Top Rated 10 Home Design Software

So you're set to doing it yourself designing your dream house or remodeling the house in part or in whole.  You know your dimensions for the house you want and you plan to save on cost by not getting a professional architect or interior designer.  You're now considering some home design software. 

A search on the internet reveals you have another hurdle to go through with all those pages of great looking application suites that promise just about everything for the home designer in you.  Cheer up, here are the top ten home design application software you should consider. 

There are others equally as good, but you have to narrow your choices to make life as easy as possible.  The more difficult tasks of actually building your homes lies beyond the design stage. But if you get it right in the design, building it should be a matter of course.

Design WorkShop Lite, Will a Freebie Suffice?

Home design software come in various levels of sophistication as well as price that ranges from free to the most expensive often reserved to professionals. 

If you are just starting out, why not start with one that's free?  You could start getting a feel of what a home design software can do with Design Workshop Lite that you can download with full functionality free of charge.  It's a basic 3D modeling software to start with.  But it lends itself nicely as a 3D house plan design tool that lets you design from scratch as well as choose from template designs and enhance from there. 

Needless to say, its most compelling feature is you get to design on a 3D setting so you get a more realistic image of every room and corner of your dream house the way you want them.  For just $10, you can purchase the upgraded version with more functionality, complete user documentation and tutorials and a more through 3D model templates. 

But try out the freebie version as it gets most of the job done for a novice home designer. Don't go cheap when getting your first house designed.  But don't refuse a good designing tool when offered free.  If you want, you can go to a more sophisticated and pricier version on the Design Workshop Pro

Get Collaborative with Google SketchUp 7

Not exactly a home design software tool but more of a 3D graphics tools, SketchUp7 from Google can create 3D models of just about everything and anything under the sun. It's got one of the most user-friendly interfaces for a 3D modeling software. That includes modeling your dream house in 3D.  You can redecorate your home, design a new set of furnishings with it or even model an entire community from scratch.

And what's nice about it is its collaborative working environment.  You can access the Google 3D Workhouse and download all the home objects you can find that you think will add to your house design. What makes it even nicer is that you can download this for free. Once you're through with you house design project, you can upload it in the Google 3D Warehouse as a way of sharing your design with others online.

SmartDraw, Get its Free Trial Version

It's interesting to note that even architectural and construction firms use SmartDraw.  It's arguably the most popular drawing application that can work as a home design tool with 5-star ratings in Amazon and CNET.

You can download its free trial version software. From designing the look of the house, getting a floor plan laid out as well a having a virtual furnishing of its interiors, few home design software can match the SmartDraw value for getting you a clear handle on how your dream house would look like inside and out. 

It even comes with a project management tool to help you plan your cost outlays for your home building project. There are other designing tools that are considered freeware (entirely free full versions) or those that allow free trial versions you can check out.  But the last thing you want is checking out all those freeware and free trial versions and never getting to decide which one is best for you. 

Just bear in mind that free trial versions often do not have all their features running and you will need to purchase the full version to activate them.

TurboFLOORPLAN Instant Architect Ver12

Created by IMSI/Design, this 12th version can be a heaven-sent design software for the first time home designer. It has most features that you can expect from a professional design tool, but simplified at a modest price of just $30 or less in some online sites. 

It is basically CAD-based program tailored for the novice allowing you to design your house, create floor plans, cost estimates, as well as landscape designs in 3D presentations. It comes with a menu of movable house objects like appliances, furnishings, landscape plants as well as provides a palette of painting schemes, interior decoration.

You get an estimate of how much your dream house will cost based on your design as well as view the final design in 3D.  For the home-bound designer, the TurboFloorPlan offers the easiest design tool and one of the best value home design software in the market.

Home Designer 8.0

It's not entirely surprising that the people at Better Homes and Gardens have come out with a home design software that automates the designing effort with user-friendly ease. The Home Designer is now on its 8th edition and its features have made it popular among amateur and professional architects and home builders alike. 

Not only does the software allow you all the tools to design your home from scratch, you get to design the garden landscaping as well.  It is one of the more reasonably priced home design programs in the market at around $90 at Amazon and it comes with a professional version that cost several hundred dollars but both versions are worth every penny.  Its latest version 9.0 has been renamed Chief Architect Home Designer Pro 9.0 that has made it the number one home design software in the market.

Getting Professional with Chief Architect Home Designer Pro 9.0

A good numbers of steps above the Home Designer 8.0 is its new iteration in the Chief Architect Home Designer Pro 9.0, considered the most sophisticated home design application in the market. 

