Architectural Designs

Home/Interior Design Software?

Does anyone have a good recomendation of a house design or interior design software program for a computer? Something with pretty good grafics would be nice, like that HGTV show, "Hidden Potential" Thanks :) Try and keep under a couple hundred dollars please, I understand that amazing grafics are in the thousand dollar range, but decent grafics are fine too. Just please try and keep it under a couple hundred dollars, you automatically get a star if your answer is under $100 lol.

Public Comments

1. For house design their are the following, in order of cost, lowest cost first: Vectorworks Architect Chief Architect Soft PLan The are all within the $1500 to $3000 range and are intended for design professionals. Chief architect also has some enthusiest software you could look into, and I believe all of these programms are good for interior design as well. But if all you do is interior, you will have to "build" the room first. [edit] If you want to keep it under $100, then punch is probably the way to go. I have punch home design suite. It is not up to par with my needs, but for an enthusiest it would do fine. There is also Floor Plan 3D and Turbo Floor Plan by Turbocad. www.turbocad.com. They are relatively inexpensive and easy to use. I used floorplan 3D for years as an enthusiest, until I ventured into the professional realm.
2. Well, you're not going to be able to get anything for cheap that makes your designs look anything close to "Hidden Potential". That being said, you don't mention why you would like this software. Are you in the business? Or just doing this for fun for your own home? If it's just for you, Google has a program you can download for free called "sketchup" which allows you to do 3-D models and the like so you can get an idea of what you're looking at. However, it's not pretty at all. It's more for conceptualization. There is software by Punch that produces pretty nice renderings and is fairly simple to use. Also, the lower versions of it cost less than $100! (The "pro" and "home" series are the ones you should look at). I have the 5 in 1 Home design which goes for $39.99. And it's not fantastic, but it works for what I needed it for at the time. It cannot match what I've worked with (20/20), but like I said, it's cheap and does the job!