Mobile Interior Design Apps

As tools to make your professional life as an interior designer a bit easier, the recent upsurge in interior design apps is a blessing for virtually everyone in our industry. With the capacity to view potential changes to virtually any space instantly on your smartphone or tablet, and to modify them in a heartbeat to present to a potential client, not only are such tools long overdue in our digital age – at least one of them should also be at your fingertips – now!

While many of these applications are designed for the home owner to use, improved functionality and universal availability make them appealing to professional designers as well. Plus, since most of them are freely available for both Android and iOS systems, downloading and using them now is quickly becoming mandatory for a cutting-edge designer.

While the list of available interior design apps as far too long to present here, there are multiple online locations that have evaluated and reviewed many of the most popular among them. These sites include: 1stdibs.com, BestProducts.com and DigitalTrends.com (for flat fee, pay-to-play apps).

Popular Digital, Mobile Interior Design Apps

With that in mind, and knowing that newer and better apps may be right around the corner, we offer a few of the most popular, most helpful interior design apps on the market at the moment:

• Houzz Design App – Arguably, the best of the bunch (CNN once called it the “Wikipedia of interior and exterior design”) the Houzz App database contains more than 5 million high-res home images tagged and organized according to style, room, and location. Browse, search, and save favorites to your smartphone or tablet, which both stores your ideas and gives the app’s real-life, professional design consultants an idea of what you’re into. (Free for Android or iOS.)
• ColorSnap Design App – Sherman-Williams has solved your desire to splash an entire palette of colors onto any interior (or exterior, for that matter). The app can analyze the colors of any photo on your smartphone and let you know which shade of Sherman-Williams paint it matches. Peruse the contents of its 1,500-shade inventory and apply it to virtual sample rooms. (Free for Android or iOS.)
• Autodesk® Homestyler® Design App – Enabling you to make smarter home design choices faster than ever before, you can watch your design ideas come to life within a photograph of your client’s space, simply by experimenting with high quality 3D models of real design products. (Free for Android or iOS.)
• MagicPlan Design App – When it comes to saving you time and effort, the MagicPlan app transforms the painstaking ordeal of taking measurements and drawing up floor plans into an effortless process. The app computes distances within a space simply by analyzing a snapshot. Simply add objects, annotations, photos and attributes to generate reports or complete estimates. (Free for Android or iOS.)
• Home Design 3D Gold - This architectural app lets you import floorplans and change the space itself; visualize new openings, raise ceilings, or take out entire walls, then add in the furniture and other amenities of your choice. See the results of your designs in either 2-D or 3-D, and share projects with collaborators who can make modifications with you in real time. (Cost is $9.99 for either Android or iOS.)

These interior design apps will soon become ubiquitous, enabling even the smallest design business to offer cutting edge technology to their clients. The interior designer who does not use such high-value tools, does so at their own peril.

Looking for interior design trends and tips? Get in touch with TD Fall today.