"are there any house plans people are willing to hold up as being really good and well designed?"

Do you mean plan mill plans? If so, the answer is maybe but the thing to remember it is impossible for them to take all things in to consideration, life style, lot type, exposure, etc, etc, etc.

Its more a matter of reversing the design process. An architect begins with your needs/tastes, the climate and the site and develops a design step by step starting with big ideas and reinforcing them with smaller ideas. Its what they have been trained to do.

A plan mill offers a completed design to which you then work backward to modify it to your needs/tastes, etc. In that reversed design process the benefits of a skilled designer are pretty much lost.

But not everyone cares as much about the quality and suitability of the design so plan mills have their place. But when you bring a design to a design forum you should expect to encounter people who care a lot about the design of a house and want to start at the beginning instead of the end..

Yes I do agree, and I think the comments are usually spot on! E.g., why is the walk in closet only 4 feet wide, why do you need to walk through the closet to get to the laundry room? etc. And I get that a house can be better or worse *for* a particular family or site. But my question is, whether it's an architect's plan or a plan mill or your own house, are there any designs you've seen where you can say about them, "hey, his is a well-designed house with good flow and light. There might be a few small nitpicks, but overall, well done"?

Picasso is often quoted as saying "good artists borrow, great artists steal".

In other words, great artists take ideas and make them their own. What you should take from a completed design is ideas that you can use in your own designs but to understand them well enough that you won't use them inappropriately. The bad news is it can take many years to develop that kind of judgement. Architecture school can accelerate a persons's design knowledge and judgement but there is no substitute for experience.

[PS closets and door swings aren't high on my list of important architectural design issues].

My plan was considered by all here to be a good one by the time we all finished working on it.

Somehow I feel the creation of a home should empower the skills of an artist and an engineer, not that of a hermit crab.

What matters to me probably doesnt matter to you. So one size does not fit all.

But if you have to go thru the master bedroom to get to the mudroom...

If your foyer is bigger than your greatroom...

If you have to open 3 doors and turn 2 90° corners to get a bag of groceries to the kitchen...

Your floorplan stinks.

What if there were a contest: who can find the “best” stock house plan? We would all be looking for something different - location, type, budget, etc. I would be looking for a house that is functional and most importantly, feels “good”. (Hard for me to judge by plan only). Once you have been in and appreciated a “feel good” house, I think all other aspects pale by comparison. I am no architect or designer, but size, scale, relationships, materials, window views, flow, functionality, energy and so many other factors distinguish a “feel good” house from an ordinary house. I have been in many functional, perfectly adequate houses (and other spaces/buildings) that had no “soul” or “feel good” factor and some that totally made my heart sing. I would like to think the “feel good” space is recognized by everyone (Christopher Alexander...), but people and cultures are all so different that I have to leave room for the possibility that what works for me does not necessarily work for you.

My plan was considered "acceptable". A few tweaks were made. I had no fear.

Everything is a compromise and my plan has them.

As I try to come up with regrets - they are all so specific to our situation, no one would "catch" them.

- we did a pocket door to pantry (one of the tweaks) and turns out the cats can open it so we have to go through a second step to lock it whereas a regular door would have been easier (and the space is not that premium)..

- Better sound isolation to master bedroom - despite 2 doors.

- Reduced size of corner post on patio roof as it blocks view of pool. It is brick wrapped - kind of a 2 ft L shape when perhaps we could have used a 12x12 decorative beam.

The moment that a custom suit for a 6’6” 180 lb person can be compared with one for a 5’4“ 350 pound person, to a 44 regular off the rack is the moment that you can start comparing “the best” home plans against each other or against millmart plans.

In general, the universal design ideas behind “good” will all be the same, as that is how the science of design has developed a body of aggregated work that is taught as exemplar of good design. The proportion of volume for a space, the use of light, the use of repetition of elements to reinforce a point, symmetry and asymmetry, the standard of the human body as the yardstick, the engineering limitations of large volumes, the progressive path of introduction to a site and concept, circulation of the human dimension through the space, the needs for storage, gathering, and isolation.....

The individualized response to the person and the site, changes the expression of how “design” clothes that site and person. Knowing what is “good design” is a psychological and physiological response to spatial relationships. Those with the ability to visualize 3D from 2D plans have a gift. Not everyone has the ability to “see”. Some people can’t be taught. Some can.

Thanks for posting this Emily. I know this thread is 2 years old, but I was wondering if any of the people with “good” or approved plans could share pictures of those plans? I’ve been terrified to post my house plan since the feedback has been pretty harsh on other posts, but it would be helpful to see what’s considered a plan with good flow. Thanks.

A good house design meets the needs of those that will use the house, and responds respectfully to the site upon which it will set. The number of good house designs is equivalent to the the number of people that need a house. The same house that is good for one person is not necessarily good for another person. Hence the range of comments.

Post your plan, you can always ignore comments that you do not agree with, even mine. With the law of averages, you are bound to get some good advice from all these experts. You might even get a chuckle here and there.

"...are there any house plans people are willing to hold up as being really good and well designed? I'm just curious..."

Good comments above. For my $0.02 worth, I think that many of the Eichler designs were and remain very good designs, especially for developer produced houses. I owned two and enjoyed them both. But they are designed for urban lots in mild-climate California...by a number of talented and experienced architects.

@Chandllerin, be brave! Post your plan if:

• you have the opportunity to make fixes to it. Some people post when they're already building. That's not the best time to try to change things
• you want your plan to be better
• you're able to disregard advice that doesn't fit your situation
• you're able to hear advice that tells you something you don't want to hear

"you're able to hear advice that tells you something you don't want to hear"

That reminds me of when I got married to my first wife. My new mother-in-law asked me, "I hope you don't mind me giving you advice?"

I answered, "I don't mind, as long as you do not mind me ignoring it."

My filter has improved since then.