In-Depth Floor Plan Tutorial Part 1 [UPDATED 2025]

In this three part series, we're gonna be making this floor plan, furnishing it, and adding materials to walls and floors, everything inside Blender. This is the third version of the series, and it's full of new tips and tricks, so you're watching the latest and greatest. I'm DudeBlender, and let's jump right in. In part one we'll be making the walls, part two will be windows, doors, and furnishing, and in part three we'll apply materials to the floors and walls, light the plan, and render it. Alright, first we need a floor plan. If you do this for clients, they will provide it. But for this exercise, let's download one from the internet. Floorplans.com and Houseplans.com have databases that we can use, so you can go to either. As a side note, if you want to create your own, you can use SmartDraw, Floorplan Creator, Floorplanner.com, or any of the bunch of resources that you can find in Google. I'm gonna go to Houseplans.com, and since this is a learning exercise, I'll just try to find the smallest plan. One bedroom, one bathroom, one story, zero garages, and let's see what we get. We can switch this to Floorplan to see the actual floor plans, and I'm just gonna go with the first one, but you can go with whichever you want. The process is going to be the same, although if you're starting with Blender, you might want to follow me step by step with the same plan. Click on it, scroll down to the plan, and download that image. You can actually buy the plan, which includes a bunch of other stuff, and you can get more information about the idea of the house, and if you scroll further down, you'll see some of the specs and features of the house. Okay, I recalculated the dimensions to the metric system, so just keep in mind that there will be rounding errors. If you want to use this one, you can take a screenshot now and use that image. Now let's jump into Blender. I'm using version 4.3, but you should mostly be able to follow if you're using 3.6 or later. Let's delete everything, so A to select all, X to delete, and click on delete to confirm the operation. The button appears right under your pointer, so you just have to click. If you don't know how to navigate, the basic controls are middle mouse button and drag to orbit, shift middle mouse button and drag to pan, scroll wheel to zoom in and out, and control shift middle mouse button and drag up or down to zoom with precision. Open a file explorer window and find the floor plan. You can drag and drop it into the scene. Now if you select it by left clicking on it, you'll see here in the top left corner, collection empty. And it will also be selected here in the outliner. Whenever you drag and drop an image into the scene, it is created as an empty. An empty is a helper object that you can use for many things and it won't be rendered. If you go to the menu, shift A and empty, you'll see that there are many types. One of them is image, and this is what we created by dropping the file into the scene. Now we want to clear the rotation of the empty and place it flat on the grid so that its position in the Z dimension, so up, is zero. There are a few ways to do this, but the easiest is using the ALT key. With the image selected, we move it by pressing G, or grab, and then click to accept the operation. Same thing with R, rotate, and S, scale. You right click to cancel the operation. If we press ALT R, it clears the rotation. So you might imagine how to clear the movement, or translation as we call it, and of course it would be with ALT G. And now it's on the origin. If you press N to show the side panel, you can confirm that it's in fact in the 0,0,0 location, and with 0,0,0 rotation. Press N again to hide it. Ok, now let's go to top view, which you can do by pressing 7 on the numbers pad, or by clicking on the Z in the navigation gizmo. Make sure that the Z is highlighted before you click on it. Now we need to copy the plan to something that we can use in Blender. Note that I will do this by hand, I'm not going to be using any addons like Archimesh or Archipack, so it's a personal choice, but if you know this process, you'll be able to adopt a new workflow with an addon very easily when and if you choose to do so. Ok, so we want to make an outline of these dimensions. I'm going to ignore the deck. Make sure that you're using the right units in your scene by going to the scene menu, units. I'm going to change this to meters. Shift A, mesh, plane. This is going to become the walls, so we might as well rename it now. F2 is the shortcut to rename it, or you can double click the object's name in the outliner. Let's call it walls. Now we want it to be the size of the outline of our plan. Horizontally it's 2.9 plus 4.1, so 7. And vertically it's 3.6 plus 4, so 7.6. Note that there are rounding errors because of the conversion of the units, and this plan apparently considers different thicknesses for different walls, which we're not going to do, but I will tell you how you would do it if you ever need to. Let's open our side panel with N, make sure that you're on the item tab, where you can see the transform information. Note that this panel is dynamic, and it changes depending on what mode you're in. If I tab into edit mode, we can see information of individual vertices, which is useful in some situations. I want to be in object mode, so I tab out. Now I want the dimensions to match the dimensions of the plan, and here we can just go ahead and type the numbers, 7 in X, and 7.6 in Y. Now this has the actual accurate measurement. And you'll also notice that the scale has changed. And this is a recurring source of frustration for Blender beginners, because it interacts with a bunch of other things like modifiers and textures. So unless you really know what you're doing, you want the scale to be 1. So CTRL A for the apply menu, scale, to reset the scale to 1. To keep everything tidy, we