At Frank Betz Associates, we’ve mastered the art of stylish, single-level, open-concept living. Our one-story house plans feature spacious, thoughtfully-designed interiors, oversized bedrooms and baths, extra space for storage, and covered porches or patios to comfortably enjoy fresh air. They offer 2 to 5 bedrooms, plenty of open space, abundant natural light, and a level of comfort you won’t believe. You’ll wish you’d switched to single-level living years ago! 

5 Benefits of Open-Concept Floor Plans

1) Easier to navigate. The biggest attraction of one-story homes with an open concept is the fact that everything you need is on one floor — no stairs required. This makes it easier to live comfortably with any physical limitations, like arthritis or achy joints. No more dreading when you’ve left something in another room!

2) Safer. No matter your age, falling down the steps, or even making it up, can be a big concern. Single-level living means no worries about you, your young children or grandkids, or pets tumbling down steps and getting hurt. And no need to haul laundry, suitcases, or anything else up and down stairs. 

3) Open space and natural light. Our one-story homes include lots of open living space. Rooms have vaulted ceilings, plenty of windows, and flow easily into one another – without a staircase cutting into the space or narrow hallways to navigate.

4) Easy to clean. Vacuums and cleaning supplies can be heavy and bulky – especially if you’re lugging them up the stairs. And no one wants to spend money on TWO vacuums! If you live on a single floor, it’s so much easier to go from one end of the house to the other with a vacuum, dust mop, or any other cleaning tool. 

5) Everyday life. No stairs and zero step entries mean that you can move easily from the garage to the mudroom to the living areas with shopping bags, suitcases, boxes – and not worry about tripping or dropping things down the steps.

If you are interested in building a single-level, open-concept home, we have some home plans you’re sure to love: 

Waterbury Cottage

• 4 Bedrooms
• 2.5 Baths
• 2-Car Garage
• 1,997 Square Feet

This light-filled, airy, modern farmhouse-style home features a split bedroom design with the owner’s suite on one side of the home, and the secondary bedrooms on the other. Step through the foyer and the home immediately opens up into a formal dining room and beamed great room, which leads right into a spacious kitchen with an oversized island. The two outdoor living spaces are generously proportioned and just as easy to navigate as the interior ones.

Mulberry Farm

• 4 Bedrooms
• 2.5 Baths
• 2-Car Garage
• 2,148 Square Feet

The epitome of open-concept design, this home features a living room, dining area, and kitchen that is vaulted with one continuous ridge line across the entire space. The result is a grand, elegant room that encourages movement and flow throughout the entire home. The 16-ft sliding glass door from the dining area to the vaulted covered back porch provides a continuous line of sight straight through to your backyard and lets in abundant natural light. 

To learn more about how a single-level, open-concept home can improve your quality of life, please contact us — we’d love to share more!

You’re interested in building a new home so you’ve started browsing pictures online. Even though the images are gorgeous, it’s hard to get a feel for the actual size of the rooms. For this, you’ll need to look at a blueprint. A blueprint is a two-dimensional diagram of a home that shows the layout, indicating room measurements and the placement of features like doors, windows, toilets, showers, closets, and major appliances. You can learn a lot about a home when you really understand how to read a blueprint. Following are some tips to help you do just that.

What is a home blueprint?

A blueprint is an overhead view of one level of a home, as if you removed the roof and looked inside from above. You’ll see lines of varying thicknesses and along with symbols, some that make sense and others that might be unfamiliar. The drawing is then combined with a series of notes and other plans (electrical, plumbing, mechanical) to provide all the information necessary for construction. For your purposes, the blueprint is all you need to “read” to understand the flow and features of your new home.

What do the different lines mean in a blueprint?

The diagram of a home is made up of symbols. A blueprint includes a variety of lines — solid, dotted, and double — and you should know the meaning of each one on a blueprint. A solid line indicates a wall, interior or exterior. Some plans use a thick or double line for an exterior wall and a thinner one for interior walls, to provide clearer distinction between the two. 

A dotted or dashed line does not represent a wall. Think of the dotted line as a marker, but not necessarily structural. This line can symbolize a variety of details, like:

• The division between rooms in an open-concept plan – A dotted line could indicate where the kitchen is intended to separate from the living and dining areas, because there’s no actual wall there. In a space like a formal dining room or flex room, there could be a dotted line to show the opening. That means there is no door, but you can close it off with French doors if you’d like.

