Single-Story House Plans

Your family may have previously outgrown the options of simply having an additional bedroom in your 3 bedroom, 2 bath house, and you have now realized that you’re now looking for actual guest house that can accommodate your various needs.

We get it. Sometimes your mother-in-law, while you love her, may simply be a little too closely around if she doesn’t have her space of her own. With an actual guest house, you get the advantages of having your guests close, but still so that they are able to do their own things, making everyone less likely to end up getting on each others nerves prematurely.

When you’re ready to get started, simply choose the plan that you like, and should you have any additional questions, our support is always willing to help you out.

Things to look for

Whether you’re looking to build a single-storey blueprint or you’re looking to build something bigger, there are a bunch of things you need to be considering in the process.

While we’re sure you have likely found a bunch of designs on this platform that you may already like, we still think it could be useful to use a structured approach in the search for your next place.

Depending on the lot you’re building on, there are some designs that may not be suitable, such as the H-shaped design.

Unless you have yet to buy the lot that you will be building on, our recommendation is always that you consider the limitations of that lot and figuring out what works with its dimensions without making it feel too crammed. Sloped lots, for instance, will have several limitations to them that you won’t have with your usual flat lot.

Our second recommendation is that you carefully consider the various features important to you and your family, as well as consider the inherent limitations of various styles, such as the modern one. If you have a growing family, choosing something that is more modern than it is practical may not be the obvious route to take. In order for you to truly value the home you’re building, you will need to make sure the most important features are considered, and those will be different for every single family. There are also families where a single-storey home simply won’t suffice, and you’ll need to build a two-storey or a three-storey home instead.

Along with the most important features, we often encourage our users not to miss out on a bedroom. If you think 2 bedrooms will be enough, you may be right, but you also might not be. A lot of families may initially think that’s enough but when reality kicks in, it turns out to be a lot more convenient to have either 3 bedrooms or 4 bedrooms, and using that extra space either for an office or a guest house. The extra bedrooms can also be used in a situation where you suddenly find your family growing in size, or if you have an older family member that you want to move in with you.

While it is possible to add on, it is a lot more expensive to alter your plans after you start building than it is to initially get it right and then building.

Take advantage of and building according to the lot’s specific requirements. If you have a fantastic lot facing the lake, and you want to wake up overlooking it, make sure that the master-suite faces the right direction. You didn’t buy that specific lot to avoid taking advantage of its features.

A lot of our users are also finding themselves loving the open floor plans that some of the homes offer.

The advantage to those listed on this page are still many, and you won’t be finding them going out of style any time soon with their ageless appeal, why they’re also one of the most popular categories on our platform across the different various different countries and languages that it is available in.

Although stairs are important for layouts that aren’t flat, to get from one storey to another, they also take up a lot of space. The advantage to this design is that it is especially popular for people that may not enjoy stairs, whether it is an accessibility thing, or you prefer the look of it. With all the bedrooms on the same level, a one-storey house is a popular option for those desiring to live in the home even as they age, although the appeal isn’t limited to the convenience of the layout.

This design is also popular among those that desire having more privacy as bedrooms can be placed further away from one another, a major appeal of the U-shaped layout.

Whether you’re wanting to build something for convenience, the added level of privacy, or whatever your reason is for your interest in this type, we’re sure you can find something that matches your needs on this page.

They can be built with everything from an open concept to a vintage feel. What you go with is really up to you.

Special factors to consider
Pool	Courtyard	Customization
Open concept	With in-law suite	Vintage

Open-concept

One of the things we get asked about the most when it comes to single-story homes is how this works in terms of the popular open-concept style. Having all parts be on the same floor, it is easy to imagine that you put a big living room area in the middle, bordering a modern kitchen and have each of the bedrooms of the house located on the outskirts, whereby it becomes very natural for everyone to be meeting in the middle. At the same time, you ensure that there aren’t any unnecessary walls that would just act as visual problems stopping the line of sight through the house. While there may be certain fashion trends that we don’t believe will stand the test of time, it is hard to see this style going away anytime soon. One of the big advantages to open concept layouts is that it is very easy to bring in a lot of natural sunlight, and we do not see families getting tired of that feature.

3 or 4 bedrooms?

Although the individual needs of your family determine which floor plans are the most appropriate for your family, it is easy to see why the 3 and 4 bedroom options are the most popular as your average family will usually have one or two kids, and as they grow older, each of those kids will very likely appreciate having their own bedrooms.

The 2 bedroom options are great for young couples

Although some of the options may generally be more popular than others, it is not to say that there aren’t reasons to choose a plan that has fewer bedrooms than what you could potentially fit in if you were to really use the entire square footage you have available, while maximizing the number of bedrooms. If you have the square footage, adding an additional bedroom is usually a good financial decision that will increase the value more than is the case as compared to having fewer bedrooms, but if that isn’t your main concern, then choose the amount of bedrooms that works the best for you. It is very easy to start off with floor plans that embrace the idea of an open-floor concept, and by the time you are done adding the bedrooms, the place ends up feeling substantially smaller. If you want an open-concept, less is more, also when it comes to bedrooms.

