In a 2019 survey, 84% of Americans declared they wanted to remodel their homes and half of those surveyed had plans to remod their kitchens.
One thing that might get in the way of that project is the cost of having someone design the kitchen for you.
But in 2021, you don’t need an architect, you can use online kitchen design software, instead.
And the cost of that software?
It starts at free, though “freemium” is the most common model, where you can test drive some features of the software and then pay for more features.
And it’s surprisingly good and takes very little work to learn to use and design your dream kitchen with this software.
So, here are our favorite free online kitchen design software programs and some awesome paid ones too.
THE FREE OPTIONS
Homestratopshere’s Kitchen Design Software
This free software package does have some freemium options but you can get most of your design work done without spending any money.
It also has the flexibility to help you design other rooms in your home, not just your kitchen.
Homestyler
Homestyler’s free option lets you get a feel for the software and the kind of kitchen that you can create with it, but if you want to get the most out of it, you’ll need to pay a small subscription fee.
It is very easy to use and it offers an excellent 3D output to help you really get a feel for what the end result will look like.
IKEA 3D Kitchen Planner
This is an excellent 3D kitchen design tool and would, perhaps, be considered the best of them all except for one obvious constraint, it only works with IKEA products.
Nonetheless, if you have your heart set on an IKEA kitchen this is the way to design it.
Planner 5D
Planner 5D is a very powerful free design tool which does have some premium features.
If you want to see exactly what the finished kitchen (or any other room in your home) will look like, Planner 5D will render it in almost perfect 3D.
It’s very easy to learn to use too.
Roomstyler
Roomstyler is 100% free and offers design down to the last detail, seriously, it even allows you to put plates and knives and forks in the finished kitchen!
It might be too much detail for some but we found designing a kitchen in Roomstyler to be a lot of fun.
Prodboard
Prodboard’s main focus is selling software licenses to design businesses which is good for us because it means they offer a consumer license for free as a demo.
The plans generated by Prodboard are like the kind of plans you’d expect from an architect.
Paid Online Kitchen Design Software Options
If you’d rather just pay outright for software and have no limits imposed on you then there are several paid design packages that are excellent.
Chief Architect
For less than $100, you really can’t go wrong with Chief Architect which is a fully-featured interior design package.
It can go way beyond kitchens right up to delivering full home blueprints and the design options are far beyond those offered in free software packages.
If you want to remodel more than just your kitchen the case for Chief Architect is beyond a doubt and even, just for a kitchen, it might save you a ton of time and money.
ProKitchen
ProKitchen’s biggest advantage is that it contains pre-built models for kitchen supplies from over 300 different manufacturers and design catalogs.
This means that if you’re already pretty sure of where you’re going to buy hardware and appliances from, you can render the exact versions of products in the designs.
The 360 degree view of the end product is a nice touch too and allows you to really “walk through” your kitchen in a virtual space.
2020 Design
2020 Design’s final drawings are the most realistic kitchens that we’ve ever seen.
It is meant for professional kitchen designers and it’s not cheap, though you can obtain a free 30-day trial, which you must request, you can’t just download a trial from their site.
You’d have to be very serious, indeed, about making a single kitchen to justify the cost of 2020 Design but there’s no doubt about it, that the end results are amazing.
If you intend to be one of the 10 million Americans who remodel their kitchen this year, you ought to give some strong thought to using online kitchen design software.
It doesn’t even need to cost you a penny and it will help you properly envision your new kitchen and prevent any poor layout decisions.
Don’t forget though, whether you opt to bake bread or smoke meat in your new kitchen, you need to leave some space for some quality cookbooks.
