Are you sat right now inside a room that you feel could do with a good re-design? A fresh lick of paint and some furniture that doesn’t look like it would be more at home inside a black and white movie? Whenever this realization took place in the past, the thing to do would be to head out and buy some home improvement magazines for inspiration, to consult your friends and family about what they really think of the dated room in question or to even go the whole-hog and enlist the guidance of expert. However this is 2012, and much like with anything else – there is now an app for that, meaning that all you need to do is pull out your phone, swipe and tap the touch screen a couple of times and get visualising your new masterpiece of a room!
But like with any new interior design project – where do you start? What do you search for? How do you do you know what is good and bad? Once again, its 2012 and convenience is the order of the day, so scroll down and you’ll find the best interior design apps available for your iPad, iPhone or any other tablet device/smartphone.
Houzz Interior Design Ideas
If your mind feels like a blank white wall and its ideas and inspiration that you’re desperately in need of, then it is highly likely that you won’t find anything better and more jam-packed with design ideas than the Houzz Interior Design Ideas app. Upheld as the “Wikipedia of interior and exterior design” I’m not even going to try and put a number on the amount of inspirational ideas and images you’ll find here because it’s a constantly updated hive of design brilliance that exceeds the half million mark.
Also revered as a “digital look book for interior-decorating ideas”, the app allows you to browse the ideas by their style, room and location and then save them to your own digital scrapbook for later reference – meaning that a whole house worth of ideas can be sitting right there on your phone, ready to come back to whether you’re painting or adding the finishing touches. “What’s the catch” you say? Not a single thing, as all of this is completely free!
uDecore
Now you have your ideas, how about getting a little bit more technical and seeing some of them come to life in your room of choice… virtually first of course. Augmented reality was complete science fiction only a few years ago, however now as other apps such as the mind-boggling Word Lens allow you to translate foreign text in real-time, it is only fair that interior design got in on the act – and uDecore is here to do just that, by allowing you to place a piece of furniture from the choice of hundreds and hundreds of interchangeable pieces, right inside a room – all in real time through the use of your smartphones camera.
It doesn’t end there, as you can then alter colour and re-position them until you are happy with your virtual choices and are ready to head out and buy them for real!
myPANTONE
Okay – slightly more expensive but come on, you are re-designing a room after all and it really is worth the price tag to gain the official Pantone colour guide right on your phone, ready to reference whenever you wish instead of reeling off a hard-to-understand description of a colour that only you might have ever seen. ‘The colour of Manchester United’s Away Kit in the 95/96 season’ probably won’t suffice (and if you remember it, why would you want it anyway?)
Pantone is the international language of colour, and this app gives you the whole lot – over 13,000 to be precise, with the added ability to create custom palettes and see what works together and what doesn’t.
Handy Man DIY
If you’re planning an entire re-design devoid of professionals and will instead be doing it all yourself, it might be an even better idea to do it with the Handy Man DIY app, as it will only set you back a measly £1.49 and is brimming with all the features needed to make a DIY re-design an absolute breeze. Coming up stuck on how much paint you need for the colour chosen with your myPANTONE app? Simply enter the measurements of your room and the app will do the calculations for you – working the same way with trim, flooring and many other variables. It throws in step by step guides to, so having the app in your palm will be like having a professional right there with you (without having to foot the hefty bill!)
So there you have it, some apps that can take you from the design process right through to completion and the realisation of your initial ideas… Your smartphone might just be the most valuable tool in your toolbox!
This post was written by Richard Paul on behalf of Paint Spray Tools, providers of paint sprayers for an all-encompassing re-design.
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