• Where the flooring changes – For example, from hardwood to tile

• A ceiling treatment – Like a beam, coffered, or tray ceiling

• A feature that is not part of the structural footprint – This could be an opening from one level to the other (e.g., vaulted ceiling). You’ll likely see “OPEN TO BELOW” on the second level’s blueprint, which shows that this is an open area and does not have a floor.

• Items like the upper cabinets in the kitchen and the seating space beyond the kitchen island

• Where items like shelving are included – As in a pantry or closet

How are doors shown on a blueprint?

Your home has different types of doors: exterior and interior, as well as single, double, sliding, pocket, and barn doors. A conventional single or double door is always illustrated with a line and an arc that shows which way the door swings open. The line of the door is thinner than those used for the walls.

A sliding or barn door on a blueprint is shown with a bold line for the door and is marked on the wall in its open position. A barn door will be drawn just parallel to the wall while a pocket door will be marked with a solid line that is laid over the wall where it will be hidden in its pocket.

Can I tell the size of the windows on a blueprint?

A blueprint will show you where the windows are placed but not the height of each one. A window is drawn with parallel lines that separate the solid lines of the wall where they will be installed.

How do I read the bathroom layout on a blueprint?

You’ll see the various bathroom fixtures drawn in symbols. The vanity is marked with an oval within a rectangle. The blueprint might have dual vanities, but if the second vanity is optional, it will be drawn in a dotted line.

A bathtub is indicated with an oval. A shower stall is a square or rectangle; it’s often marked with an “X” filling the space, which indicates it is only a shower and doesn’t include a bathtub. A tub and shower combination can be drawn as a rectangle within another rectangle.

How can I figure out the size of the rooms?

Blueprints include the dimensions of each room, under the title of that space. In a dimension like 10’x12’, the first number represents the width of the room, and the second number represents the length. Some architects place furniture symbols in the rooms to give you a sense of how standard pieces — like a queen or twin bed, sofa, or dining table — fit there. It’s helpful to know the size of your current rooms so you can compare them to those on a blueprint.

As you browse our 1,000+ new home blueprints, if you have any questions about how to read them, give us a call — we are happy to help!

As we bring this year to a close, we’re taking a look back at our top-selling house plans of 2021. Generally, homebuyers were drawn to easy elegance and casual luxury  — homes with large outdoor living areas, open-concept living spaces, and private, tucked-away bedrooms. As we move into 2022, our customers are still interested in these home styles, but they’re customizing  them with features that meet their particular needs and lifestyles. Here’s a look back at our top-selling new home plans of 2021, and a peak at some of our most in-demand plans for 2022.

Most Popular House Plans of 2021

Contemporary Craftsman

You may be able to spot traditional Craftsman-style homes from their wide porches, thick support columns, low-pitched roofs, and exposed beams. Contemporary craftsman is a new take on this timeless style that weaves in sleeker lines and up-to-date floor plans that fit modern lifestyles. The kitchen tends to be centrally located in the open floor plan, and bedrooms are tucked away for privacy. These homes still incorporate lots of natural materials, like wood and stone, to lend a warm, cozy feeling. 

Craftsman House Plan Highlight: Azalea Park

4 Bedrooms | 2.5 Baths | 2-Car Garage | 2,182 Sq Ft

Plan Features:

• Main-level owner’s suite
• Wide, covered front porch
• Screened-in back porch
• 2-story, vaulted family room with fireplace
• U-shaped kitchen with center island

See more Craftsman house plans. 

Modern Farmhouse

Cozy yet sophisticated, rustic in some ways and polished in others, the modern farmhouse is the perfect blend of country and city that’s uber popular right now with interior designers and families alike. A modern farmhouse features wide open spaces, neutral color palettes, natural elements like wood and metal, and decorative wood details like shiplap and beadboard.

Modern Farmhouse House Plan Highlight: Kensington Creek

4 Bedrooms | 3 Baths | 2-Car Garage | 2,960 Sq Ft

Plan Features:

• Main-level owner’s suite
• Formal dining room
• Main-level, multi-purpose guest room
• Semi-circle kitchen island
• Built-in kitchen desk area

See more modern farmhouse plans.

