All Posts

The Best Apps for Professional Interior Designers: 2022 Edition

Interior designers spend a lot of their time on project sites, visiting showrooms, and tending to other business outside of the office. That’s why the best interior design apps let the pros do great work on the go, which is useful when you’re heading from appointment to appointment. 

This is our 2022-2023 list of the best apps for interior designers, which we first published in 2019 and update annually. These apps will make your life easier and help you take your business to new heights.

Apps for Developing A Concept

(Mood board created in Morpholio Board Pro; Photo Credit: Morpholio)

Pinterest

The Pinterest App brings everything you love about Pinterest into an intuitive mobile interface. Search for inspiration or organize your images into boards that you can selectively share with colleagues and clients. The app is free and is available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch operating on iOS 12.0 or later. It is also available for Android

Paper

The Paper app lets users make color sketches that mimic a variety of art techniques, like pencil and watercolor. What makes this app different from Concepts and Art Set 4, both great apps for creating art, is that Paper, created by FiftyThree (which has since been acquired by WeTransfer) has a more advanced collage feature that allows you to cut, paste, and combine things like handwritten notes, photos, and text. The app is free to create and share files up to 2 GB and is available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Note that it requires iOS 12.0 or later. It does not currently offer a version for Android. 

Morpholio Board Pro

Making our list again this year, Morpholio Board Pro is the best app for creating mood boards and 2D renderings that use real products. The free version will let you create professional-looking mood boards, while the Pro version will also provide shopping lists, cut sheets, and specs for the chosen products, plus a variety of additional tools. Making life that much easier is that the Morpholio Board Pro app can connect to Pinterest. Note that Morpholio Board is part of the Morpholio Suite, which includes other helpful apps such as Morpholio Trace, Morpholio Journal, and Morpholio (a portfolio making app). The Morphio Board app is free for basic use and with upgrades available from $0.99 to $7.99 per month or $11.99 per year for Pro on devices operating on iOS 13.0 or later. The app for iPad includes more features than the iPhone version, as detailed in the app description. It is also available for Android.

Paste

By the same makers of Paper and also under the WeTransfer umbrella comes Paste, a new addition to our 2022 list of the best apps for interior designers. With Paste, you can easily create presentations using any of your images, drawings, and moodboards, or mood boards created within the app itself. The accompanying app, Paste Preview, has the same creation tools as the desktop version and allows you to view slides in realtime and share them from anywhere. Using Paste Preview is an easy way of compiling your ideas and creating presentations sleek enough to put in front of clients and other collaborators. You can download it for free using Apple devices with iOS 11.0 or later and Android devices.  

Apps for Mapping & Creating 2D

(Rendered floor plan created in Floorplanner; Photo Credit: Floorplanner)

iHandy Carpenter

The iHandy Carpenter app continues to be a favorite among interior designers. It provides a virtual carpenter’s toolbox, including a surface level, plumb bob, and steel ruler. It costs $1.99 and is available for all iPhones operating on iOS 6 or higher.

MagicPlan

The MagicPlan app takes photos of your space and converts them into floor plans with impressive accuracy, making this a must-have app for interior designers. Down the line, you may want to make your own drawings in Autocad (the Autocad app can help), but the MagicPlan floor plans are a great starting point. You can use the app’s most basic components for free, but there are a variety of fee levels to access additional features. It is available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch operating on iOS 14.0 or later. Google Play offers a version for Android

Floorplanner

The Floorplanner app is a new edition to our list of best apps for interior designers this year. While the app is capable of creating both 2D plans and 3D renderings, its best use is for creating presentation-ready rendered floor plans. Users can draw rooms and walls using a drag and drop method or by entering dimensions directly to produce accurate scale drawings. Unlike Autocad, lines automatically connect to help avoid hard to catch mistakes that will create trouble in producing 2D and 3D renderings of the basic plans. One of the downsides is that the app is only available for Android

 

Apps for Visualizing 3D

(3D model created in SketchUp for iPad; Photo Credit: Floorplanner)

 

Home Design 3D Gold

Despite the influx of new 3D drawing and rendering apps, The Home Design 3D Gold app makes our list again this year, as it’s one of the highest-rated apps in the Apple App Store. Users can draw spaces directly in the app in either 2D or 3D, then extrude walls, change thickness, and add doors and windows with remarkable ease. Once a space is built, you can add finishes and furniture from the app’s digital warehouse of over 1,000 furniture pieces. Once your design is complete, create photo-realistic renderings directly from your device in seconds that rival those made in Rhinoceros and Revit, with realistic light and shadow renderings based on customizable settings. It costs $8.99 and is available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch operating on iOS 11.4 or later. It is also available for Android.

