second story perpendicular to the first story.These small tricks can help you expand the possibilities.

Modular Home Handbook

For more ideas about how to design a modular home, purchase a copy of The Modular Home, by Andrew Gianino, President of The Home Store. The chapter on designing a modular home will answer the following questions: