Customize Your Dream Home

The majority of the house plans that you'll find featured at The House Designers were custom homes drawn from the very same stock house plans shown on this website. Almost everyone will make some changes to their house plan when building their new home. Some are very simple changes made on-site by the builder called redlining, while more extensive structural changes are redrawn by the designer or architect to ensure an accurate build.

Our designers and architects would like to guide you through the process of modifying and customizing a stock house plan to meet your specific needs and personal preferences.

The most common and least expensive way to make simple changes is red-lining your blueprints, which simply means making the changes directly on the plan with a pen, pencil or red line pencil rather than redrawing the plan. Red-lining is not suitable for major structural changes, which would require a redraw by a designer or architect, preferable the original designer.

Some common red-lining changes are:

• Moving interior walls that do not affect the structural integrity of the home.
• Adding length to a portion of the home that won't be affected by the structural spans.
• Adding, changing or moving the location of windows and doors.
• Material changes, fixtures, cabinet layouts, closets, etc.
• Adding or removing a fireplace, garage, decorative dormers, dropped or raised ceilings.

While red-lining is a common method of modifying a house plan, be sure to check with your local building codes to ensure that the changes you are making are considered an acceptable method to modify your plans, especially if you are building in an area with high wind or flood zones. You will also need to make sure that you order enough sets of blueprints since you cannot make photocopies.

When you need to make major changes to your plan, it is recommended that you purchase a reproducible set, PDF or CAD file, which will allow your architect or designer to make changes to the blueprints and print as many copies as needed to build one home. These plan packages all require signing a licensing agreement to use the house plan for a single construction.

Some more extensive modifications include increasing or decreasing the square footage of a home where it affects the roof pitch or length of the rafters, adding a room, garage or porch, changing the foundation type (most house plans offer different foundation options), elevation changes, major changes to the interior layout or adapting a plan to meet local building codes or providing engineering where required.

All of the house plans on The House Designers website can easily be modified, so be sure to speak with one of their home plan specialists to determine if your changes are simply red-lining changes or a major modification. Most requests for modifications are simple, affordable, and can be done in a reasonable amount of time. The House Designers offers free modification quotes so you will know if the plan you selected is within your budget to build.