Floor Plan Guide: How to Read it Correctly

We often talk about the floor plan of a house or apartment. As already mentioned, a floor plan helps you enormously when planning your interior. Whether drawn or perfectly worked out on the computer, as in this example, the principle is the same: you see a view of your rooms from above, without a roof or ceiling.

This clear representation of an apartment is not common when buying or planning construction. You will usually find a drawn floor plan. A floor plan with dimensions is a way of drawing an entire apartment or house. You can see windows, doors, walls and more in the floor plan. Architects and draftsmen draw a floor plan and with a little practice you can easily read the plan.

A floor plan is a drawing of a room or a building. It shows on paper on a small scale what is actually the actual size. Floor plans are drawn by the architect during the planning phase. When you move into a new apartment, floor plans are particularly useful because they help interior designers plan the interior design in advance. You can see at a glance whether the bed is too small for the room, where the couch will fit, and how the children's room can be best furnished. Using a floor plan, you can see at a glance whether the room layout is favorable and which direction the individual rooms face. The floor plan also contains windows, radiators, and doors and can help avoid planning errors right from the start.

In a floor plan, the north is marked with a so-called north arrow. This means that you can tell from the floor plan where north is and which rooms face this way. It is perfect if the rooms that can be cool and need less light, such as the bedroom, storage room or hallway, can be placed to the north. Common rooms such as the living room, children's room or dining room, on the other hand, ideally face south or southwest, from where light and warmth can penetrate into the rooms. A balcony that faces only north is also unsuitable, as plants receive little light here.

The floor plan not only shows the windows themselves but also their dimensions, often on the dimension line. Windows that cannot be opened are given the additional name “fixed”. In addition to the width, the height of the window is also given. Floor-to-ceiling windows are also marked as such. The floor plan shows the shell dimensions of the windows, i.e. the total size of the opening and not the size of the glass area. According to regulations, at least one-eighth of the room area must allow light to enter. On the north side, where little light penetrates anyway and where it is coldest, fewer windows are practical as this minimizes heat loss. Here, special attention must be paid to lighting planning. In the south, on the other hand, where the sun shines through the window all day long, large panes of glass can provide plenty of light and warmth.

Doors and openings are marked with dimensions in the floor plan. This means that every passage can be identified and you can see whether there is access to all rooms from the hallway. Passage doors or openings are also recognizable as such in the floor plan. The standard dimensions for doors are 80 centimetres wide and 2.01 meters high. The direction in which the doors open is also marked in the floor plan. A curved arrow shows the direction in which the door opens. It also shows whether it opens to the right or left.

In the case of stairs, not only the stairs themselves are drawn in the floor plan, but also their dimensions and the number of risers. For example, if the stairs say 14 steps 19/25, this means that the stairs have 14 risers, each with a height of 19 centimetres, with the steps having a tread of 25 centimetres. It is therefore possible to see exactly from the floor plan where a staircase is installed, how many steps the staircase has and what dimensions they have.

In addition to windows and doors, other elements are also noted on the floor plan. Permanently installed fireplaces should definitely be included in the floor plan. But radiators should not be ignored either. They can help you find the right place for certain pieces of furniture. Radiators should not be blocked up and natural wood furniture should not be placed directly in front of the heater or next to the fireplace in order to protect the wood. Electronic installations and sockets are also often found on the floor plan. This is important for planning all those furnishings that require electricity. This can affect the computer workstation as well as the sewing corner and the installation of kitchen appliances.

The usual scale for floor plans is 1:75 or 1:100. One centimetre in the floor plan, i.e. on paper, corresponds to 75 or 100 centimetres in the apartment or building. If you have different floor plans in front of you, for example, because you want to compare several apartments with each other, you should pay attention to the scales when comparing. For example, a building with a smaller scale can appear smaller than the comparison partner, although the rooms may actually be larger. If you use the floor plan to try out how the furniture can be arranged, you can make cardboard templates for this. These should correspond to the scale of the floor plan. If the floor plan is drawn on a scale of 1:100, a chest of drawers with a width of 2.30 meters will be 2.3 centimetres wide in the floor plan, for example. The cardboard templates that are created in this way can simply be placed in the plan. Moving furniture is quick and easy. With the right measurements, you can also order custom-made furniture before you move in.

Now look at these 10 smart house floor plans to inspire you