Summary: To make the living place or ambiance aesthetically beautiful, individuals often rely on interior design software. There are multiple software options available in the market that help create beautiful interior designs. Designers have a diverse range of options to choose from based on their specific design needs. From SketchUp’s powerful 3D modeling to Floorplanner’s user-friendly UI and Planner 5D’s customization options, let’s read about them in detail below.
Proper interior design is essential for a places where individuals spend a significant amount of time, like homes or workplaces. It’s not just about aesthetic value but improving the lighting, space efficiency, color effects, and more.
However, the use of manual drawings for interior design has certain limitations. Not only does the process become repetitive, but it is also challenging to visualize the plan in 3D. Therefore, any interior designer uses computer programs like interior design software.
Some solutions even provide the 3D rendering feature to visualize a place from different angles. You can also send mock-ups to your clients to communicate your ideas accurately and decide on the final plan.
If you are a beginner, it can be challenging to decide which software to get started with. This article discusses some of the best free interior design tools to use easily.
Interior designing is often preferred by people to increase space utilization in the functional sense. Interior design service is often preferred by the owners of residential and commercial spaces to enhance colour effects, texture, and lighting effects.
Professional interior designers take the help of the best interior designing software to create an aesthetically appealing look.
Here, we have listed some of the best free interior designing tools based on factors like available features, pricing, compatible platforms, and more.
| Interior Designing Software | Best For | Compatible Platforms |
| SketchUp Pro | 3D modelling & rendering software | Web, Windows, macOS, iOS, Android |
| Floorplanner | Online editor for 2D & 3D floor plans | Web, Windows, macOS, iOS, Android |
| Planner 5D | 2D/3D home designing for your dream home | Web, Windows, macOS, visionOS, Android, iOS |
| HomeByMe | Trending home designs & decoration ideas | Web, Windows, macOS, iOS, Android |
| Sweet Home 3D | 3D floor planning & furniture addition | Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android |
| DreamPlan | Detailed landscaping & architectural plans | macOS, Windows |
| Roomstyler 3D | For 3D space planning online | Web-browser based |
| Infurnia | Kitchen & interior designing software | Cloud-based, supports 64-bit version of Google Chrome |
| IKEA Home Kitchen Planner | For planning for personal kitchen space | Web-browser and Windows |
| Homestyler | Online home designing & 3D rendering | Web based |
| Cedreo | Creating 2D & 3D Floor Plans | Windows, macOS |
| D5 Render | Creating photorealistic pictures for architectural projects | Windows |
SketchUp Pro is a web-based interior design 3D software that is well-suited to hobbyists. It is highly flexible, and designers can easily customize the objects for interior design.
There are many SketchUp Pro tutorials and courses available online to help beginners with home interior design. Once you are familiar with the interface, you can switch to the paid version that has features like augmented reality (AR) viewing for commercial interior design.
Powerful 3D Modeler: This 3D home designer has a web-based modeler that gives flexibility as working with a pen and paper.
Pre-Built 3D Models: Download up to 100 2D and 3D models a day from the repository (maximum 1000 per month) for your projects.
Cloud Storage: The home designer software offers 10 GB Trimble Connect cloud storage to share and collaborate on projects.
Support for Multiple File Formats: You can easily import files in PNG, SKP, and JPG formats and export them in PNG, SKP, and STL formats.
Price to Upgrade: The Professional plan for SketchUp Pro starts at around $349 per annum.
Floorplanner Basic is an easy-to-use online home designer software for personal and professional use. For example, after designing the layout of retail, real estate, or educational space, you can add objects like accessories, sofas, and the like in a few clicks.
This home designer online also supports sharing, and 2D/ 3D live design viewing. With this interior design 3D software’s paid version, you get photorealistic pictures, HD exports, 3D tours, and more. You can even purchase credits to upgrade single projects.
Assets Library: Search for different furniture types in the library to choose from over 150,000 3D objects.
