House Plan Websites

It's very difficult to wade through the mass-market house plan factories to find anything not from that same mold.

You see all the same conventions of Great Rooms and principal bedroom suites and entry hall treatments flipped left or right, modified just slightly as if all the houses were from the same housing development, differentiated only by small nuances.

There are a good many publications of historic house plans - reproductions of published floor plans from the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1880s, Cape Cods, Four-Squares, Colonials, etc., and not adapted to have a large 2nd floor laundry room or a kitchen island or multiple large bathrooms in the current taste (though some if the smaller plans in particular lend themselves more to adapting some elements.)

There have been a number of architects with a particular perspective who published floor plans that expressed their philosophies (see Susan Susanka's Not-So-Small-House designs at link.)

There are some okay designs for Mid-Century Modern houses, both republications of period plans and new plans in that style.

But it's a lot of work to find anything that isn't pretty awful, and it seems the number of exceptions of any quality or a different perspective are fewer than existed 20 or do years ago.

R1, yes, you are right on every point. It's so difficult to find legitimately good plans online, which seems to me a shame, and a business opportunity. But I digress.

What makes a plan "awful" or "legitimately good"?

[quote] I'm thinking of building a little weekend house

as in you are building it yourself, or you will hire a builder to build it for you. Don't most builders have their own plans?

I like this one.

R3, for me, it's things like:

Lots of natural light

No dead-end rooms - good circulation

Great proportions

Nothing superfluous

Looks just as good from the back as the front

Devoid of McMansion-y details and finishes