What is a floor plan?
A floor plan is the drawing you see when a building is cut horizontally at about waist height and viewed from above. Walls are drawn thick because they are cut; items below the cut are drawn with thin lines. A drawing viewed from the side is called a section.
Symbols
- Wall: thick black. Its thickness can be read from the drawing; external walls are usually thicker than internal ones.
- Door: an opening in the wall, a leaf line and an arc. The arc shows where the leaf swings; nothing is placed in that area.
- Window: thin lines within the wall. The middle line is the glass.
- Stairs: step lines and an arrow. The arrow shows the way up.
- Furniture and fixtures: symbols such as a bed, sofa or toilet are drawn at real size; they show how much space they take up.
Dimensions and areas
- Dimension chain: the numbers along the edge of the plan are in metres. The outermost line shows the building's overall external dimension; the inner chain shows how it divides along the room walls.
- Dimensions inside a room: written like “5.60 × 4.20 m”, this is the wall-to-wall interior size. Use it to check whether furniture will fit.
- Room area: the room's interior area (net area). The sum of all rooms is the home's net area. For net vs gross, see the net vs gross floor area post.
Scale and north arrow
Printed plans state a scale. At 1/50, 1 cm on paper is 50 cm in reality; at 1/100 it's 1 m. On screen the scale changes, so read the dimensions from the labels. The north arrow shows which directions the home faces: use it to tell which rooms get the sun.
In Nodaform you place the plan on the drawing sheet at a scale such as 1:50 or 1:100 and add a north arrow and a scale bar.
What to look at first on a plan
- Total net area and the area of each room
- Inner dimensions of the bedrooms (do the bed and wardrobe fit?)
- Door swing direction and the space in front of doors
- Window positions and the north arrow
- Location of wet areas (kitchen, bathroom, WC)
The plans and dimensions in this post are layout ideas. A building permit, structural design or construction project requires a design by, and approval from, a licensed architect and engineer; ask your municipality about the details of the regulations.