Top 45 resources for interior design

Creating your perfect home require can a lot of thought. Lots of planning and preparation are crucial. However, if you’re a little stuck with where to start, it might be handy to have a few ideas. Luckily, there are plenty of resources online to help you on your way.

Even luckier for you, we’ve collected some of the best out there and put them into one convenient list.

ROOM DESIGN TOOLS

Here are some of the best design tools to plan your dream home or room:

1. Space Designer 3D

This browser application lets you draw floor plans for your home with ease. Once you have a floor plan of your home prepared, you can experiment with different decor and furniture to see how your home will look with a different style.

2. HomeStyler

This program lets you create your ideal home in 3D, from walls and flooring to furniture and lighting. You can also upload a portfolio of your designs and decor concepts. Available for PC and as a mobile or tablet app.

3. 3Dream

This online room planner lets you design spaces in 2D or 3D. Choose from more than 7,500 models and textures to decorate your room with before taking snapshots to print and keep as interior design concepts.

4. HomeByMe

This application lets you sketch your home’s floor plan and transform it into a detailed 3D model, complete with realistic lighting. Furnish your home with real projects and save it to share with friends or use as a reference when decorating your real home.

5. Olympic Paint Colo(u)r Visualizer

Have you ever wondered what your bedroom or living room would look like with a different colour scheme? This application lets you upload a photo of your room and virtually repaint it in a range of colours.

6. Home Hardware Design Centre

Home Hardware’s Design Centre includes three different online applications: a painting tool that lets you see how differents colours look on a home, a storage design tool and a kitchen design tool that lets you place countertops, cabinets and appliances with ease.

7. Floorplanner

This tool offers a quick and easy way to create and share interactive floor plans. Organise a new room or sketch and reorganise an existing room from your home. Floorplanner is also great for sketching and organising gardens and outdoor spaces.

8. Small Blue Printer

This handy tool lets you create detailed blueprints of your home or garden online. Design a home or garden using Small Blue Printer or Garden Planner before rendering it in 3D to walk through and explore.

9. SketchUp

This user-friendly 3D modelling application lets you create a model of almost anything. It’s perfect for adding furniture and room decorations to your home. Find out how your designs fit into your ideal room by ‘pushing’ and ‘pulling’ surfaces to turn them into 3D shapes

10. Sweet Home 3D

This interior design application lets you create a plan of your home and view the results in full 3D. Available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, it creates great 3D renders without the challenging interface of more advanced 3D modelling applications.

11. Live Interior 3D for Mac

This Mac application makes creating detailed 3D models of your dream home easy. Sketch your home’s floor plan in 2D and add windows, doors and room markers. From here, you can add furniture, change colours, adjust your home’s lighting and much more.

12. RoomStyler 3D Room Planner

This browser application lets you sketch blueprints of your dream home or existing home to decorate and digitally renovate. Add windows, staircases and other items to create a high quality 3D model of your dream home.

13. Chief Architect

This application lets you design and visualise interior spaces, from living rooms to kitchens and more. Designed for interior decorators, Chief Architect lets you create digital tours of the home you’ve created that make experiencing a new design simple.

14. Planner 5D

This browser application lets you design homes, offices, retail spaces and more using custom 2D floor plans and pre-built room designs. Add furniture, light sources, windows and a wide range of other items and view your design in 3D.

15. Cylindo

This furniture visualisation application lets you add furniture to a virtual version of your home to see what it will look like before you buy. Choose from a huge range of real furniture items to add to your living room, bedroom and other spaces.

16. Colo(u)rSmart by BEHR Mobile

This smartphone app lets you preview, match and coordinate different colours to see what they will look like in your home. Choose from all of the BEHR paints to find the perfect colour scheme for your home. Available for iOS and Android devices.

17. Stainmaster Carpet Tool

This app lets you find the ideal carpet for your decorating plans. Swap and change different carpet materials to find the perfect look, colour and texture for your home. Once you find the perfect carpet, you can also estimate how much you’ll need to fully carpet a room.

18. SeeMyDesign

This PC, Mac and Linux application allows you to realise a design idea in 3D. Redecorate your home in a new style or experiment with different colour schemes and layouts to find a great look for your home.

19. SmartDraw

This PC graphic design application lets you create great looking 2D floor plans of your dream home. Drag symbols for furniture, windows, doors and other items to create a detailed plan for your architect, interior decorator or renovations company.

TRAINING

If you are passionate about interior design, you can educate yourself with these in-depth design and decorating courses:

20. What’s Your Home Design Personality?

This detailed course, hosted by Tobi Fairley of House Beautiful Magazine, covers the most popular interior design styles to help you find your favourite. Everything from the classics to modern trends are covered in 42 instructional videos.

21. Using Colo(u)r in Home Design

Another video course by Tobi Fairley, Using Colour in Home Design covers the importance of choosing great colour combinations when decorating your home. Learn the most stylish and versatile colour combinations as well as the unique psychology of each colour.