Magic Layout: Select a style and get the first layout proposal in a click, which can be edited easily.
Room Wizard: Set up your first room quickly to start working on interior design with this home designer free online tool.
2D & 3D SD exports: Render blueprint images or interior renderings in SD quality (960 x 540 pixels).
Floorplanner Price to Upgrade: Floorplanner pricing for professionals starts at around $29 per/month. Whereas Basic Plans is available for free.
Suggested Read: Top Furniture Design Software | 3D Furniture Design for Free
Planner 5D is an immersive free interior design software that offers drag-and-drop functionality so that even beginners can create floor plans quickly. There are several options in this home design 3D software to customize the size and material of items on floors.
You can switch between 2D and 3D designing modes as per your needs. To access additional features like photo-realistic rendering, you can use paid solutions. This is one of the few interior 3D software that is supported by visionOS.
2D/ 3D editor: Create unlimited projects with detailed 2D/ 3D plans via drag and drop.
Item catalog: Access over 150 items like appliances, landscape features, furniture, and more.
Sync across all platforms: Your projects get synced across all platforms to let you work on the go in this free room design software.
Customization: Explore and select from hundreds of different colors, patterns, and textures from a catalog.
Multilingual support: Planner 5D supports Italian, German, Russian, Spanish, and many more languages.
Planner 5D Price to Upgrade: It’s a free interior design software that asks you to pay only if you want to access their entire catalog.
HomeByMe is a house designing software. It provides brand-based products to furnish your space. You can quickly create multiple copies of floor plans to try out different styles.
This interior design 3D software also offers a mobile app to access the projects 24/7, even in offline mode. The pro version offers 360-degree views, virtual tours, advanced customization features, and so on.
HomeByMe Features
Digitize existing plans: Scan your 2D plan and turn into a digital format with this 3D home designer.
Customization: Choose color, texture, dimension, and other such features to create designs as per your needs.
Large catalog: Create different styles for decoration and furnishing available in the catalogue.
Filtering: Search for products you want to add to the interior design based on parameters like type & brand.
Sharing: Designs are shareable via links and HD pictures among clients, colleagues, and the HomeByMe community.
HomeByMe Price to Upgrade: Premium plan starts at $29/month/paid annually. Whereas Unlimited+ starts at $63/month/paid annually.
Suggested Read: List of Best Graphic Design Software
Sweet Home 3D is a free and open-source interior design software for homes. Users can draw irregular walls such as sloping or round ones. In addition, it offers the drag-and-drop functionality to insert objects like windows, doors, and more.
You can also add more features through additional coding or simple plug-ins. This free home designer software interface is available in 29 languages, including Spanish, French, Italian, and more.
Simultaneous 2D and 3D views: Design your home in 2D using real-time 3D aerial or virtual visitor views in this home designer software.
Easy-to-use catalog: Search and insert furniture items from categories like bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and so on.
Photorealistic rendering: Change the sunlight effect to create photorealistic pictures and videos based on location and time.
Annotations: The free room design software supports plan annotation with text, arrows, dimension lines, compass, etc.
Import/ Export: Import 3D models, blueprints, and textures. Export and print pictures, video clips, PDFs, and more.
SweetHome 3D Price to Upgrade: It’s an open-source and free interior design software.
DreamPlan 3D interior design software can be used for personal projects like designing kitchens, bathrooms, and more. In addition, this home design software allows the addition of several floors and stories to projects.
This professional interior design software also provides the option of printing and exporting models to STL or OBJ files for sharing with others. You can switch to the paid version when you want to use it for commercial projects.
Multiple view modes: View your designs in a 2D blueprint, 2D rendered or 3D modes.
2D to 3D conversion: Import 2D pictures of floor plans and change them to 3D models using the trace mode.
In-built library: Select chairs, doors, appliances, beds, and other items from the library.
Blueprint symbols: Insert symbols with this home designer free online tool to read the blueprints of 2D floor plans.
