I recently decided to try creating a floor plan design with ChatGPT.
I was looking online at different floor plans, and I found things I liked about each one, and then I thought, “Well, why don’t I just create my own, and I’ll have ChatGPT do it?”
I thought I could plug everything that I wanted in, and a beautiful floor plan would spit out, and voila, I would have it.
That’s not exactly what happened.
A floor plan did spit out, but it was far from beautiful!
So that was a bust. However, I found things about ChatGPT beneficial when you’re creating your floor plan.
Keep listening and learn why I think ChatGPT can be a great tool in your tool belt as you create your floor plan.
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Floor Plan Design with ChatGPT
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Below is a full (verbatim) transcript of this podcast episode.
Can ChatGPT Create Floor Plans?
So, I recently decided I was going to try to create a floor plan with ChatGPT.
I had been looking online at all these different floor plans, and I found things I liked from each one and then I thought, “Well, why don’t I just create my own and I’ll have ChatGPT do it?”
I thought I could just plug everything in that I wanted and a beautiful floor plan would spit out and voila, I would have it.
That’s not exactly what happened.
A floor plan did spit out, but it was far from beautiful, and I’m going to tell you about it. But I also want you to know that there were things about using ChatGPT that I found extremely beneficial.
So stick around to see why I think ChatGPT can be a helpful tool in your tool belt as you create your floor plan.
Welcome back to the Before You Build Podcast. I’m your host, Carrie Barker AKA Caroline on Design. And today in episode 72, I’m telling you about my experience with ChatGPT drawing a floor plan for me.
So, little background. I plan to move in a few years, about three years when my youngest graduates, so I am starting to think about my next floor plan.
The other day I was looking at all these plans online, which I’m sure you’re doing the same thing and there are bits and pieces from almost every plan I find that I like. And, of course, there are lots of things about the plan that just would not work for me or my family.
So, when I did my floor plan for my current house, I literally drew it on paper. It was not to scale, it didn’t look good, but I drew it out because there were very few tools online that I could use and now there are so many tools. That was back in 2012.
Now here we are in the end of 2024, almost 2025, and there are so many tools available to us.
My Experience with Floor Plan Design Apps
I recently had a listener contact me, and she asked me if there were any floor plan apps or websites that I recommended, like those websites where you draw your own floor plan.
I honestly don’t have any that I recommend, and that’s because of all of the ones that I’ve tried, I do not find them to be user-friendly at all. There are huge learning curves.
If you use the free version, you’re so limited in what you can do, and maybe there are some great ones out there, and if you know of them, please let me know because I would love to know if there’s just a really easy user-friendly floor plan app that you can draw what you’re thinking without having to go through a whole learning curve and without having to pay all this money to just create one plan.
So, I didn’t have something I could recommend to her because I just don’t like any of those websites.
Can ChatGPT Generate Floor Plans?
So I thought, “Hey, I’ll go to ChatGPT. We’ll see how this works.”
So, I went to ChatGPT. I just have the free version. I rarely use it. Every once in a while I’ll use it if I’m looking for an idea for a podcast episode or just something along those lines, but I would never have it write anything for me.
But I do think it’s very helpful for gathering ideas and helping me think about things in a new way. So my goal was to put everything in that I wanted, every room, all these things, I typed in.
Actually, you know what? Let me pull it up and I’ll tell you some of the things that I typed in.
So, the first thing I put in is I said, “I want a 3,300 square foot house with a first floor primary bedroom, two primary closets, mudroom, laundry room, butler’s pantry, open concept living and kitchen, small office, tons of windows, two floors, three secondary bedrooms on the second floor, stairs off to the side.”
That was the first thing I wrote. And then ChatGPT kind of reiterated what I said, spat a few things out, and then said, “Do you want a powder room?” And I was like, “Yeah, I definitely want to powder room.” I had completely forgotten about that.
Now, if you’re using an architect or builder, they’re going to remind you of that, but I forgot to put that in my initial once for this house.
So that is one thing I found helpful, and I could put stuff in, and then ChatGPT would reiterate what I said and say, “Do you want this too?”