22. Function-Driven Interior Design

This video course shows you how to combine style and function in your interior designs to create spaces that are both great to look at and great to live in. From floor plans to spatial planning, this course covers a wide range of functional design topics in 37 videos.

23. Intro to Interior Design

This course covers the basics of interior design, from understanding the most popular styles of the 20th century to the fundamentals of reading and designing floor plans, in 52 in-depth video lectures.

24. Interior Design Foundations

This short video course covers the foundations of interior design, drawing its lessons from a wide range of presentations and interviews with leading interior designers. Aimed at design professionals interested in improving their skills to enhance their career.

25. JD Campus London

This e-learning course explains the basics of modern interior design, from designing interior styles to specific considerations for commercial designs and other settings. This instructional course is spread over 10 modules, all of which are completed online.

APPS

These mobile colour, carpentry and design apps are helpful if you need a design tool while on the move:

26. Benjamin Moore Colour Capture

This mobile app lets you photograph and match any colour you see during the day. Capture any colour with your iPhone or Android smartphone and match it to one of Benjamin Moore’s range of more than 3,500 different paints.

27. Home 3D

This mobile home design app lets you create a 3D model of your home and find out how colours, materials and furniture look inside it. Customise your home using a huge selection of different items before walking through it on your iOS device in 3D.

28. iHandy Carpenter

This affordable (£1.49) and hugely helpful iOS app gives you five great tools to help around the house, including a spirit level, plumb bob and ruler. A fantastic tool for getting pictures levelled just right.

29. myPantone

This iOS app lets you browse a huge range of different colour palettes and create your own colour harmonies. Available for iPhone and iPad, myPantone is a great app to have on hand when searching for colour combinations for your home.

30. Remodelista

This free iOS app provides an online sourcebook with inspiration from stylists and architects from all over the world. Browse hundreds of high resolution images of great interiors to find the perfect look for oyur home. The go-to app for anyone with a passion for interior design.

31. Mark On Call

This iOS app lets you create detailed floor plans of your home, complete with furniture and other items, in full high definition. Choose from a huge range of colours to design your ideal home or see how your current home could look after renovations.

32. Quill

This £0.79 iOS app converts anything you draw into vector art, letting you easily resize your drawings to any size. Since your drawings are smoothed out and turned into vectors as soon as they’re completed, this is a great app for creating illustrations for your interior designs.

33. Decolabs

This augmented reality visualisation iOS app lets you modify the design and layout of your living room, kitchen or any other indoor space with ease. Choose from a huge collection of items to add to your living space before sharing it with the Decolabs community.

34. Architonic

This iOS inventory app lets you browse the entire Architonic product range, including lamps, chairs, sofas, tables and more, using your iOS device. Browse more than 75,000 products to find high resolution images, specifications and more information in seconds.

35. Photo Measures

This helpful app lets you record measurements on your photos with ease. Take a photo of your living room or any other space and overlay measurements to make finding furniture simple. Available for iOS and Android devices.

36. Peppermint

This colour wheel application takes the guesswork out of choosing colours for use in your home. Adjust your colour palette to suit your home’s look and feel without worrying about clashing colours or other aesthetic issues.

INFOGRAPHICS

37. Interior Design by Decade

This infographic looks back at interior design throughout the 20th century with a focus on design trends in the UK. From the 1950s until the current decade, view the biggest design trends of the last 65 years to find your favourite style.

38. Interior Design 101 – A Beginner’s Guide to Home Decorating

This infographic covers the basic principles of interior design, from balance to proportion and scale. An incredibly helpful resource for interior decorating beginners seeking a quick, simple guide to the basics of timeless design.

39. Home Décor Infographics & Cheat Sheets – Curated by honeyandfitz.com

These home decor cheat sheets cover a huge range of topics, from choosing the right chairs for a dining table to which size of rug best suits a twin bedroom. A great resource to keep in mind if you’re shopping for tables, rugs, mattresses and other home essentials.

40. Top Five Interior Design Styles

This infographic explains the basic elements of five of the most popular interior design styles of today. From industrial design to modern interior decorating, learn what gives each design style its own unique look and feel.

41. How To Make Your Home A Happier Place

This infographic looks at the link between home design and happiness. From the effects of different colours on your mood to the best light sources for maintaining energy levels, use this resource to work out how to make your home a nicer place to live.

42. The Psychology of Colour

This infographic explains the psychological effects of each of the major colours, from bold and vibrant colours like red to soothing and peaceful colours like green. Make sure to read this if you’re planning on repainting your home’s interior in a new colour scheme.

PODCASTS

43. Design Pro Success Stories

This podcast features interviews with leading interior designers, architects and other design professionals. Learn more about the influences and ideas of many of the most acclaimed and important people in the world of design.

44. The Chaise Lounge

This podcast is all about the business side of interior design. Every week, host Nick May talks to a successful interior designer to learn more about how they built a successful business in the field of interior design.

45. Archispeak

This podcast covers the day-to-day reality of working as an architect. The three hosts discuss topics ranging from 3D modelling to finding clients, making it a great educational resource for people that aspire to be architects.