HomeStyler Interior Design

In the HomeStyler Interior Design app, you can use a picture of your actual space and begin populating that space with different furniture from the app’s warehouse and play around with different color schemes, all in photorealistic finishes. The basic version of the app is free with upgrades available from $5.99 to $9.99 per month and is available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch operating on iOS 10.0 or later. It is also available for Android.

SketchUp for iPad

New to our list is the SketchUp app, which offers a great value (functionality for a low price) and its integration with several other softwares. Its new app for iPad offers many of the same features as SketchUp for desktop with additional tools such as Apple pencil drawing, which allows you to turn sketches into 3D forms. With the SketchUp app, creating detailed and professional, commercial grade 3D drawings and renderings for single rooms to enormous, multifloor complexes is possible while on the go. It is available for iPad operating on iOS 15 or later for a free 7 day trial and is then $119 for a yearly subscription.

Apps for Delving Into Design

Adobe Capture

The Adobe Capture app has so many useful functions, making it an essential element of any interior designer’s app folder. This app can take a photo and identify its patterns, convert its shapes to vector drawings, and organize its color themes. It is the perfect tool for taking inspiration images to the design phase. It is free and available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch operating on iOS 14 or later. It is also available for Android.

Apps for Managing Your Business

(Design Manager app; Photo Credit: Design Manager)

Design Manager

We wouldn’t put our own product on this list if we didn’t think it belonged here, but we think there is no better app for interior design project management and accounting upkeep than Design Manager’s sleek, easy-to-use offering. The Design Manager app offers users the ability to tap into their account portals and access any information they need to pull up at a moment’s notice. What's more, the app makes it super simple to take pictures and add items, swipe through an item gallery with professional formatting for client meetings, and to quickly add contacts. Of course, we can’t fail to mention the time tracker function, which works like a stop/start timer that converts minutes into billable time, all saved to your account portal. It’s free with a Design Manager account and is available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch that operate on iOS 11.0 or later. It is also accessible for Android devices - see instructions here

Zoom

In our new normal, no professional can go without Zoom. For interior designers, remaining virtually available by video conference technology was previously a challenge, as they are often on the move. The Zoom app allows users to connect to video calls, whether one-on-one or with multiple participants, using their mobile device. While certain Zoom features require a paid account, the app is free. It is available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch that operate on iOS 8.0 or later. It is also available for Android

Gusto

Gusto is an all-in-one Human Resources platform that is ranked the “Best Payroll Software of 2022” by U.S. News, making it the perfect choice for small businesses that choose to outsource HR functions. In fact, the company was originally founded to serve start-ups with plans to scale. Gusto can service hiring and onboarding, payroll, benefits, time and attendance (also trackable using Design Manager), and compliance of your HR functions. Employees can use the Gusto Wallet app to manage their profiles, such as in which personal accounts to distribute paycheck funds and how to direct benefits contributions. It also offers financial tools such as goal setting and tracking.The Gusto wallet app is available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch operating on iOS 13.0 or later and is also available for Android.  

 


The functionality offered by apps for interior designers continues to grow every year. What were once highly specialized and time consuming tasks, such as drawing precise floor plans and producing photorealistic renderings, can be done quickly at a moment’s notice, wherever you may be. The better you can visually communicate your ideas to your clients and collaborators, the faster you can move your projects along while ensuring satisfaction amongst all stakeholders. 

Try the best apps for interior designers in 2022 and see how they can help you grow your business while giving you more free time to do what you enjoy.

Margot LaScala
Margot LaScala
Margot is a writer and interior designer based in the NYC area. She is passionate about keeping up with the latest architecture and design news to not only stay informed, but inspired.

Related Posts

Pro Cloud Updates that Streamline Project Management

Interior design projects are complex, so one of our main jobs here at Design Manager is to make them easi...
Continue Reading
  • Greg Palmer, CEO
    March 29 2022 . 3 min read

10 Mistakes Interior Designers Make on Their Websites

A strong website is the most important marketing tool for an interior design business. Social media has b...
Continue Reading
  • Margot LaScala
    January 28 2022 . 7 min read

Getting Started With Design Manager: The Premier Interior Design Software

Design Manager was created to make running an interior design business as easy as possible. Our new Trial...
Continue Reading
  • Margot LaScala
    September 15 2021 . 6 min read