In one embodiment of the invention, a method of designing integrated circuits is disclosed. The method includes determining a power correction factor for a subset of partitions of circuits in an integrated circuit design; determining a gross power consumption estimate for all partitions of circuits in the integrated circuit design without synthesizing the entire integrated circuit design; and improving the accuracy of the gross power consumption estimate using the power correction factor to generate a reasonably accurate power consumption estimate for the entire integrated circuit design prior to substantially full circuit synthesis thereof.