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Six of the best home design apps

Wave goodbye to flouncy interior designers and say hello to smartphone-powered home makeovers

Decorating the home rarely goes to plan, mainly because there’s a big difference between how amazing things look in your head and how they end up in reality. Although why you ever thought lime-green walls with purple borders was a good idea is beyond us.

The good news is that apps have transformed the process: you can now decorate, rearrange or transform an entire area, from the hues of the walls down to the colour of the furniture, all from your smartphone.

Before you know it, you’ll be designing a whole house. And yes, there is an app for doing that too. 

READ MORE: Six of the best video-editing apps

Virtual Plan 3D

The six best home design apps

This is currently a concept but one that you might be using for real quite soon. It’s an augmented reality app that turns 2D architectural drawings into 3D models. For now you can only use it with some demo drawings – and even though it’s not going make your own plans pop up, it’s a lot of fun to play with.

Stuff says ✭✭✭✭✩

Platform Android Price £free

Download Virtual Plan 3D here

Homestyler Interior Design

The six best home design apps

Say you want to make over a room. Clear it out, take a picture and then import it into this app. Give the positions of the walls and corners as clues, and then you can choose from a host of furnishings, plopping the 3D models into your room. Proof at last that you can’t fit a snooker table in the kitchen.

Stuff says ✭✭✭✭✭

Platform Android, iOS Price £free

Download Homestyler Interior Design for Android here

Download Homestyler Interior Design for iOS here

Home Design 3D Gold

The six best home design apps

A brilliant app for designing extensions or whole buildings, taking the grind out of digital design. You can quickly throw up walls, add doors and windows and drop in furnishings, then take a virtual tour around your new abode in 3D. There are two free editions of the app but we recommend the full-fat option.

Stuff says ✭✭✭✭✭

Platform iOS Price £6.99

Download Home Design 3D Gold here

READ MORE: The 30 best free apps for Android

Dulux Visualizer

The six best home design apps

Now you can paint your walls with virtual brushes. Snap a photo, choose a colour and start splashing away. It’s a quick way to get an idea of the tones that will work in a space. There are limits to the app’s accuracy – so much of a paint’s appearance is to do with lighting conditions – but you can order testers to be delivered direct from the app.

Stuff says ✭✭✭✭✩

Platform Android, iOS Price £free

Download Dulux Visualizer for Android here

Download Visualizer for iOS here

Magic Plan

The six best home design apps

Here’s a neat solution for creating floorplans of existing properties. Mark out the walls, floor, ceiling, doors and whatnot of a room. From that, the app makes 2D plans to be exported as PDF, JPG, DXF, HTML or CSV files. It’s free to try with in-app purchases to unlock the export options, ranging from £1.99 to £69.99.

Stuff says ✭✭✭✭✩

Platform Android, iOS Price from £free

Download Magic Plan for Android here

Download Magic Plan for iOS here

3D Room Designer

The six best home design apps

Interiors retailer Crate & Barrel is behind this one. Regardless of whether you intend to buy any of their gear, the app gives an idea of how you can decorate, rearrange or transform a room, using 3D models overlaid on to your photos or preset room templates. Of course, if you do fancy anything, the ‘Add to cart’ button is never far away.

Stuff says ✭✭✭✭✭

Platform iOS Price £free

Download 3D Room Designer for iOS here

READ MORE: iCheapskate – 30 amazing free games for iPhone and iPad

Profile image of Tony Horgan Tony Horgan Senior Reviewer

About

27 years as a professional consumer technology journalist has yet to take its toll on the Peter Pan of Product Testing. From Wizball to Windows 8, Tony has been there at every step, telling it like it is. The former editor of CU Amiga Magazine, part-time music producer, DJ and app developer is in his element when he's pushing gadgets beyond their known limits, subverting the rulebook and plugging things into things they've never been plugged into before. Tony's motto is: "Never dispose of a cable; just put it in a box with all the others because you'll probably need it one day."