Your Dream Home in London
If talking about computer-aided design (CAD) software online seems daunting, simply try sketching your home with a good, old-fashioned pencil and paper. If you are building a home for yourselfs or to rent out, have a go at making your dream come true.
Your Guide to Design – a Starting Point
If you are considering designing your London home from scratch or making alterations to any of our standard home designs, please note the following. If you use this guide to help you create a VERY rough preliminary sketch or doodle, this will provide us with a starting point to help us better understand your thoughts and house design ideas .
- Begin with your ‘Bubble’ design…
On a blank piece of paper, mark North, South, East, and West along the four sides. Then draw bubble shapes for all the major living spaces. Identify each room e.g. “K” for kitchen, “B” for bathroom, “Bed” for bedroom, “L” for living room, “C” for Conservatory, “S” for Sun Lounge, “U” for utility room, “D” for dining room, etc.. Now play around with the ‘bubble’ shapes. With this ‘bubble’ technique, you can create a very good sketch of the relationship you want between the different spaces in your new dream home.
It can help to consider which direction you would like these living spaces to face. For example, if you want the morning sunrise to stream into your kitchen it should have windows that face towards the east.
- Now change those bubbles…
When you have a good idea of how you want all of the living spaces in your home to interrelate with one another, change your ‘bubbles’ so that they are more representative of your dream home’s floor plans. Take some time to look over some of our pattern book example home plans. These should provide a clearer understanding of how each floor is intended to look. Don’t worry too much about the dimensions, so long as the rooms look reasonably in proportion to each other.
- Now write in the desired sizes.
Now you have something resembling a rough floor plan, and it’s time to mark on some of the sizes you’d like your rooms to be. You should also indicate the location and size of windows, French doors, patio doors, and external doors that you want to be included. It is not necessary to mark on every measurement; just the widths and depths will suffice. However, do make sure you write in the overall width and depth of each floor. This is also a good time to do a rough sketch of how you would like each timber frame elevation to look.
What To Do Next
Finally, send us your rough floor plans and elevations (if you have sketched them), along with any other information, such as plot width, plot depth, land slopes, and surrounding properties, and any photos of the site and/or buildings on it.
Now you can contact us and send Harlequin your ideas for a free estimate.