This is more of a product competing for professionals and companies specializing in residential and commercial building designs promising improved workflow efficiency and productivity with home designs that impress the most demanding clients. 

But precisely because it is also a software product targeted to homeowners, you get no less than the same tools that professionals use in designing and remodeling homes, landscaping, interior designing and cost estimating. 

It is designed with ease but with professional finesse.  It has all the features that the more expensive Architectural Home Designer, Landscaping and Deck Designer, Interior Designer as well as AutoCad programs have, so you can create your home blueprints that professional builders will be more than happy to follow.  It retails at around $400 making it one of the most expensive designing software in the market, but well worth every penny with its user-friendly and feature-rich functionalities.

There's a slightly watered-down non-Pro version retailing for just $70 and its sibling the Chief Architect Architectural Home Designer 9.0 which is just a subset of the Pro version retailing at slightly over a hundred dollars.

At these prices, the Chief Architect v9.0 family of home designing suites can certainly live up to their reputation as the number one designing tools for the home builder markets.

Interior Designer 9.0 from Chief Architect

If you're looking for a specialized design software just for interior decorating and remodeling needs, look no farther than this new Interior Designer 9.0 from the same software publisher that brought the number one home designing software, the Home Designer Pro 9.0. 

This is a full-featured derivative program from the suit that is customized to stand alone and retails for a fraction of the Pro's cost at around $70 from Amazon.  

Like the Pro, this is the first choice among professionals, this time, interior designers.  You get the same professional quality designs from what we've come to expect from Chief Architect's intuitive and powerful features.

Interior designing has never been more exciting and fun with a library of 5000 interior design elements that can be augmented with downloadable items from the Home Designer website.  Room decorating, floor space planning, remodeling, bath and kitchen designing - all benefit from a feature that adds artistic water-color-type rendering to your vector-based designs. 

You can even generate an animated virtual walk-through of your designs. Even the little things like kitchen tops, cabinets, chairs and sofas, just to mention some,  you can have individual  surface treatment and coloring of your choice from its library of textures.

Getting a Punch! Home Design Architectural Series 4000 v12

Dreaming of becoming an architect one day?  You could start out with software that can at least allow you to design a house like an architect does.  The Punch! has a line of software design tools that are essentially CAD equipped 3D drawing software tailor-suited for the architect and homeowner designer.

There's the full-featured Punch! Home Design Architectural Series 3000 v12 that merges the versatility of its Punch! Landscape, Deck & Patio Designer v12 and the power of its Punch! Interior Design Suite to bring a two-in-one package for designing your home inside and out. 

The Punch software offers one of the most versatile and powerful home and landscape design software.  Apart from 3D rendering that is 4 times faster than any in the market, you get multiple shadowing options with its directional lighting and glow features for a more realistic day or night presentation of your dream house.  You get customized fireplace designs, ceiling and mantel designs and multi-level garden designs limited only by your imagine.

All that can be presented both in 3D and animated Hollywood-style video.  This suite has been updated with a series 5000 that have yet to prove itself in the market. There's also a watered down Punch! Interior Design Suite which, as the product name indicates is limited to home interiors.

Get Punchier with the Punch! Professional Home Design Suite.

At the top of the heap is the Punch! Professional Home Design Suite which is 12 programs in one and has all the power features in the Punch! software design portfolio for both amateur and professional designers.

It offers a suite of intuitive tools that bring the novice user on guided process all the way to the finished home using a drag-and-drop interface that lets you design your floor plan with just about everything from electrical outlets, furniture, plants, trees and other design elements form its extensive library of everyday objects that spice your house design.

There's a free trial version, like most software out there, which allows full functionality except that the save and print functions are disabled.  You can at least use this trial version for getting over your learning curve.  Once you master the Punch Professional Home Design Suite, you can be very well on the road to becoming an architect one day, with just a university degree.  And in case you need something more powers there's a more expensive Platinum edition.

The Total 3D Home and Landscape Deluxe Suite Version 9.0

This is an impressive suite of 35 programs fully integrated and designed specifically for the homeowner instead of professional architects and builders.  No experience or previous designing skills required as it comes with a highly intuitive navigational feature for anyone to design a house, remodel or redecorate a room as well as create an alluring backyard garden. 

It contains an extensive library of design elements you can just drag and drop onto your design work area like roofing, floor tiles, doors and windows, garden patios and pools, various plant species as well as ready-made sample homes and landscape designs to be inspired by.  3D aerial views with virtual lighting and shadows make for a realistic rendering of your house designs.