Augmented reality, online planners, and inspiration boards: 11 tools that will replace the interior designer – or at least make repairs easier.
Renovating and redecorating spaces is a difficult and stressful endeavor that requires you to delve deeply into several areas of design and understand engineering techniques. Therefore, hiring a professional interior designer is reasonable and correct.
However, it is only sometimes possible to transfer this work to other hands: the services of a specialist can be expensive, or the amount of work can be very small. Or there is a desire to do repairs and interior design yourself. To do this, you can turn to digital assistants – simple programs that simplify the design and selection of materials.
In this collection, eleven available applications will help those who take up space design for the first time and professionals.
Get inspired and collect examples
Format. Website, apps for iOS and Android.
What is useful? Pinterest is a bottomless source of images from all over the web, with categories, visual cues, and themes. This application is used by everyone associated with design: here, you can find thousands of ideas and examples of decorating every room and corner. But the main thing is that all the finds can be saved in convenient collections as if attaching clippings from magazines with buttons to a corkboard.
How to use it? The Pinterest smartphone app is simple, and the features are likely to be intuitive.
- To find pictures, you need to go into the search and enter the words of interest – for example, “design of a room in a one-room apartment” or “wiring in the kitchen.” Subsequently, the application itself will offer visual content based on your interests. And also, if you search in English, the output of pictures will be more diverse and larger.
- Images can be saved in the application and then sorted into boards.
- Each picture leads to an article or the author’s profile on a social network. If necessary, you can follow the link further and study the design in more detail.
Milanote
Format. Web service, apps for iOS and Android.
What is useful? Milanote is another service for collecting and organizing references and ideas. But its difference from Pinterest is that you can add pictures to the boards and your text notes, videos, sketches, comments, and links. Milanote’s built-in image search on the web is handy because you don’t have to leave the app to find and save content.
How to use it? For each project or topic in Milanote, you can create an inspiration board – a mood board.
- Pictures can be loaded from the phone’s memory or search, and the “+” button can be used to add notes and links to articles.
- To organize content on a whiteboard, drag and drop it onto a space, such as the name of the room you are gathering ideas and information for. In addition, you can add arrows to each element, cross out the unnecessary, or attach a to-do list and shopping list.
Create a plan and design a project.
RemPlanner
Format. An application running in a browser.
What is useful? A design project is not just about arranging furniture between walls. Plans for water supply and sewerage, plumbing and electrical wiring, and counting switches and sockets are very important. You may also need separate plans for lighting, underfloor heating, and heating. Full-fledged technical drawings are needed to make a screed, plaster, and ceilings properly.
In large projects, all this is drawn by designers and construction technologists in the professional AutoCAD program. Still, for an apartment’s repair and interior design, it is enough to use RemPlanner. In this planner, you can draw the contours of rooms and try on furniture and get calculations and technical documentation for workers.
How to use it? To work in Remplanner, knowledge of descriptive geometry and design in 3D space is optional – only the ability to measure walls and distances to the main utility outlets.
- First, you need to designate all existing walls and partitions. Above them are window and door openings.
- The next step is to add risers, radiators, an electrical panel, and other immovable elements to the drawing, the location of which determines the design and architecture of the space.
- Further, on the plan, you can arrange furniture and appliances and plan the conclusions of communications. For example, moving a dishwasher according to the scheme makes it easy to understand how many meters of drainage tube will be required.
Roomle
Format. Web App and iOS Apps.
What is useful? The Roomle app lets you create floor plans, add furniture, lighting, and décor to them, view in 3D what the plan might look like in real life, and even virtually “walk” through the space.
How to use it? Roomle’s interface is minimalistic, and the features are easy to find and use.
- To draw up a floor plan, you need measurements. The application allows you to add them from a special Meazor device automatically, but if it is not there, all the elements can be drawn manually. Or — choose one of the standard layouts in the catalog and adapt it to your data.
- The catalog of furniture and appliances will open by clicking on the large red “+” sign. It contains items from Ikea and other popular brands. All sizes are indicated, so even if these products are unavailable, making plans and looking for analogs is possible.
Find materials
Google Lens
Format. A built-in function in the main application and the Google website is located under the camera icon.
What is useful? “Lens” simplifies the selection of materials or expands the search horizons: algorithms can find the same objects and similar ones.
How to use it? Take a picture of the finish you like or save a picture from the site to the phone’s memory, then upload the image to the search. For greater accuracy, you can supplement the query with a short text.
Egger Decorative Collection
Format. Applications for iOS and Android.
What is useful? The Egger Decorative Collection is a brand-specific flooring, wall panels, and countertops catalog. It is quite extensive, while the laminate decor is. This common application is quite suitable for choosing a material for finishing the floor or walls and, if necessary, finding an analog from another manufacturer. For example, with the help of “Google Lens.”
How to use it? There are more than 400 types of decor in the catalog, so you should use filters – by color, surface texture, and moisture resistance. Samples can be added to collections for each project: it will be more convenient to compare them, match them, and filter out inappropriate ones.
Create a palette and try on colors.
Palette Camera
Format. Application for iOS.
What is useful? Palette Camera converts photos and images into palettes with color codes. For both the amateur and the interior designer, this application is a simple tool that helps decompose an object’s desired image into shades to harmonize them and determine the primary and secondary colors.
How to use it? The application opens as a camera, with which you can take a picture of the interior, landscape, or object you like, or upload it to a picture from the gallery. It will automatically create a palette of eight shades. If you save it, you will be able to delete and edit colors and copy their codes – this is useful for tinting paint.
Coolors
Format. Applications for iOS and Android.
What is useful? Coolors generates five color palettes for free. This application should be used as a tool for inspiration or finding combinations if the interior design is done from scratch and no constants must be integrated without fail – for example, a kitchen set of a certain color.
How to use it? The main button in the application is Generate: by clicking on it, you can create an almost infinite number of color schemes. Each color you like can be fixed so that it does not change and is not lost in the generator: to do this, you need to click the lock icon. Also, shades can be manually edited.
Coolors can also select “scientific” triad, analog, monochrome, and complementary palettes, but this is a paid feature.
Dulux Visualizer
Format. Applications for iOS and Android.
What is useful? What sets Dulux Visualizer apart from other color-matching apps is that it allows you to virtually “paint the walls.” And also – using the camera to determine the shade and find its code in the Dulux paint catalog.
How to use it? To try the color on the walls, you need to go to the Visualizer section, select the one you like using the “More colors” button and point the phone’s camera at the surface that needs to be repainted. The smoother it is, the fewer artifacts will be in the image.
To determine the color of any object, select “Color Scanner” and point the camera at it similarly.
Pick up furniture
“Hoff Design”
Format. Applications for iOS and Android.
What is useful? “Hoff Design” helps to view furniture from the catalog of this retailer and try it on in your interior without buying.
How to use it? For the visualizer to work, you first need to configure it: the application itself will give instructions on how to move the camera around the room so that it calculates its volume. Once set up, you can select pieces of furniture from the Hoff catalog and arrange and move them virtually.
Dizi
Format. Application for iOS.
What is useful? Dizi helps to assemble harmonious or spectacular furniture sets for a particular room.
How to use it? In the application, you can photograph a real room and “put” furniture and decor from the catalog. Or — choose a template with 3D visualization of the room: from a simple rectangle and white walls to a villa with an ocean view.
Only three items can be placed in the virtual room for free: for more and for the virtual repainting of the walls, you must pay.