You can make yours more modern

While the idea of a modern home may seem appealing to some people, it is not the right choice for everyone. Modern options, while simple in their design, are usually not the first choice for families with kids as they tend to lack very basic features that these families appreciate so highly.

Farmhouses and wrap-around porches

In starch contrast to the more modern alternatives, you can find a range of other beautiful options on this page – the farmhouses that often come with beautiful wrap-around porches. If you are not living in either the city or the suburbs, these are very popular alternatives that will give you that nice country-style living where you may also have a bunch of other common features such as your own barn where you keep a couple of horses, and a big plot of land, too.

Having a space with a basement serves as a great storage space

You probably have a bunch of things that you don’t want to have lying around all day, but you still want to have easy access to them when you need them. The easiest option is to choose a floor plan that also includes a basement. Rather than having to rent a storage space half an hour away that is a very big inconvenience to get to, it’s much easier having to just take the stairs down one floor and you have access to as much storage as you could possibly want. If you have a lot of land that slopes, you can additionally easy create a daylight basement with the opportunity to walk straight out into your garden, which ends up being a very useful space.

How many car garages do you want?

When people are building, a lot of people choose to do so because they have always had this grand fantasy about having a lot of garage space. Perhaps you want it for a workshop, or perhaps it’s rather because you want it for the several cars that you have. Whether you’re building a ranch-style home or building a modern one, the amount of garage space you’re including will affect how you will be spending those Sundays, especially if you have a passion for home projects.

What features do you want for the master suite?

If you’re building a 3 or 4 bedroom layout that you intend on living in for a long time while you raise your future family, it is especially important that you make sure that it has the features that you want, whether it comes down to the size of the master suite, the view that it would have from the windows, or the bathroom that it has planned for it.

It could be that you have always wanted a one-story with skylights in the master bedroom in order to let in a lot of natural light in the morning, which would create some requirements for the roof that you are having installed to make sure it’s without an attic immediately situated above the master bedroom.

Small, simple options

If your goal is just to live there for a couple of years, and it is you and your spouse living there by yourselves, there is no reason to go with one of the bigger plans on this website, at which point you may be better off just choosing a small floor plan.

While it may be a smaller option, there is no reason why the space needs to feel cramped, so make sure that you choose a size you are still comfortable with that has the amenities you wish for. Sometimes the simpler options may be what your heart truly desires.

Do you want an L-shaped floor plan that has an option to have a pool installed?

Some of our most popular plans in this category include ones with pools, ones that are 1,000 square feet (100m2), 1,100 square feet (110m2), 1,200 square feet (120m2). There is no better place to relax than next to your own private pool after a long day at work, why these are very popular among families with kids, or if you are simply someone that likes having friends come to your house after work while you are using the grill outside.

Just think about all those nice summer nights you are going to be spending outside with the people that you love. Have you found that bottle of wine you intend on serving for them the first day that you are having them over at your new home?

If you are looking for a popular option that fits the average size family, we can definitely recommend the 2,200 square foot option, the most common one being the 33 feet by 66 feet option (which translated to about 10×20 meters).

Whether you want something more modern, something with specific requirements for the master suite, 5 or 6 bedrooms, or you have specific size requirements that you are looking for, we are sure you will find what you are looking for on this page.

Things to consider

Whether you are looking to build a mansion or a single-story home, there are a lot of considerations that need to be made throughout this entire process. Building a house is not as simple of a process as simply snapping your fingers and it appears in front of you. While it would be great if that was the case, you will have to prepare yourself for a lot of frustration before you are able to make your dream come true. There will lots of nights where you might be questioning whether you are making the right decision or whether in fact it would have simply been better to buy an already built house instead.

It’s a very natural part of the entire process, but you need to focus on the end goal you are trying to obtain. You’re not just building something for your family that will serve you well for many years to come, you are in fact building something that is customized to the many needs and desires that you may have. While it would sure be the case that it is easier to simply buy, it is not nearly as exciting either. When you’re buying, you will also often have to settle for something that doesn’t have all the features that you would really like to have. Families’ needs differ, and some other family that may have two kids may not have the same needs as another family that has the same amount of kids going at home.

Your family may have a great desire for a modern layout, while another family may rather want a more traditional one. When you’re choosing the plans that are right for you, it’s therefore very important that you find out what the needs are for your family, and whether you believe that those will be changing in the future.

You will need to think about how big the rooms need to be, whether each child will have their own room and the number of floors that you believe is optimal. Some of these questions may be easy to answer, whereas others may be more difficult. For instance, how big do you want it to be, and are there certain features that you simply cannot live without?

While some families feel like they need to have a pool installed, a comparable family may not choose to build a pool. If you live in a part of the country where a pool would be unusable for most of the year, it would make sense that you are not basing any of your design decisions on the basis of wanting to include a pool. If, however, you realize the great potential of having a pool as well as what it can do for your social life, perhaps it’s worth putting a pool on the list of things that you want for your future place.  While swimming pools are a lot of maintenance, and they rarely increase the value by the amount it costs to have them installed, they can definitely provide your family with lots of great memories.

