So I'm alright at building but when it comes time to design floor plans I struggle a lot. Normally I can muddle through and eventually (after several days of contemplation) come up with something semi decent. However the house I'm currently building for my legacy family has me stumped for over two weeks. I'm fairly happy with what I have one the first floor but the second is still completely blank. Was wondering if any of the builders here could offer some advice.


This is the second floor of the house.


This is what it currently looks like from the front. It still needs a lot of work on the outside but I don't want to do anything like adding more windows until the floorplan is finalized.

I remember when another member in TS4 asked this exact same question. My suggestion is simple, as in most real houses, the wall from the bottom extends up to the 2nd floor, so you create your rooms based on the 1st floor rooms. Then you just decide what you want to furnish them with.

I have to say though, most people don't really google and look through real houses. I recently edited a bunch of houses in Setra b/c they were just wrong. Try not to put "kitchen" right next to the front door, that makes no sense. When you enter a house, normally it is the living room, with kitchen in the back. It is also strange when they have bedroom doors on the first floor right next to the front door, typically if you have 1st floor bedrooms, it should have some sort of hallway to separate it from the living room area. And of course, though TS3 does not have plumbing, but try to visualize it and make your plumbings match, such as a bathroom on the first floor would likely have a matching bathroom on the top floor instead of having the top floor bathroom all the way at the other side of the house.

Nitromon has given you many good tips. One being, look at floor plans of real houses. Of houses you have been in or lived in. Can we see the first floor? I think one thing that is unusual is your stair placement. The back wall of the house is not where they are usually placed in real builds, and that may be contributing to your problems.

Suggestion:

1. Plan out your rooms using rectangles, and then add and subtract from these rectangles. Keep in mind that these rectangles don't need to be surrounded by walls in the end- just that they're used to visualize and delineate space.
2. Roughly place down the big pieces of furniture first so you know how large your rooms need to be. You don't need to think about the style, you just need an approximation for the footprints.
3. At the same time, think of proximity and flow, and how your sim would navigate the house- i.e. what rooms does the kitchen open onto? Like what the others say- looking at real life plans works well.

This phase is rough and fast, working back and forth between 1-3. Once you're happy with the 50% completion, you can then move onto refinement:

4. Finalize your functional furniture placement- no need for CaST yet.
5. Paint walls and floors, and CaST items.
6. This is the point when you can start adding decorative objects and clutter.
7. Finalize lighting in the rooms.

I do this a lot too. One thing I notice in some builds that are done are IMO way too big halls and way too small rooms. I make my rooms large enough for Sims to navigate but do not do overly large ones. I also pay a lot of attention to door and window placement depending on how I will furnish.

Some houses seem to be built from the outside in and some from the inside out. I want to make sure I have a good balance that the exterior looks good and the inside layout works.

I do it the opposite. I am not concerned with the furniture when I create the rooms but rather after the room is created then I find the furniture I need to fit the room.

What I can't stand is wasted space. Some lots I've seen have such huge bathrooms that it is ridiculous. Even bedrooms with huge empty spaces, I rather div it up and create a 2ndary small study or a walk in closet or something.

I just toss in any bed or table and chairs or whatever just to plan the layout a bit, but do not hunt for what I will actually use when I start a build. And I feel the same way about wasted space, especially in halls as I noted.

Daisylee- here is the down stairs floorplan as you asked. By the way sorry for the pictures being so large. I'm using the screenshots from the in game camra and recently up graded my operating system so don't have my imaging editing software installed yet to size them down.


Starting from the bottom right and moving along the L is the living room, the dinning room is separated by a half wall. Passed that is an archway leading into the kitchen. To the right (when looking at the front of the house) of the kitchen is the stairway and a narrow hallway leading to the laundry room and the down stairs bath. In the picture the door to the bath is off the dinning room. I know its probably a bit strange to have the stairs and bath off the kitchen but I have been in houses where that was the case.

nitromon- as you can see the first floor plan doesn't really lend it's self to being coped upstairs and converted cleanly into bed rooms. I did however consider everything else you said. No kitchen right by the front door.

I did finally manage to come up with something I'm happy with. I thought I had a snapshot of it but apparently not so I'll need to take one next time I'm the the game. It's not super realistic but it is functional where the sims are concerned. The only thing I'm not happy with is that I couldn't fit in a master bath. Making sure to have master baths is something I've been making an effort to do in my builds recently as I use to not bother. I could in theory put in one but it would mean making some compromises I'm not willing to make.

Yes, let's see what you did when you have a chance to post.