Sweet Home 3D allows your imagination to run wild without you having to lift a finger or costing you a cent. Apart from being a very useful interior design application, it's also a hell of a lot of fun, allowing you to mix and match furniture with ease, take virtual walks around your creations, and indulge yourself in designs you'd probably never be able to do in real life.

Sweet Home 3D offers more than 50 different pieces of furniture, ranging from beds to lamps and desks tables, but you can import even more from the developer's website. To create your rooms, all you need to do is drag and drop elements into the grid view and you'll see them building up 3D in the viewing screen below. Once you've done this, use the virtual visit tool to get a 3D preview of what it looks like and talk a walk around.

The latest version adds a new level of realism to Sweet Home 3D. This includes a new ability to handle rounded walls, the possibility to store points of view, a new compass and even light and sun management to accurately show how your designs react under different conditions. They've also added a much needed auto recovery function if Sweet Home 3D crashes.

These are the basics and Sweet Home 3D is extremely easy to get to grips with. Unfortunately, the graphics on Sweet Home 3D are not great - many pieces of furniture look blocky, but its designed to give an idea of what an arrangement will look like rather than a perfect picture. You can take a photo of your finished design, which you can then send on to friends to view who won't need Sweet Home 3D to view it. The fact that it's based on Java shouldn't put you off either - it works very smoothly with virtually no delays in placing furniture or creating previews.

Sweet Home 3D is an excellent solution for all those that daydream about redesigning their home, or even for professionals that need a basic mock-up.

Download Sweet Home 3D 3.2 in Softonic

With Envisioneer Express you can easily create a floor plan of your own home – or any other location – and decorate it anyway you like. It's the perfect program to do small interior design projects or check how the furniture is going to look like in your newly bought flat.

Envisioneer Express is nothing like the 3D CAD (Computer Assisted Design) tools you may have seen so far. It's aimed ad people with little or no designing skills at all, which makes it feel more like a game than a real design application – especially for Sims players like me!

All you have to do is design the basic structure, set room divisions and add windows and doors. Then simply start decorating each room accordingly, dragging and dropping elements from the program's sidebar.

The only drawback I found to Envisioneer Express is the 3D navigation. The 3D rendering is perfect and helps you a lot when trying to visualize the finished project, but navigating it can be a real mess.

With Envisioneer Express you can create your own interior design project in a very easy way, no technical skills required!

Download Envisioneer Express 5.0 in Softonic

Now, what does all that have to do with software? The answer is easy: along with their catalog, IKEA has launched a set of software decoration tools that can help you redecorating your life. One of them is this Home Planner Bedroom, which includes the whole bedroom section of the IKEA catalog and enables you to plan your bedroom's new decoration without actually moving anything.

Home Planner Bedroom features a very simple interface where you can create the floor plan for your bedroom, choose the new furniture and even see how everything looks in a three-dimensional image. The program also generates the approximate budget and enables you to upload data to the IKEA server, so that they're ready to use when you visit your local store to buy the furniture.

On the downside, and despite being an IKEA fan, I must admit I found the program to be too simple: the interface looks dull, furniture is poorly drawn and the 3D rendering is clunky. I guess software development is not IKEA's strong point.

IKEA Home Planner Bedroom is an easy-to-use 3D decoration tool that lets you test IKEA furniture at home before actually buying anything.

Download IKEA Home Planner Bedroom 2008 in Softonic

One of these tools is the IKEA Home Kitchen Planner, which is especially designed to help you furnish that area of your house. It includes the complete kitchen bedroom section of the IKEA catalog and enables you to plan your kitchen's new decoration without moving anything a single inch.

Home Kitchen Planner features a very simple interface where you to create your kitchen's floor plan, choose the new furniture and even see how everything looks in a three-dimensional image. The program also generates the approximate budget and enables you to upload data to the IKEA server, so that they're ready to use when you visit your local store to buy the furniture.

On the downside, I was disappointed with the program's overall impression: the interface looks dull, furniture is poorly drawn and the 3D rendering is clunky. I guess software development is not IKEA's strong point.

IKEA Home Kitchen Planner is a cheap, efficient way to check how your new IKEA kitchen will look like before actually buying anything.

Download IKEA Home Kitchen Planner 1.9.4 in Softonic

Using your own images

Color Planner is very easy to install, and comes with a selection of interior and exterior views of homes that you can practice on. If you'd like to use Color Planner to check out colors on images of your own home, however, they must be sent to the Color Planner developer to be masked, which carries a fee.

Once you have chosen the images you want to re-color, whether you've uploaded your own or you're using Color Planner's example shots, you'll find it really easy. Simply click on the element in the image that you want to change, and pick a new color from the selection on the right hand side. Immediately, the object will change color and you can decide if you like it or not.

Changing color and decor

The colors Color Planner makes available to you for each room depend on the type of room chosen. They're divided into color maps that you can browse and choose at random, although by choosing certain color combinations, some aspects of the room will change automatically. There's a little button that helps you quickly revert to the original color scheme, and the ability to lighten and darken the layout.

Once you've used Color Planner to create a scenario or scenarios you like, you can save the combinations or print them out. There are also a few nice options for printing out before and after images for comparison. Under the Instructions menu, you'll also find plenty of troubleshooting and explanation.

In all, we thought that Color Planner was a useful app that could nonetheless be a little more polished. Although it ran on Windows 7, it felt like a program for a much older operating system, and felt rough around the edges. In short, it's good, but could be a whole lot better.

Color Planner is a handy app that will give any home decorator a head start.

Download Color Planner 4.3 in Softonic

Download Furnish 1.8.17 in Softonic

With Ashampoo Home Designer you can easily renovate your apartment's style or plan your future home, without having to hire the expensive services of an interior designer or learn to use complicated 3D planning software. Ashampoo Home Designer is a nice 3D home planning tool easy enough for everyone to use, yet featuring really professional-looking results.

Using Ashampoo Home Designer is like playing with a dolls' house – or playing a Sims game. Create your room – using a template or setting the actual room's measures – and drag and drop the decorative elements and pieces of furniture you want to use. All objects are stored in the right-side bar, though they're a bit difficult to browse.

The program lets you change, move, rotate and view everything just by dragging and clicking your mouse. You'll be able to check the plan from a bird's eye view, look at the room from the interior perspective, even insert 3D human models for an enhanced contextual detail.

Once your project is done, Ashampoo Home Designer can generate lists with all objects and materials used, in order to help you calculate the costs of your project. The lists, however, don't include any prices.

Ashampoo Home Designer is a simple, fun, easy-to-use 3D home planner that can help you when decorating your home.

Download Ashampoo Home Designer Pro 1.0.0 in Softonic