If you have already bought the plot of land that you want to build your future home on, and you know that it is a relatively narrow plot of land, building a single-story design may not be right for your family. Perhaps you already know that you have the intention to see if you can have another baby, why you would also need an additional bedroom. When it comes to narrow lots, many families simply prefer some of the taller designs given the fact that you are still able to get a decent amount of square footage, while still working with the plot of land  that you have.

Building is an exciting process that you are getting started on, and there are definitely many things that you can choose to consider before embarking on this adventure. While you may very well make a bunch of mistakes in your building endeavors, it’s a process that is exciting and educating. You will learn so many things that you probably didn’t know about yourself, and at the nd of the entire process, you will even have the place of your dreams rather than simply buying a house that manages to fulfill most of your needs, although potentially leaving out a lot of the things that you would still really want.

Our philosophy

Our mission on this site is to ensure that you build the space that works for you and your family. We don’t simply want to sell you a design, but we want to sell you the right one. It is incredibly important to our reputation that you don’t leave this platform thinking that you were unhappy with the services that we provided for you, why we spend so much time educating our users.

We provide a range of different services for our users, including many educational ones – check out this article on how to build a home. It would be very easy for us to use techniques to push our users to buy from us more frequently, but that would likely result in you building something that wasn’t entirely what you had hoped for, and that could end up meaning that you wouldn’t in fact recommend our platform when some of your friends are in the same position that you are currently in.

We would rather work on becoming the source that you trust for all your building adventures, and in the process we hope that we provide the platform that you would consider buying your design through. If not, that is no issue at all.

We were previously debating whether or not we should keep some of our articles behind a pay wall but chose to instead share them freely. In order to become the trusted source that we want to become, we believe it is important to aim for transparency, and to help people build their dream. That is, even if you don’t choose to buy your designs through us.

Check out our Mediterranean homes as well.

Researching local building conditions before you choose the right design

One of the things that we recommend you do if you want to ensure that your building project is a success is that you start researching your local building conditions. That includes everything from the building codes that may be relevant in the county that you are into the types that are popular where you live.

There may be a time and a place where you want to go all-in, and where you are building something that massively stands out in comparison to the surroundings that you are building in, but a lot of the time there is good reason to build something that resembles what other people are building. We are not saying that you should build and exact replica of your neighbor’s place, but we do encourage you to consider whether or not you want to build something that is substantially different as it could become hard to sell it if you do that. If you build something that costs 3 times as much to build as any of the other homes in the community, you should not expect that you can sell it for 3 times as much as well.

You may want to reach out to a real estate agent to hear if the type that you are considering building is in fact a good idea. Real estate agents are the people that know your local market the best and will therefore be able to provide you with the best advice possible. While real estate agents typically make their money from selling homes, there are also ones that will offer their consulting for an hourly fee. While we provide the overall designs through this website, real estate agents may help you throughout the building process in order to make sure that you are making choices that are attractive in the market that you are in. It could be that a specific type of flooring is very popular where you live since it is both durable, and the material can be sourced locally.

While they are able to provide you with building advice on the overall layout, the place where they really add the most value is by making sure that you are making good interior design decisions. They interact with buyers on a daily basis and know what features local buyers are looking for. In terms of finding the outer design that best matches your desires, while still being a good financial decision, we do have some recommendations as well. Although a real estate agent could help you with this process as well, we often find that it is more than you necessarily need. Most people that are looking to build a home do not want to build something that is vastly different from what is otherwise built around them. If you are questioning whether or not the design that you are interested in may be too bold for your neighborhood, you can visit the local website that lists all the houses for sale to see how your decision compares to others. Rather than having to get the advice from a local real estate agent on that specific step of the process, doing your own research should be enough to make sure that your design fits into the neighborhood.

Just because you’re building a single-story home, doesn’t mean you can’t build something interesting and elaborate. Here are some styles to consider to spice up your building project.

Styles to consider
Country-style	Usonian
Ultra modern	Colonial
Log	Cottage-style

While this feature may not be available for all the countries that we operate in, it is a very popular way to do research if it is actually available in your region. Our recommendation is to look at how long it takes for individual homes in your neighborhood to sell, which will give you an indication of the popularity of the different types.

The good thing about single-floor layouts is that they are generally very popular. If you are otherwise looking to build something a little bit more unique, it is a good idea to see how long it usually takes to sell something comparable in your region. If all the homes in your community are single-floor ones, you are not risking anything by building one of these. If, on the other hand, you want to build a 3-story home, and these are relatively rare where you live, you might want to check on your local real estate platform how long it commonly takes for such homes to sell.

If you know that you may have to move at some point, you might not want to build a type that is so different from the others in the neighborhood that it could take you six months to sell. If you are in a position where it won’t be an issue if it takes a significant amount of time to sell 10 years from now, you may not be as forced to build a more popular type. If you build something that is very unique, you should prepare yourself for the fact that it could take a year to sell. You should also prepare yourself for the fact that you might not be able to sell it for quite as much money as you were hoping.

If you can’t find anything on this page that you like, we encourage you to follow the links that we have otherwise included on the page. Some of these single-story homes provided on this page are actually the most popular options that you may find on our platform, why we believe they can be very good choices for a wide range of families.