House Design Software Reviews

A review of house design software, whether remodeling, adding a room or building a home, house design software saves time & money.

After reading these house design software reviews I hope you'll agree that house design software will help you plan and visualize what the finished job will look like before you even start.

By visualizing the job I don't mean just looking at a paper sketch or a fully dimensioned plan but as a 3 dimensional model that you can view from any angle.  

I first used house design software 6 years ago for a small kitchen remodeling job. The software ran on Windows 95/98 and with the limited computing power of PC's at that time was itself somewhat limited when it came to realistic 3D modeling of a house design.

Fast forward to today and the current generation of House Design Software is light years ahead of those early products and takes full advantage of modern PC's with Intel Pentium P4 Processors, high speed 3D graphics cards and large hard drives.

In fact all the house design software reviews I have assessed require a high performance PC with enough hard disk space for the massive 700 to 1000MB of program software.

After much research, I settled for a House Design Software called the Professional Home Design - Platinum.

Remarkably, this still costs the same as I paid for it two years ago.

It combines not only Home Design but also Landscape Design in the one fully integrated software package.

For more details click on the box image above.

After a review lasting several weeks I upgraded to the slightly more feature rich Architectural Series 18 software.

One of the benefits of this range of software is that you can upgrade from one product to another without having to buy each product again at full price.

You can start off with one house design software and keep upgrading it to the next level in the series, as and when you need to.

The Architectural Series 3000 is the next version in this series and provides additional room templates, fireplace and chimney tools and enhanced shadow effects from multiple lighting sources.

It also has additional editing facilities for design objects, an automatic plant filler and even the ability to produce your own avi video of a 3D walk round.

A video is useful for presentations to family, friends or clients of how your house design would look when completed.

Despite the software still being compatible with Win 95 you should not think this is old software. In fact I run mine on Windows 2000 Professional from which Windows XP was derived.

You can run the software on Windows XP, but I don't like XP !

As the name might suggest the Architectural 3000 version is better for producing architects dimensioned elevation plans.

It comes with enhanced 3D and lighting simulation and can import plans produced in other programs like Auto CAD.

It also supports a wide range of plug-ins developed by 3rd party programmers.

For more details click on the box image above.

These plug-ins referred to as Power Tools allow you to accomplish more complex design tasks with deck designs, material estimation roofing and topography design.

The software features that come as standard with the Architectural series, include 2D/3D Exterior & Interior Home Design, 2D/3D Landscape Design, an expanded Plant Library, Precision Lighting Planner & effects, a Foundation Planner.

You can also complete Electrical, Plumbing, HVAC, Basic Decking, Wainscoting, Sprinkler System Design, Custom Roofs, Doors and Window Styles and Design Log Homes.

It comes with a large object library from which you select furniture, cabinets, lights, plants, doors, floors etc and these can be modified or you can create your own.

The top of the range in the Architectural series of software's is the Architectural Series 4000.

Enhanced 3D rendering capabilities make it faster when drawing complex 3D visualizations of your house design.

It combines 32 functions in one seamless integrated application with access to over 30,000 designs.

It also has more than 25 Power Tools integrated into the software.

For more details click on the box image above.

 The 2D/3D landscape designer and plant advisor features are excellent, allowing you to choose plants to match your location, soil type and climate and even see how they will look at different stages of growth.

I have used the Architect series house design software to design and plan several projects, the biggest of which was a two storey 5,000 sq ft home.

House Design Software - My Suggestions

For a good, but basic house and landscape design software for small scale projects, where you just want an idea of what the finished look might be, then my suggestion is Professional Home Design - Platinum.

If you want to produce more detailed interior and exterior plans with greater attention to landscaping and printed architects drawings then my suggestion is the Architectural Series 3000.

If you want more exact modeling of interior furniture, a greater design library, faster 3D graphics and the full range of Power Tools then the Architectural Series 4000 is the one for you.

Whatever you choose, based on my experience and other house design software reviews, I give all these Home Design Software packages the two thumbs up !

Household Tips & Do-It-Yourself Advice