Ranch

The ever-popular ranch house plan is the epitome of easy, casual living. The single-level plan is easy to navigate, whether you have young children or mobility concerns. With a spacious, open-concept, a ranch-style home typically features an open flow between all the rooms, and unobstructed access to all parts of the home. The low-pitched roofs and general rectangular shape add to the easy maintenance of this style of home.

Ranch House Plan Highlight: Blantons Trace

4 Bedrooms | 3.5 Baths | 2-Car Garage | 2,073 Sq Ft

Plan Features:

• Oversized kitchen island
• Vaulted Porch and Outdoor Dining Room
• Full Basement
• Optional second level
• Bonus Room

See more ranch house plans. 

If you’re interested in any of these plans to build your own new home in 2022, or if you’d like to see others like them, please contact us. We’d love to help!

A lot goes into designing the front elevation of a new home. We take into consideration the style of the home (Craftsman, modern farmhouse, colonial, etc), how many windows are needed to optimize natural light, various materials (stone, brick, siding), and what’s trending in home design. But while the front elevation may seem like the most important aspect of a home (first impressions do count!), there are actually other features to consider first.

Because front elevations are a sum of parts that can be easily switched out for others, the most important things to focus on when building a new home is the floor plan and the desired square footage. If you love the house plan, but you’d prefer a different front elevation, it’s often an easy switch, as long as the roof line stays the same. When roof lines need to be modified to accommodate elevation changes, an architect may be needed to redraw plans. 

While the short answer is yes, your front elevation can be changed, there are a few instances where changes may be restricted. Some communities have homeowner’s associations or ARBs (architectural review boards) that create rules for how front elevations can look. This is to maintain a uniform aesthetic and universal appeal of homes throughout the community. For the same reasons, we typically design a few different elevations for the same house plan, so that home builders can add variety and interest to the look of a neighborhood as they are completing homes, but keep the overall “look and feel” of the community intact. 

If you are building a new home on your own land, there’s typically no need to worry about community guidelines, and we can alter the elevation to meet your requirements or to take advantage of the orientation of the home on the property. For example, you may want to relocate window groupings to take advantage of views or the rising/setting sun.

Here is an example of the Huntington Ridge house plan that was designed with three varying elevations:

Huntington Ridge (a)

Huntington Ridge (b)

Huntington Ridge (c)

At Frank Betz Associates, we pride ourselves on creating modern house plans that look fantastic and are ready to be built. However, they can all be customized to meet a buyer’s personal preferences, a builder’s needs, or a community’s requirements. Learn more about our plan modifications and custom designs.

At Frank Betz Associates, we aren’t just experts in all things home, we’re experts in all things important to you. We make it a priority to not only stay ahead of prominent design trends, but to listen to what modern homeowners like you are looking for in a home — the coziest and most reliable place in the world. 

Warm, stylish, and inviting, it’s no surprise that our farmhouse plans are the most popular we offer. With timeless design that incorporates contemporary flair, homeowners enjoy a living space that looks fresh and feels familiar. Take a look “inside” our modern farmhouse-style plans and experience the magic for yourself!

Farmhouse Exterior Features

Whoever said “it’s what’s on the inside that counts” has certainly never come across one of our modern farmhouse homes… With an absolutely stunning aesthetic that’s quick to touch your heart (and pique your curiosity), there’s no way you can glance at one of these living spaces and not want to go inside for more. 

With a mix of stylish features like clapboard, board-and-batten sidings, multiple gables, battered entry columns, stone pedestals, timbers, metal roofing, clean trim lines, warm front porches, and more, an exterior of one of our farmhouse-style floor plans is truly a sight to see — and signifies that you’ve finally made it home.

Interior Features

Like the beautiful features found on the outside, the interiors of our farmhouse-style plans include everything that makes the little moments special. Our main floors are open and welcoming, anchored by gorgeous kitchens that “feed” out into the rest of the space. Apart from grand rooms, dining areas, and guest and master suites, these contemporary and cozy homes also offer peaceful and private covered porches for relaxing.

With thoughtful touches like beautiful vaulted ceilings, regal windows, and design elements that allow for plenty of natural light, these special floor plans truly look and feel like your greatest vision of home. In a space specifically built for families to experience their happiest moments, life only gets better by the day. 

