Anyone who has searched for or purchased house plans online can attest to how easy it is to quickly become overwhelmed by the volume of plans that are available. Whether building a forever home, garage or investment property, homeowners can successfully navigate the search process when they know where to start, what questions to ask, and how they can most effectively (and efficiently) find what they’re looking for.

Georgia based Design Evolutions, Inc. building designer Kirya Duncan says the online pre-design plan...

The joy of a vacation is universal across countries and cultures. For many, a second, vacation home can add to the bliss of getting away by providing welcoming comfort in an exotic locale.

But as tastes change, so too do the features that vacation homeowners look for when choosing a design.

“We’ve had vacation homes forever, but today people want to have more flexibility because they’re more mobile than they used to be,” said Ken Pieper, owner of Ken Pieper Signature Plans in Evergreen, Colorado.

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Over the past two decades, tastes and preferences in home design have changed drastically in many respects and very little in others. The House Plan Company dug into the archives to find the top five most popular house plan designs since the late 90s and discovered it’s a diverse collection of styles to fit varying purposes. The only common denominators among all of them, they found, was the attention to detail and open living space in the design.

“Each of my designs delivers as much detail on the exterior of the home as they do in the interior,” explained Ken Pieper, owner of Ken...