If you want to get lots of house design ideas, a great place to get those ideas is by looking at other houses. By seeing things that you like in houses that are already built, it makes it easier to come up with your own house design plans.
On Saturdays and Sundays each week, you will see lots of "Open House" signs on street corners in the residential neighborhoods. You can stop in to take a tour of all those houses you see open and you shouldn't feel bad about not really being in the market to buy. This is a great way to see a large variety of different house designs, but also to see how they are furnished. How else are you going to get a grand tour of other people's house all for free!
Once you are in an open house and are looking around, you might want to remember what you are seeing. A great little small camera is the Flip Camcorder which fits right in your pocket. It is small, lightweight, takes geat movies, and is easy to carry anywhere. You can discreetly take a film of what you like in every house you go to! For instance. if you see iron balusters that you particularly like on a beautiful staircase in one of the homes, you can take a video of the staircase and try to design the same thing in your house.
Make sure you go to different neighborhoods so that you can see all the different house plans that are in your area. Going from house to house allows you to see all types of house designs from different economic areas and price ranges. You may end up realizing that you like one idea from one house and another from a different house. This will give you lots of great ideas once you start to design your own house plans.