Or it would just automatically assume I wanted things. It said things like a large soaking tub in your primary bathroom. I was like, “No, no, no, no, no. My husband and I don’t use the tub. We don’t have one now. We don’t want one in the future.” So, I wrote no soaking tub.
So then ChatGPT is like, “Got it, we’re not going to have a soaking tub.” And then it kind of prompted me to find out if you want double vanity. Do you want a separate water closet?
So that is what was super helpful. All these things that I wasn’t really thinking about helped me to think about them so that when I create a floor plan and go to my builder or drafts person or architect, I can say, “This is what I want.” And I will have already thought about it.
So, again, I put everything in. We went back and forth and it didn’t spit out a floor plan. It said, “We can’t give you a drawing.”
I was like, “Great.” I did all this. I mean, it only was like 20 minutes of my life, but I said, “I did all this and there’s no floor plan spit out.”
So, that kind of was annoying, but I thought, you know what? This is still an extremely valuable tool because it helped me to think of things that I didn’t think of.
So when I do go to the builder or whoever draws up my plan, I already know to say, “I don’t want a tub. I want double sinks.” I already know all of that, but it just helped me put it all in one place and think about it.
My ‘Floor Plan’ Drawing via ChatGPT
So this morning, before I was going to record this podcast episode, I thought, “I’m going to go back to ChatGPT.” I just want to make sure there’s no way to get a drawing to spit out based on everything I said, and I just want to make sure I have all the information before I record this podcast episode.
And it must’ve just been a glitch when I did it a few days ago. It just could not give me a drawing that day. But today, I went back into that session, and I messaged ChatGPT. If you’ve ever used it, you know what I’m talking about. But I added a message, “Can you create a drawing of what we talked about?”
And it did. It created a drawing today. And I was like, “Ooh, this is exciting.” Because I could see it spinning and saying it was creating the drawing, so I was like, “This is awesome.”
Well, a minute or two later, it spit out the drawing, and I was just a little underwhelmed.
Honestly, I’m looking at it right now. It’s kind of comical, actually. It reminds me of this time that I was on a trip with my family, with my mom and dad and my sisters when I was younger, and I don’t even remember where we were. I think we were in Europe somewhere, and my little sister had a character drawn of her, and we were so excited to see it.
When the guy was done, he turned it around, and we said, “That looks nothing like her.” It was so childish looking. It looked nothing like my sister.
And that’s kind of how this floor plan looks. It’s such a basic drawing that doesn’t even have… It’s just not what I wanted, we’ll just say. It is very basic. It’s like all just squares. So, I was underwhelmed.
So that did not work out. Now, possibly with a paid version of ChatGPT, you could get a better floor plan that maybe actually looked like a floor plan. This just looks like a bunch of boxes or squares that were put together.
So, that did not quite work out the way I wanted it to; however, I still think this tool is so valuable because of what I said before. It really helps you think about what you want, and it even comes up with ideas for you to see if maybe this might be something you want.
For me, that was a powder room. Yes, of course, I want a powder room.
So, I do think that was really helpful.
What I did not think was helpful was the actual drawing. I will add a picture of the drawing in the show notes because it’s comical. I don’t even know where the door is, the pantries, the garage, the bedrooms are all in a line. I can’t even explain it, so you’ll just have to go to the show notes for that one.
Next Steps
I highly encourage you to try this out. If you’re creating your floor plan right now, definitely try this out.
Also, I have a great *FREE* resource: a Floor Plan Creation Questionnaire that will get you started and help you start really thinking about things with your floor plan.
You could use that in addition to ChatGPT and really, really start to think about how your family is going to live in the house and what you really need, and you can go from there.
So, I will add a link to that in the description for this episode, and you can find that below. If you have any questions or suggestions of AI tools that actually will spit out a floor plan that looks like a floor plan, please let me know.
I would love to play around with tools that are easy to use because I love sharing those with you guys and with my clients. So, please share those.
And be sure to grab a copy of my *FREE* Floor Plan Creation Questionnaire!
