8 Websites that Will Design a Room for You and Then Charge You and Arm and a Leg to Print the Plans
8 Websites that Will Design a Room for You and Then Charge You and Arm and a Leg to Print the Plans for Your Dream Home (and 2 that will actually let you do it for free)
The definition of the word “hack” is a little loose but most everyone would agree that a hack is a clever solution to a particular problem or a shortcut around an issue. In this article, we’ve found 8 websites that claim they can design your dream home for you, including 3D floor plans and detailed drawings, but upon further inspection, these sites seem more concerned with gaining your email address through an offer of “free house designing”, or getting you to sign up as a member so they can then ask for $50 – $100 surcharges both before and after the service. The services we feel are worthwhile only offer their complete service at no charge.
The following list of “house design” sites that may or may not be trustworthy are organized in order from most to least reputable.
1) Room Sketcher –
The first few steps of the process for designing your home does indeed seem legitimate and free of charge, but after selecting a room layout both on their site and within the program itself, users are prompted to enter their name, email address and phone number before being automatically logged into Facebook as another user who has already been through the process. In fact, simply close your web browser and re-open it to find yourself logged into another person’s Facebook account with all of their preferences already set up.
2) Room Sizer –
This site offers a free room planner that calculates square footage and takes prints out at various scales for you to share with your builder or plan on a home printer, but once again, if you’re not willing to give them your email address, they will prevent you from using any of the services offered. There isn’t even an “X” to close out of the pop-up before entering your information so be sure not to blink as you click through the next few screens. If these were indeed trustworthy and worth subscribing to, why would they need you to share your email address and phone number with them in the first place?
3) Home 3D –
This site offers two rooms for free with a limit of 10 photos per room before your contacts are asked to sign up as members or subscribe to their newsletter. Once again, for this service, we expected that you’d be able to choose from various floor plans and paint colors instead of almost identical room layouts and limited color options. This also gives us an opportunity to remind our readers that if most (or all) of the features offered on a website require a paid membership in order to access them, it is likely not worth joining. Oh yeah…watch out for those pop-up ads too!
4) Home Design Studio –
This site offers a similar program to the previous three but is less likely to hijack your Facebook account in the process. It does still require an email address and phone number in order to use any of their services beyond simply viewing free plans for various rooms within your home. There are also quite a few advertisements along with images that could be considered copyrighted material so this website has not made our list of reliable design services.
5) My Design Deals –
This site requires you to give up an email address before seeing any free floor plans available on the site, despite what it might say about “3D walkthroughs” or “virtual reality”. The service they offer seems more like simple drawings on graph paper rather than anything close to a detailed 3D representation of your future home.
6) My House Plan –
This site offers five-floor plans for free with the option of additional plans for purchase, but none of these are actual interactive or 3D house designs. It’s simply just another service that is trying to get you to give up your email address by asking for “partner referrals”. If the house designs they have available are really worth paying for, then why would they need you to refer anyone? Maybe it’s because they aren’t actually offering any valuable services?
7) Home Design Online –
There is no fee require before seeing their collection of over 4500 free and paid layouts. And other tools like the doorway width calculator but beware of the pop-up ads. Once again, if there are so many available free online, why would they offer paid services along with them? We have a feeling that this service is worth passing up as it seems to be nothing more than another site trying to sell you things you don’t need.
8) Planner 5D –
This site requires an email address before allowing users to even see what type of designs are available for purchase or download. It can tell you how long an upcoming renovation project will take and provide you with information on electrical wiring among other things. However, these tools come at a price that makes us think twice about visiting their website in the place because it doesn’t seem worth it.
Conclusion:
If you find a “3D house design” website that doesn’t require an email address or phone number to view free plans, then by all means give it a shot. If this is not the case and you are ask for such personal information. Before seeing any of their services, we recommend keeping your distance from them entirely. For those of you who want to design your own home but simply don’t have the money to hire an expensive architect, there is absolutely no shame in using online tools like Google Sketch Up. It will allow you to create and modify various structures and even take measurements without paying anything at all!