want this corner to be in the origin. So tab into edit mode, and select this vertex. Shift S for this menu, and cursor to select it. Tab out, right click, set origin, origin to 3D cursor to do precisely that. And now as we did before, ALT G clears any translation. Next we need to delete this face, but not the vertices. So tab into edit mode, A to select everything, X to get the delete menu, only faces. Now we tab out to object mode, and select the image. We want to scale it with S, and align it to this object. So let's do that, you'll be scaling it with S, and moving it with G. If you want to constrain the movement, press G, and then X or Y, and hold SHIFT to move with precision. Just eyeball it, it's just a reference. As we expected, there is a little bit of mismatch here, because we changed the units. If you're using the original plan in feet and inches, you might not get this gap. Let's dim the image a bit. Select it, go here to the data properties, check the opacity box, and drag this down to something like .25. We've got our setup, now let's get to work. Select the walls by clicking on the object, or on the outliner, and tab into edit mode. I'm going to delete these three vertices. So select them. By default, you have the box selection. Select these, and to add to the selection, hold SHIFT and select this one, X, and the menu appears with the item you last used selected, to improve your workflow. Click on vertices, and we're left with one single vertex that's exactly on the world origin. We're going to draw the plan by extruding this vertex with E. So select the vertex, E to extrude, and this creates a new vertex joined by an edge. We want to move this in the X axis, so press X to constrain the movement, and now we can just type the amount. In this case, it's 7 meters, so we type 7, and click or enter to confirm. Now we make this wall, but there is a wall intersecting here, so we want to make this segment and then this segment, so that we have a vertex to extrude later. Same thing, select the vertex, E, Y, and we type 4, enter. Then again, E, Y, 3.6. You'll note that if we add these dimensions, 1.8 plus 1.8 plus 3.1, results in 6.7, which is not exactly 7, which is the 4.1 plus 2.9. And the reason here is that there are walls, and they have thickness, and we have to account for the thickness of those walls. I'll show you how to do that in a second. Let's finish this first. With the vertex selected, we continue, E, X, minus 3.1, enter, E, X, minus 1.8, enter, E, X, minus 1.8, enter. So we'll just move this vertex to the left, so that it matches with this one. To do that, there is a very neat trick that they implemented, I think, in version 4.2, which is the base point. Make sure that your snapping here is set to increment. Even if it's turned off, the base point function uses whatever you have selected here. With this vertex selected, G to move it, X. Now we turn on base point with B, and we need to select the start and end points. The start is the vertex we're moving, and the end is the vertex that we're referencing. Note that the cursor changes to a square when you're selecting a vertex, an hourglass when it's an edge, and a circle when it's a face. Click and click. We continue, E, Y, minus 3.6, enter. And to close the outline, we select these two vertices, and press F to make an edge between them. We're done outlining, and there's a couple of things. The first one is that this is a wall, but there's no measurement. So in that case, you would ask the client, or you can just eyeball it. I usually round to the nearest tenth of a meter, so let's do that. We don't have a vertex here, so to cut this edge, the shortcut is CTRL R, and you'll see a vertex appear exactly in the middle of the edge. Click to accept. Now let's zoom in, and grab it with G. Then, if you want to slide the vertex along the edge, press G again. Our snapping here is still on increment, so we can just go ahead and change it to grid, so that it will align to the grid, and now, G, G. If the snapping is turned off, we can turn it on temporarily by holding the CTRL button. Let's place it here. We can also adjust these vertices to match the position of the plan. Select them, G, G, CTRL. Let's place it here, G, G, CTRL, and let's place it here. One thing that you should know is that in a later step, we're going to tell Blender to what direction will the walls gain their thickness. So ideally, you want each vertex to be on either side of the walls. In this case, because I know that there's a lot of rounding errors, I'm not going to do it. But in a real project, where all of the measurements are correct, the vertex would have to be aligned to one of the sides of the wall. Let's take a short commercial break to help support the channel, and I'll be right back. We're back. Now let's make the walls that go into the house. Let's start with this one, and then we'll just go around. Select this vertex, and same procedure, E, X, and I will add the bedroom and bath. So 1.8 plus 3.1 is 4.9. And we can press the minus key at any point, even after typing the number. Minus. Enter to confirm. And I don't have the information about the thickness of these walls, but I do know that this wall and this wall sit on the same vertical axis. So I'm just going to do the base point again. Change this to increment, G, X, B, now I click here, and then I click here. And of course if this was client work, I would ask about the thickness of each of the walls. And all of this would match perfectly. Also note that, for now, we're ignoring windows and doors. Now there are three walls that go up here, so we need to create vertices along this edge. So control R, click. Now let's say that we want this distance between the vertices to be exactly 1.8 meters. The easiest way to do it is to move the vertex all the way here, and then move it back again by exactly the number that you want. So select it, G, G, and slide it all the way. By default