Building A house is a process. Like any process the more work you put into decision making the better the results. Online catalogs of house plans offer the best way possible to browse many house plans and build your idea library thereby improving your process. The old way of looking at books or magazines of plans limited your ability to see many plans. By looking at many many plans you start developing a hierarchy of what is important in a plan. Search functions on house plan sites allow you to focus your search and review many plans vs. the old way of looking at plans in magazines. You can copy pictures and plans and build your idea library. Your house design is improved by browsing many house plans and studying plans, comparing plans and deciding on what are your design priorities. Searching for your house plan can be narrowed if you know what type of architectural style you prefer, for instance popular architectural styles are country, ranch, modern, craftsman, farmhouse, cottage, colonial and beach. Architectural design blogs are a great place to get ideas. A Cost to Build Report Cost is a good tool in getting your budget together. Online catalogs of house plans are a very cost efficient way to get your house plans. If you use the plans as the base and add your custom changes you end up with the best deal. A reproducible plan set or CAD set of plans cost around $1000. Integrating your custom changes to a stock set of plans on average will cost in total an average of $2000. This is an substantial saving vs. hiring an architect where standard cost run 10% to 15% of building cost. It is important to choose the right online design studio with expertise and relevant experience.