Texture schemes: Import your textures or choose from a wide range of options for walls, fences, roofs, and more in the library.
DreamPlan Price to Upgrade: It’s free interior designing software.
Suggested Read: Best Open Source and Free Architecture Software
Roomstyler is an easy-to-use 3D interior design software that enables users to create custom rooms. Users can start with a previously saved room design or start from scratch. It provides the drag-and-drop functionality to add doors, walls, windows, and more.
You can follow other designers and get inspiration from their work. In addition, there are video tutorials of this home designer free version to help you if you get stuck while working.
Camera tool: Place the camera tool anywhere you want and get zoom, normal, or wide-angle 3D views.
Newsfeed: Choose whose designs you want to view on the newsfeed in your Roomstyler dashboard.
In-built library: Browse from over 120,000 brands (Marks & Spencer, John Lewis, and more) items in different categories to decorate your interior designs.
Lighting: Adjust the lighting setting based on the direction and altitude of the sun at any point in time.
Sharing: Create a copy or share your actual design to collaborate with other team members on a project.
Roomstyler Price to Upgrade: It provides a free community for interior designers to share their designs and ideas. There is customized pricing for its paid plans.
Infurnia cloud-based design software is popular among freelance designers and architects. It offers the drag-and-drop feature to build custom designs.
In addition, this interior designing software helps avoid the wait time by allowing users to work on a new design while the older one is rendered. Other features include collision avoidance, smart placement, and more.
The paid versions of Infurnia house designing software offer additional features like access management, custom branding, and catalog management.
Detailed floor plan: Create 2D floor plans as per the actual location and switch to a 3D view whenever you want.
Custom surface design: Create custom shapes, tiling patterns, false ceiling shapes, and more.
Admin dashboard: Manage your tasks with a centralized dashboard provided by this free home designing software.
Catalog: Browse items like kitchen cabinets, customize the desired ones, and save them to your personal catalog.
Import/ Export: Upload 3D models in *.obj/ *. blend format and export them in *. blend format.
Infurnia Price to Upgrade: Infurnia base design plan is available at INR 50,000 per annum.
IKEA home kitchen planner is one of the several home planning tools offered by IKEA. Users have complete control over the shape and measurements of the kitchen.
In addition, you can add new items like doors, cabinets, sinks, appliances, tables, and more using its drag-and-drop functionality.
There are several ready-made IKEA kitchens on the website for inspiration. The company also offers other home designer tools like storage planners, living room planners, bedroom planners, and more.
3D view: Create 2D models and get the kitchen plan in a 3D view format with just one click.
Wide range of elements: Select kitchen islands, appliances, and other kitchen items and test their positioning to furnish the final plan.
Customization: The free room design software lets you customize your kitchen with different styles, colors, configurations, and so on.
Sharing: Save your design to the server and print it to share it with others.
Budget estimates: This home designer software provides an estimate of the costs of designing the new kitchen.
IKEA Home Kitchen Planner Price to Upgrade: It’s an entirely free home designing platform.
Suggested Read: Best Free CAD CAM Software for Beginners
Homestyler house designing software enables users to design and render interior design projects starting from scratch or using already available templates.
In addition, there are demo projects from which you can edit or get inspiration. Homestyler ensures beautiful visualization of your interior designs with panorama views and real-life-like rendering.
In addition, this online home designer software’s pro and master versions offer watermark removal, more 3D model uploads, video rendering (1080p), and other unique features.
2D/ 3D floor plans: Create precise 2D and 3D floor plans with this home designer tool in a few clicks.
Furniture Library: Choose from over 100K furniture models from popular brands for space decoration.
Customization: Change the color, material, size, lighting, and other parameters as per your needs.
Rendering: HD quality photo-realistic renders and panorama to visualize designs (1K render for free plan).
