Thinking about a design for your new home and looking for software to visualise your design ideas? For this article, we take a look at 10 of the best programs for budding residential designers to create their own home. All of the 3D home design programs are either free or under $100. We've done the research for you, tabulated the features, and given them a rating based on feature-set and ease-of-use.
For those of you that decide to download, install and attempt a design for their new home, we encourage you to ask for design tips in the comments area below the article. Bleuscape design is happy to provide inspiration for home ideas and guidance on home design. But please don’t ask for help on installing software or technical questions on using the software. These types of questions are best answered at the support pages of the 3D home design vendor's website.
Of the 10 packages tested, our favorites were My Virtual Home and Turbo Floor Plan 3d. My Virtual Home scored the highest for a few reasons. The targeted audience of this article is Australian and we're an Australian firm. Being able to furnish, decorate and design gardens with locally available products and flora is a tremendous advantage over the competition - for our intended audience.
The second reason My Virtual Home is a clear winner over the competition is due to the developers behind the software. The developers have experience in game development and this experience translates into a fun and intuitive interface and a degree of model interactivity not seen in any other package.
To score each program, we made an excel sheet of all the features found in the packages and checked off the features as included and easy to use. For features, there was a top possible score of 8/10. We then allocated the last two points to how applicable designs could be when applied to Australian construction, building materials/methods and home decoration.
To expedite the test, time is such a scarce commodity, we attempted to reproduce an existing residential house design, Bleuscape's Crossroads House.
The List of 10 3D Home Design Programs
*Cost: in currency of software vendor's website (mostly USD)
| Name/Link | Design Tasks | *Cost | Notes/Limitations | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
My Virtual Home
 |
|
Free |
|
9.5/10 |
|
Free / $45 |
|
7/10 | |
|
Free |
|
7/10 | |
Architect 3D Silver
 |
|
$60 |
|
6/10 |
DreamPlan Home Design
 |
|
Free |
|
7/10 |
TurboFloorPlan 3D
 |
|
Free Trial / $99 |
|
8.5/10 |
Punch! Home & Landscape Design
 |
|
$46 |
|
8/10 |
Home Sweet 3D
 |
|
Free |
|
7/10 |
Sketchup Make
 |
|
Free |
|
8/10 |
Home Designer Suite
 |
|
$99 |
|
8/10 |
