How to make a house electrical plan
An electrical plan answers one question for everyone involved: what goes where. Done before framing inspections, it turns vague wishes into a document your electrician can price and your inspector can read.
Start from the architectural floor plan
Work on the real floor plan, not a sketch: room sizes, door swings and cabinet runs decide where receptacles and switches can go. If your architect or builder gives you a PDF, you can annotate it directly instead of redrawing it.
Name and qualify each room
Give each room its type — bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, laundry, garage — and its area in square feet. The type decides which NEC rules apply; the area sizes the general-purpose circuits.
Place the receptacles
Along the walls of habitable rooms, no point should be more than 6 ft from a receptacle. Add the ones you actually need: both sides of a bed, behind the TV, the desk, the vacuum. Then the required ones: bathroom, laundry, garage, outdoors front and back, balconies and decks.
Lighting and switches
Every habitable room, bathroom, hallway, stairway and the garage needs a wall-switch-controlled lighting outlet. Draw the switches at the doors you actually use, and add 3-way switches at both ends of stairs and long hallways.
Appliances and special loads
Place the range, dishwasher, refrigerator, microwave, washer and dryer, water heater, HVAC equipment and EV charger. Each fixed appliance usually gets its own circuit, and some — range, dryer, water heater, EV charger — need 240 V.
From devices to circuits
Group rooms onto general-purpose circuits, keep the required kitchen, laundry, bathroom and garage circuits separate, and choose the protection of each breaker. Planelico proposes this layout from your plan and exports a panel design pack with the directory and the circuit schedule.
Quick method with Planelico
- 1
Import the floor plan PDF
One page per floor.
- 2
Draw the rooms
Type and square footage for each.
- 3
Place receptacles and lighting
Comfort first, then the required ones.
- 4
Add appliances
Including 240 V loads and the EV charger.
- 5
Generate the load center
Circuits, breakers, protection.
- 6
Export and share
Plan and panel design pack as PDF.
Frequently asked questions
Official sources
Build your electrical plan online
Import your PDF plan, drop the electrical symbols and export a clean document to share.