Shortcut keys: Use shortcut keys for copy-paste, render, zoom, duplicate, save, and more on both Mac and Windows.
Homestyler Price to Upgrade: Homestyler Pro plan starts at around INR 700 per month.
Cedreo, an intuitive 3D interior design software, which operates on the cloud and is widely used by interior designers to generate 2D and 3D floor plans. Equipped with an extensive library of 3D furniture, fabrics, materials, and accessories, this tool empowers designers to present clients with realistic representations of interior design projects. This helps expedite the approval process and streamline project timelines.
Cedreo Price to Upgrade: Starts at $119/month for the Pro plan.
D5 Render empowers users to design aesthetic interiors for residential spaces, commercial interiors, and architectural visualizations. It provides cutting-edge rendering technology along with user-friendly tools to enhance the design process. This allows designers to bring life to their creative visions.
D5 Render Price to Upgrade: Starts at $30 per month for professional and advanced users.
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When evaluating free interior design software, several crucial features like UI, rendering capabilities, design flexibility, platform compatibility, etc. should be considered.
By carefully considering these key features, individuals can make informed decisions when selecting free interior design software that best suits their design requirements, skill level, and overall project objectives. These include:
Each software selected above, provides a unique set of features tailored to specific design needs, offering a diverse range of design templates. By carefully evaluating the essential features mentioned below, we selected them. Let’s read about them:
| Criteria | SketchUp | Floorplanner | Planner 5D | HomeByMe | Sweet Home 3D |
| User Interface & Ease of Use | Highly flexible & intuitive | Easy-to-use online editor | Drag-and-drop functionality | Easy to use | Simple and straightforward |
| 3D Modeling Capabilities | Powerful 3D modeling | 2D/3D live design viewing and photorealistic pictures in the paid version | Shiftable between 2D and 3D designing modes | Provides 360-degree views in the Pro version | Irregular walls and drag-and-drop functionality |
| Access to Design Resources | Download up to 100 2D and 3D models a day from the repository | Search for different furniture types in the library with over 150,000 3D objects | Access over 150 items like appliances, landscape features, furniture, and more | Brand-based products to furnish space | Search and insert furniture items from categories like bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and more |
| Collaboration & Sharing Features | 10 GB Trimble Connect cloud storage to share and collaborate on projects | Supports sharing and 2D/3D live design viewing | Supports sync across all platforms and sharing of projects | Designs are shareable via links and HD pictures | Create copy or share designs |
| Rendering Capabilities | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| File Format Support & Export | Supports files in PNG, SKP, and JPG formats, and exports in PNG, SKP, and STL formats | Render blueprint images or interior renderings in SD quality (960 x 540 pixels) | Export images, plans in HD quality | Export the 3D models in .obj/ .blend format | Import and export pictures, video clips, PDFs, and more |
Each software excels in specific areas, such as user interface, design flexibility, 3D modeling capabilities, access to design resources, collaboration features, platform compatibility, rendering capabilities, and file format support.
Designers have a plethora of options to choose from based on their individual design preferences and project requirements. You can choose from the intuitive interface of SketchUp, the drag-and-drop functionality of Floorplanner, the customization options of Planner 5D, the digitization features of HomeByMe, the open-source nature of Sweet Home 3D, and so on.
The comparison between the software offers valuable insights for designers looking to optimize their interior design workflows and achieve visually attractive outcomes.
You can use free interior design software like Planner 5D, Infurnia, and more available in the market for practice. There are online materials, tutorials, and courses to help in getting started with these software solutions.
Some of the free websites for interior designing are Roomstyler, Floorplanner, and SketchUp Free. Roomstyler is popular for creating rooms and has mood boards for ideas.
Floorplanner enables the creation of 2D/ 3D plans for offices, houses, and more. Finally, SketchUp Free is a 3D modeling and rendering software that allows quick creation of 3D models.
Interior designers use free home and office designing software like Dream Plan, HomeByMe, and Homestyler.
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