Tips on How to Read Mobile Home Floor Plans

The hard part about reading a mobile home floor plan is not that they are complicated, it is that they are hard to “see” how the house will look as if you are standing in the house.  So, we are going to share some tips with you to make life easier when reading a mobile home floor plan.

Take a Virtual Tour After Looking at the Drawing

Take a look at the floor plan, take the virtual tour, then look at the floor plan again.  Once you have “walked through” a house, you can “see” what the floor plan really looks like.  You don’t have to guess, because you saw the house with your own two eyes.

Pretend You Are Looking at a Dollhouse from Above

If you look at your current living space, how would it look if you could float above it and look through the roof to see all your furniture as if you were looking at a dollhouse?  That is the kind of picture you want in your mind.  When you can think about the floor plan as if you are looking at a pencil sketch drawing of your future home, it becomes easier to “see” where everything goes.

One thing you can do to make it easier to view the dollhouse is to draw or paste little drawings of your most important furniture on the floor plan so you can feel where everything goes.  If you can’t draw, then just make little boxes and label the boxes for your furniture.  Your furniture cutouts don’t even need to be perfectly scaled to the room, as long as the size is close enough to give you a decent feel, you are golden.

Know the Symbols

This tip is pretty obvious, but we couldn’t avoid mentioning it. One of the most important symbols is the door and which way it swings.  Knowing where the door is located often sets the stage for where the furniture in the room will get placed.

Dotted lines often mean that you are looking at something on the ceiling.  On our sample floor plan above, you can see the decorative beams and ceiling fan drawn using dotted lines.  (Side note: there is not really a ceiling fan in the corner of the bedroom in this home, we just wanted you to see what a ceiling fan looks like on a floor plan.)

Most of the symbols are pretty easy to understand, yet above is a little map to common symbols you find on a mobile home floor plan.

Look for Labels

Folks that create floor plans try to use images that are readily apparent to most people, but some symbols they use may not be too obvious.  In those instances, the person my label the item with a name or initials.  An example might be the water heater, which often looks like a circle with the letters “WH” inside.

Think Use, Not Square Feet

The amount of space in a home is important but often given too much importance.  What is important is the flow of your house and how you use your home.  Don’t look at only the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, and square feet.  Look at the location of everything and think about how you live your life.

Where are your “sharing spaces” where everyone will gather?  Where are your “quiet spaces” where people can get some rest from the bustle of family life?  Where would the TV go and will that location mess with kids doing homework?  Should the dining room space combine with the living room, or should it be on the other side of the kitchen, so meals and entertainment don’t mix?  Will the person cooking need to keep an eye on the kids in the den?

Again, showing where your main pieces of furniture go helps in this whole process.

Side Drawings Are Your Friends

Sometimes you will find part of a floor plan to the side of the main layout.  These partial layouts show you what the home layout would look like with certain upgrades.  These side drawings are there to help you “see” a more complete picture of how your home will look with certain upgrades.

Those are the biggest items to think about, but if you ever have more questions about mobile home floor plans, feel free to give us a call.