Frank Betz Associates has been drawing houses out of metro Atlanta since 1976, and we have been building them around Lake Anna long enough to have favorites! We’re going to talk about 7 of our favorite designs we’ve built across Central Virginia, in Orange, Spotsylvania, and Louisa counties. The Frank Betz house plans have been featured in Southern Living, and we have built enough of them to know exactly what each one does best. 🏡
About Frank Betz Associates
Frank Betz is a residential design firm that started in 1976 and works out of the metro Atlanta area, and over five decades it has become one of the country’s best sources of pre-designed house plans!
What sold us on them is the paperwork, and yes, we get excited about paperwork. A Frank Betz set comes through complete: elevations, foundation layouts, floor plans wired for electrical, framing plans, detail sheets. You can read the firm’s own rundown on the firm’s about page. When the drawings are that thorough, framing moves faster and the finished house matches the one you fell for on paper!
Why These Plans Are Great For Lake Anna and Central Virginia
Frank Betz draws for the Southeast, and Central Virginia sits close enough that the plans work here without a fight! The exteriors are pretty traditional, the way most buyers around here still want them: brick, stone, stucco, gables that hold their proportion. And they are built for the way you actually live on a lake lot.
Between retirees coming down from Northern Virginia and weekenders driving up from Richmond, almost every buyer we meet wants some mix of these:
- Main-level living. A primary suite on the first floor pays off for years, especially once the stairs stop being your friend.
- Walkout basement variants. Most lots around Lake Anna fall toward the water, and a finished walkout turns that grade into another floor of living space.
- Rear porches and great-room window walls. These plans point at the view, which is what you want when the view is the lake.
- Bonus space over the garage. A bonus room takes your weekend guests and their gear without pushing out the main footprint.
These designs really just work on a wooded lot outside Gordonsville as good as on the waterfront at Lake Anna, which is why you will find these homes all over the map from Bumpass to Locust Grove!
7 of Our Favorite Frank Betz Designs
In no particular order!
Walnut Grove
The Walnut Grove gives you three bedrooms and a bonus room across 2,275 square feet. The exterior is white board-and-batten and siding, transitional rather than country. A screened porch and an open deck run the back of the house over a finished walkout basement, which turns a sloped lot into an asset.
The great room is the reason. It runs up to a cathedral ceiling with exposed stained beams. A floor-to-ceiling stacked-stone gas fireplace holds one end, and a wall of windows opens the other to the trees.
The kitchen sits open to all of it. White cabinets, stone counters, a herringbone backsplash, a professional-style double-oven gas range, and a sightline from the island straight to the fireplace. Cook here and you are still in the room with everyone.
The finished walkout and the bonus room stretch the living space well past the main-floor number, so you get more house than the square footage lets on. This is the one people walk into and go quiet for a second, and then start rearranging their furniture in their head. 😍
The Chapman
The Chapman puts four bedrooms and a sitting room off the master on a single level, in 2,193 square feet. We built one directly on the Lake Anna waterfront in stucco and stacked stone, with a hip roof and a gabled entry that reads well from a boat.
Four bedrooms and not a single stair is the draw! The primary suite and its sitting room sit apart from the rest, so guests and grandkids get their own end of the house and you keep your quiet.
Salem
The Salem is the biggest of the seven at 2,322 square feet with three bedrooms, and it carries the size well. We put one on the water too, in stucco and stone, with a side-entry garage wing that hides the doors and arched windows aimed at the lake. It is a lot of house that never turns boxy.
All that room is the point. Weekend guests get real space of their own, and the open front rooms swallow a whole holiday crowd without a single elbow bumped!
The Nathaniel
The Nathaniel is 1,949 square feet with four bedrooms on one level, and it exists for its front porch. Three arched openings span the columned porch, and the stone-and-siding front looks like it has stood on the road for thirty years. If curb appeal is what you are after, start here.
That porch sets the tone for the whole house. Pull into the driveway and it already feels like somewhere you want to spend a slow Sunday with a glass of tea. 🌾
Holland
The Holland fits four bedrooms and a real primary bath into 1,764 square feet. Proof you do not need a giant footprint to land the bedroom count! It is a stucco-and-stone two-story with arched window transoms and layered gables above a two-car garage, and it suits a growing family, or a buyer near Mineral or Louisa who wants four bedrooms without four bedrooms’ worth of house to heat.
The two-story layout is what makes the math work, stacking four bedrooms above the open living space below. A growing family gets the full room count on a footprint that stays easy to heat and easy to own.
Topeka
The Topeka is the smallest at 1,717 square feet, three bedrooms and a sitting room off the master. It is a raised design over a two-car garage, with a bay window and an arched entry that give it more character than the size suggests.
The raised design is made for a lot that falls toward the water, and those are everywhere around Lake Anna! Set it on that grade and the garage tucks in below while the living space lifts right up to the view.
Bagwell
The Bagwell is single-level living in 1,949 square feet with three bedrooms, and the floor plan is as straightforward as they come. The character lives on the outside: a stucco exterior, a hip roof, an arched columned entry, and gabled dormers.
Inside, it is an easy one-story that just works, every room right where you reach for it. For single-level living with curb appeal that punches above its size, it is tough to beat!
What We Usually Modify on a Frank Betz Build
Of course we start with the stamp. Because Frank Betz is a design firm and not an architecture practice, the stock plans arrive without an engineer’s stamp on them. Normal for stock plans. It also means the site-specific engineering review falls to us.
Every house we build goes through the same standard, or what we like to call, The Spartan Difference:
Structural engineering on every home. A licensed engineer reviews and stamps the plans for your actual site: the wind exposure, the slope, the loads, the soil under the footings.
NGBS Silver Level minimum. Every Spartan home certifies to at least the National Green Building Standard Silver Level, and we have been named an NGBS Partner of Excellence every year since 2016.
Floors built to feel solid. We upgrade the floor system past what the stock drawings call for, so nothing bounces when you walk across the great room.
HVAC sized to the house. We run a load calculation on your actual house on your actual lot instead of sizing by rule of thumb. Right-sized equipment runs quieter and pulls humidity better.
Foundation tuned to the soil. The soil report drives the foundation, not the other way around. Waterfront lots pay you back for that discipline.
Third-party inspection. An independent inspector walks every house on top of the county, because a second set of trained eyes is cheap insurance on the biggest check you will write.
We also upgrade the trim, the window sizing, the soft interior corners, and the molding package, because those are what your hand touches every day. A local home inspector who has walked a lot of our houses put it plainly: they land in the top one to two percent of what he sees, and we price in the middle of the market.
Build a Frank Betz Plan With Spartan
The fastest way to know which of these is your plan is to stand inside one. Our model home and design center is on Route 208 near Lake Anna Winery, just outside Mineral, and we will walk you through floor plans and finishes and tell you straight what your lot can handle, whether that lot is on the water or over toward Orange and the Fredericksburg side of Spotsylvania.
Browse the full Frank Betz catalog for galleries and floor plans on all seven. Then reach us through the contact page or call (540) 895-9966. Come see which one is yours! 🔑