Too little information. What region, architectural styles, budget, site restrictions?

We started with paper cutouts of basic rooms and thought about our lot and the way we actually live, then moved to a basic house design CAD program to play with real dimensions. Seemed a lot better than digging through someone else's ideas and trying to make it work for us.

A good start would be to talk to a few local architects an see what services they provide and what they can do for (with) you. There are millions of pre-conceived house designs in books and on the internet that you can spend A LOT of time looking through, but if you are looking to build a home, the most efficient use of your time and money is to engage the services of an architect. You will want a home that meets your needs and fits your site. Looking for a pre-conceived plan is like looking for a needle in a haystack with no guarantee of a needle being in there.

Basic places such as houseplans .com is a place to look. Also search houseplans with any details you are looking for. Such as "modern house plans" or "ranch style home plans" etc. I like looking at floor plans. But if a site is not user friendly I don't enjoy it and find another site. There must be ? hundreds of website options. If you are really building from scratch, sure meet with an architect. But I think it is useful to look at many plans to be able to rule in or out what you like. Other sites I like are builder websites, even basic ones that are national builders. And you can go to open houses or tour model homes to see what the floorplans look like in 3d. I have been a bit obsessed with floor plans for over twenty years and like to look at them and imagine what it would be like to live in such a home. If you have not spent time doing this, the floorplan alone can be misleading. This here site is a great site to post and discuss plans. But people can be critical so have thick skin.

lafdr

The problem with looking a plans on the plan factory sites and at builder's open houses is that, more often than not, the designs (if they are designed) are often poor and unthoughtful.

Many builders, especially tract builders and sub-division builders, simply re-built the same 5 homes time after time, location after location.

The result? Becoming accoustomed to poor and second-rate house designs.