Want to explore more of what makes our farmhouse-style floor plans so unique? Here are a few of our most popular plans:

Hickory Flat

4 Bedrooms | 3.5 Baths | 2-Car Garage | 2,205 Sq Ft

Plan Features:

• Main-level owner’s suite
• Covered front and rear porch
• Optional 2nd floor with 4th bedroom and bonus room

Northfield Manor

4 Bedrooms | 4.5 Baths | 3-Car Garage | 3,878 Sq Ft

Plan Features:

• Main-level owner’s suite
• Covered front porch
• All bedrooms feature en suite bath and walk-in closets

All of us at Frank Betz Associates can’t wait to meet you and discuss your perfect farmhouse-inspired home. For more information, please call 888-717-3003.

Building a new home should never be a cookie cutter process. Every person and family’s needs are unique, so even the most perfect house plan on paper may not work in reality. That’s why, at Frank Betz Associates, we are happy to accommodate almost any change to our existing, award-winning house plans, or even start from scratch and develop a custom plan just for you. We work from a library of trend-setting, modern, remarkably-functional house plans, so making an adjustment is typically an easy process. Here’s how we do it:

Modify an Existing House Plan

We offer hundreds of house plans, so if you can’t find the perfect one, there’s likely one that will serve as a great starting point for your unique home. Whether you want to make one change or 10, we recommend starting with a base plan so that you can envision how your home will look. The process is easy:

Step 1: Select a house plan that you love from our extensive collection, then fill out and submit the Modification Request Form. 

Step 2: We will get back to you within 3 business days with an estimate for the work and the time needed to complete the modified plan.

Step 3: We will deliver the finished product dependent upon the license that is purchased.  Regardless, all files are created using exceptional quality control standards and exact precision.

Here are a few of our most frequently requested modifications, and ones that we can make for you, too!

• Upgrade to a 3 Car Garage
• Add/Delete Living Space or other square footage
• Add a Floor Over a Two Story Area
• New Front Elevation
• Garage: Front to side load or vice versa
• Add Front or Back Porch, Screened Porch, Sunroom or Deck
• Change Exterior Building Materials
• True Reverse of Plan
• Post and Beam Basement
• Slab Foundation Plan
• Change Exterior Walls from 2″ x 4″ to 2″ x 6″
• Adjust Plan for Handicap Accessibility

A note about timing… 

The time it takes to return a final set of plans will depend on how many jobs we have in queue. We take great pride in making sure every set of drawings is accurate, so we don’t rush through any job just for the sake of getting it done, including yours. Home is the most special place in the world, and we give each the respect and care it deserves. 

We do, however, realize that some of our customers may be on a tighter deadline than others, so if you or your builder have local CAD resources, or we are happy to pass on the final concept and design work so that you may get it drafted to meet any internal deadlines. 

While we are able to make any revision or modification to our existing house plans, if the changes become so extensive that they are no longer economical or feasible, we may recommend starting from scratch with a custom house design. Our designers have years of combined experience, and can easily determine early on in the process if a custom design is appropriate.

Design a Custom House Plan

Our designers are happy to work closely with you to develop a custom house plan that meets all your needs and accommodates your lifestyle. The custom home process is divided into two phases: design phase and construction document phase. We’ll work closely with you on both to make sure you leave with the house plan of your dreams. 

Design Phase: Our designers will work closely with you to develop an initial concept. Through a series of approximately 2-3 meetings, as a team we will meticulously work through ideas for the first floor, second floor, and front elevation. While we will take our time and explore all ideas until we have the concept just right, we pride ourselves on being intuitive as well as in-tune with each client to efficiently work together during this phase.

Construction Document Phase: Here is where your new home begins to come to life! Once the design is approved, your plans are transformed into a set of CAD files, which represent your home at 1/4″ scale and with dimension. Now you can start to visualize how your home will flow, where furniture will be placed, and where you will spend your time during different parts of the day.  If you are already working with a builder/contractor they can provide input regarding the type of plans they require.  After any necessary revisions, your house plan will go through a rigorous quality control process to ensure the accuracy and quality for which all our designs are known. 

The custom home design process typically takes about 6 – 8 weeks until you have a final house plan in hand. Through constant phone and email communication, we’ll keep you up-to-date on where we are in the process, and when we need your input, so you never have to guess. 

If you are interested in a personalized house plan, or a completely custom one, we can help! Browse our house plans and gallery, then give us a call at 888-717-3003 to get started. We can’t wait to start designing with you!