House building advice please! (update 2)

I completely get what you mean about stairs! I don;t move my camera too much when I play, so I like to just be able to see everything from the front. Stairs tend to block out spaces, so I can;t see rooms behind them, and it becomes a sort of dead space. The update to stairs was a while ago, and it definitely helps. There's a little white square arrow type thing that appears over the stairs once you've placed them, and you can click and drag and make them U shaped stairs, and it really helps with the space issue, because you can shove them in a corner somewhere ;)

I like to make my builds as simple as possible, and use google or Pinterest for some good exteriors, and then I make a simple layout inside that suits my gameplay, so I tend to ignore real floor plans. I only have a few, but if you search me on the gallery (asimbsim), I have a few simple, clean style houses that you can have a look at? I've only just started experimenting with the new stairs, but they really do help :)