you cannot go beyond the next vertex, so just place it here. Now G, X, 1.8. Remember not to extrude vertices along existing edges. If instead of dividing this edge with control R, as we did before, I were to extrude either of these vertices with E, and then I press X to constrain, let's say that I place it here, it looks like it's okay, but it's actually not. I now have two overlapping edges here, and that will cause a bunch of problems in the future. So I'm going to delete it, and now divide the edge with control R. Now I'm just going to align it here, so I'm going to change this back to grid, G, G, control, and I'll place it here. Now these two walls have the same length, so we can extrude these two vertices simultaneously. But if we use the normal shortcut E, it extrudes the whole edge, creating a plane. But then we have to remove this edge, and that's an unnecessary step, so instead, we select the vertices, and bring up the vertex menu with control V. You'll see a bunch of stuff that we can do with the vertices. As a side note, control E brings up the edge menu, and control F the face menu, and we use all of those quite often. Okay, so control V, extrude vertices, Y to constrain the movement, and here's a nice trick available since 4.2 I think. When you're in the middle of a transform operation, like moving vertices, the navigation is disabled, but sometimes you need to zoom in or pan during an operation, so if you hold the ALT key, you can navigate like you usually do. We can pan, and we can zoom. I don't know this dimension either, so I'll just align to the grid by holding control. Another trick, when you're aligning to the grid, if you also hold shift, you can align to the minor grid. You can see the information on the top left, that now we're moving in hundredths of a meter instead of tenths. This way I can align the vertices to the middle of the square. Now we need to make a wall here, so control R, click. I'm just going to align the rest to the grid to do it faster. Now we want to extrude this to the right, in a way that it aligns to this vertex. So E, X, we'll use base point, B, click this vertex, then this one. Okay, we need to cancel that, and turn the snapping back to increment. Now, since we extruded this vertex, even if we cancel the move, the second vertex still exists, so be careful not to extrude it again to avoid doubled vertices. So now, G to move, X, B, now we click, and we click here. And now to make an edge between these two, we select them and press F. Now these are actually sliding doors, so we just need to connect these vertices and these vertices. So we can just do it with F, and then these, F. Great. Now here, control R, G, G, control, and we'll place it there, E, Y, B, we click here, and here. Select these, F to make an edge, and to finish, we just need an edge here. I think we're done. If you feel that you might have doubled vertices somewhere, you can select all with A, M, for the merge menu, by distance, and it will show here if you deleted any vertices. Now save your work with control S, I wanna call it FP Tut, enter. Now let's tab out to object mode, and we wanna duplicate this with shift D, and right click to cancel the move. That will be our floor, so let's rename it here to floor. Now let's make the floors faces quickly, so with the floor selected, tab into edit mode, and now it depends if you'll want different floor materials for different rooms. You wanna make separate faces for rooms that have different materials, and you don't want overlapping faces, so for example if you do a face here, and then I do a face here, and now you'll see that this face is overlapping this one, and you can see that by moving this vertex. We don't want that, so control Z. So here in the mudroom, I want the same floor to be in the closet than in the rest of the room, so I don't need this geometry. I select the vertex, and delete it. Let's hide the walls for now, because since we can still see that geometry, it might be confusing. So by pressing here on this eye, you can hide that object in the viewport. Now let's do the same thing in the bedroom. We don't need a different material for the floor in the closet, so we can delete this vertex. It's also a good idea to tidy up and remove any unnecessary vertices. An easy way to do that is by turning on auto merge with this button. Now if we overlap a vertex on top of another, they will merge. So select this one, G, G, slide it all the way, click, and now it's gone. We can make sure that it's actually gone, by clicking away to unselect it, now selecting it back, and moving it. There should be no vertex beneath it. Let's do this one too, and this one. If we wanted to separate the kitchen and living room materials, we would need to cut this edge, and create a new edge here, to separate the spaces, but I'm not gonna do that. Ok let's be good and do this one too, and this one, this one too, ok this is as clean as we can do it. Now for each room, we're gonna select all of the vertices that make it up, and press F to make a face. So that, bathroom, mudroom, and now the living room and kitchen combo, F. Lastly, tab out, and we're gonna duplicate the floor. Shift D, right click to cancel, and we're gonna rename this to background. Now with the background selected, we tab into edit mode, and this is gonna be a plane surrounding the house. We delete every vertex inside it, A to select all X faces. Let's also turn off the floor for now. Now if it's not selected, we select everything with A, and E to extrude everything. While the move is still active, we press S to scale. Now we click, and we have a background, with a cut where the floor will be, to prevent Z fighting. Now if we ever need to make this bigger at any point, we don't scale the object, because the whole will also scale. We need to go to edit mode, alt, left click on any of these edges, to select the whole outer edge, and then we scale that with S. Tab out, let's