Contemporary Home Plans Tags

What house style will hold the best value in your neighborhood? What style house will closely match your interior style and existing furnishings? These are all questions that you need to ask yourself and your family. This was a tough question for my wife and I as we grew up...

Turn on any home-design TV show and you’ll repeatedly hear the words “open concept.” Tearing down walls to create open floor plans for the living, dining and kitchen area is what open-concept design is all about. For some, separate rooms still hold their charm. But many homeowners today are taking...

Modern Farmhouse, Here's a good example of the red-hot modern farmhouse trend. Plan 933-8 takes a much-loved style and streamlines it to an easy-to-build box shape that gets extra curb appeal from vertical siding, a porch, and dark window frames. The kitchen island provides a ton of room for meal...

For starters, the size of the home will shrink. As the Boomers jettison stuff, weaning themselves from some of their accumulated furnishings and other material, they will find that a smaller house suits their needs just fine. And since these houses will likely be situated in warmer locales, generously sized...

Dark Door and Window Frames. One way to make windows look special, without spending a fortune on custom styles and sizes, is to darken the frame around the window. The treatment plays up the shape of the window, reinforcing the geometry of contemporary design. The look is also commonly associated...

Sports parties are a whole other ballgame (so to speak!). When I edited Builder magazine, we often hosted super bowl parties in show homes. Even though the game was running on multiple screens, guests tended to congregate around one screen in particular so that they could, in effect, watch the...

modern-open-floor-plan. Sleek and urban open floor plan. What Started This Trend. Decades ago, homes were built with the notion that every room has a distinct function. You cook in a kitchen, so it was a separate room — often with a door. Dining rooms were formal. Living rooms were for...

Sports parties are a whole other ballgame (so to speak!). When I edited Builder magazine, we often hosted super bowl parties in show homes. Even though the game was running on multiple screens, guests tended to congregate around one screen in particular so that they could, in effect, watch the...

Emphasis on the Outdoors, This sleek, small home (plan 484-6) opens along most of its side to flow seamlessly onto the impressive deck. Here's a look from inside: Wow! Can't you imagine this at a lakefront or mountain location? The bedroom even has room for a queen or king bed....

Specialty Storage One of homebuyers’ biggest regrets is that they didn’t get enough storage space. Astute designers have answered that demand with over-sized utility rooms and pantries, big walk-in closets, and garage storage systems. Now they are including custom storage spaces everywhere. You can find storage for wine (Plan 888-17),...