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Jeremy Stevent asked:




Designing your own house can be a daunting task if you don’t have a lot of ideas. Where do you go to find some great house designs that will help you figure out exactly what you want? If you want to get lots of house design ideas, a great place to get those ideas is by looking at other houses. By seeing things that you like in houses that are already built, it makes it easier to come up with your own house design plans.

On Saturdays and Sundays each week, you will see lots of “Open House” signs on street corners in the residential neighborhoods. You can stop in to take a tour of all those houses you see open and you shouldn’t feel bad about not really being in the market to buy. This is a great way to see a large variety of different house designs, but also to see how they are furnished. How else are you going to get a grand tour of other people’s house all for free?

Once you are in an open house and are looking around, you might want to remember what you are seeing. A great little small camera such as a Flip Camcorder will fit right into your pocket and not be too obvious. It is small, lightweight, takes great movies, and is easy to carry anywhere. You can discreetly take a film of what you like in every house you go to!

Make sure you go to different neighborhoods so that you can see all the different house plans that are in your area. Going from house to house allows you to see all types of house designs from different economic areas and price ranges. You may end up realizing that you like one idea from one house and another from a different house. This will give you lots of great ideas once you start to design your own house plans.

Kim Mendes asked:




With the recession most families find it difficult to sell and move. Consider having an extension built instead. This is the best time to build as you can get really good prices from the builders and the materials, it would increase the value of your existing home and then when the market picks up you will be in a better position having a larger house to sell, that is if you still want to sell. Look for a great design that would add value to your home and not just a plan that would suit your needs. The first step would be to find an architect that you can relate to, a person that makes you feel comfortable, to share all your thoughts, no matter how silly. The architect should look at your existing home and design ideas that would cover some key elements that would increase the value of your home.

One of the first key elements to consider in a design, and the most important is to bring a lot of light into the property. As a home grows there usually is a central bit of the home that is very difficult to get light in. There are a few modern ideas that can be used like velux lighting or even a skylight in modern style and shapes, there are glass floors as well for the brave. These interesting modern features should be introduced into buildings as they create interest and great design. Windows are a norm, they have been around what seems forever, but why not introduce glass walls, or long strip windows but a lot of them instead.

There are too many boring designs around and architects are not expanding their creativity. It is a know fact that the local authority who give planning permission for the house plans and extensions are hard to please as they want all the new building and extension to look the house next door, but there is still room to input some interest. skylights in roofs that are hidden, or glass walls that are not in the front but to the rear of properties. It would only be in a listed building that they would have grounds for a complaint.

As we are on the subject of light, what about the electrical lighting for the design? The artificial lighting could be so fantastic in any home and it does not have to cost any more, all you need is to be creative, think out of the box, and be different.