hide the background, and unhide the walls. With the walls selected, tab, now we're going to extrude in Z. So we select all with A, E, and now, Z to constrain to the Z axis, and we type the height of the walls. So let's say 2.3 meters, enter. Now we need to make sure that all of these walls are facing the right direction. Right now, all of our walls are two dimensional faces, and faces have a front and a back side. We can show their orientation by clicking here on the overlays menu, and checking face orientation. The front of every face is blue, and the back is red. By default, Blender uses a very saturated red color that's too bright to be comfortable, so if you want to change it, you can go to edit, preferences, themes, look for the 3D viewport and expand it, and scroll down until you find face orientation back. I just desaturated the red color, but you can use any color that you like. Now to give the walls thickness, we're going to use a modifier. Modifiers change the geometry of an object non-destructively, which is super powerful. So let's go ahead and click the modifiers tab, and add modifier. Start typing solidify, and click on it, or just select it with the arrows, and press enter. Change the mode from simple to complex, and the thickness to whatever thickness you want. I'll type .15, since I want my walls to be 15 centimeters thick. Alright, now we have thick walls. The modifier generated all of this extra geometry for us, and we can change the thickness at any point. Now if we go to top view, and analyze our walls, let me hide the image for a second, you'll notice that some of the walls are incorrect. In my case, this, this, and this wall, probably this one too, have a weird shape, it's not straight, so we're gonna fix them. Now note that which walls are wrong will depend on how you extruded the vertices, so if you're following along but not exactly, you might get a different thing, but the fix is gonna be the same. Let's turn the modifier off by clicking on this monitor icon here. This shows our original geometry, before the modifier. Whenever we have walls with more than one segment, like this one, we need to make sure that all of the segments are facing the same way, and that the red side is facing the direction to where the wall will gain its thickness. Let's get the plan back again. So for example, this wall should gain its thickness to the left, so this face should be red, which in this case is the other way around. Now sometimes, and I'm not sure when this happens, it's possible that you cannot see your floor plan if you are on a perspective view. If this happens to you, select it, go here, to the data properties, and make sure that both showing orthographic and perspective are checked. If perspective is not checked, you'll only be able to see the plan when you're in orthographic view, which you can easily change by clicking on this button. In any case, I want it to be visible in both, so I'm just gonna check it. Ok, now, with the wall selected, tab into edit mode, press 3 on the keyboard, not the numbers pad, or click on this icon for face select mode. Now we select the faces by clicking on them, instead of selecting vertices. Now all of the outer walls should be blue, because we want the walls to go inside of the house. So if on the outside of the house you see any wall that's red, select it, by just clicking on it, shift N, and it should now turn blue. Next we need to make sure that the inner walls are oriented in the right way. So these three seem to be right, the thickness of the wall should go that way, so we change this one, shift N, inside. And we continue to check, this one's correct, this one's correct, this one isn't, so shift N, that's good, and this one is also wrong, so shift N, this one, I think it could go either way, because of the way we did it, so I'm just gonna leave it there, and this one should go this way, so that's correct. And it seems to be that we are good. So again, make sure that any wall that has several segments, has all of the segments facing the same way, so this one, this one, and this one. Okay, everything seems to be correct now, so let's go again to modifiers and turn it back on, go to top view, and just review every wall to make sure that everything looks good, which seems to be the case. Okay, now that we've fixed everything, note that all of our geometry is now blue. Both sides of every wall are now blue, and that's because the solidify modifier is actually generating new geometry, so this wall has now this face, which is the original face that we created in the previous step, but also this face on the top, this face on the other side, and the one below. And now if we actually go into the wall, you'll see that inside, all of the faces are red, which makes sense, this is the back side of each of these faces. So everything looks good, we can now go ahead and turn the face orientation overlay off, we don't need it anymore, and we can also show the background and the floor. And this is what we have so far. Save your work with CTRL S, and then save as with CTRL SHIFT S, and call this file the same thing, with an identifier at the end of the name. I'll just call it fptut b, enter, enter again. We wanna have our history of files, in case we ever mess up, we can always go back to our previous file, that way we don't lose all of our work. Now the final note here, is that if you wanted some of the walls to be thinner, you would need to create a separate walls object, and change the thickness of the solidify modifier of that object to a different thing. With the solidify modifier, there's no way to give different thicknesses to different walls. Ok, if you followed all the way, great job, you've used some basic modeling, navigation, and all of the transforms. A bunch of more advanced tips and tricks, and even modifiers, so well done! In part 2 we'll be adding windows and doors, and furnishing the plant, so see you there!