Continuing the “real” theme, I thought Ikea’s 3D view was the most life-like of all of the three tools. Obviously it’s limited to Ikea’s real life finish options, but they’re pretty plentiful. Like above, you can pick from a range of cabinet sizes, front styles, drawer & shelf configurations, finishes, colors, hardware, etc to get a very customized look. Convenient, but only if you’re getting everything at Ikea. It even offers to print out a shopping list when you’re done. Ikea lets you design using real products from the catalog (and not just cabinets and counters, but chairs, tables, etc) so you know there’s some “reality” to your design when it comes to size/layout/planning. I’ve saved three or four different files (aka different kitchen layout options) and so far I haven’t hit any “max projects limit” like I did on Floorplanner.
There is some software to download, but once you do that you can access it anytime on their website using your free log-in. Having had a good experience with that, it was actually the first place that I turned to when deciding to plan our kitchen’s new layout in 3D. Ikea’s Kitchen Planner popped up on my radar when we were considering their cabinetry for our wall-to-wall office desk. It’s also great for testing out furniture arrangements thanks to their library of stock furniture and the ease at which you can move things around in your virtual space. Also, I found the only thing I could change in the 3D version were my wall colors, so I ended up working in 2D most of the time.īEST USE: In my very humble inexpert opinion, Floorplanner is best if you’re short on time or technical skill and need to create a 2D floor plan (of one room or even your whole house). I like the look of their 3D rendering, but it’s a bit clunky to navigate around and I had issues with things not showing properly (see below how my counter got wonky and my rug disappeared from the kitchen).
Kitchens are probably one of the toughest rooms to design, so Floorplanner is quick to fall short when it comes to trying to precisely layout a kitchen (I could only find one type of base cabinet, for example). You can create one plan for free, but after that you may have to fork over some dough.
I find the interface very user-friendly, so if you’ve got your room measurements handy you can have a simple whole house plan done in a matter of minutes. But when I gave it spin last week to render our new kitchen plans, here’s what I observed: Each have pros, cons, and a different scenario where they might take the win.į is what we’ve used to create just about every digital floor plan you’ve seen on our site (like this one), so we’ve got a soft spot for it. But having been a loyal user of in the past and having recently become acquainted with Ikea’s Kitchen Planner, I thought I’d give you my take on how these three 3D modeling tools stack up against each other… because there’s actually not a clear winner in my book. This blog will not be coming to you in any additional dimensions today.Īs you saw in our latest kitchen planning post yesterday, I finally bit the bullet and learned me some Google Sketch-Up (as many of you recommended) to help us plan our kitchen renovation. Break out the 3D glasses! Okay, not really.