Interior Design Apps are making an interior designer’s life much better!  What was life like before smart phones? I have only had a smart phone for three years, but now that I have one, I don’t know what I would do without it. It has a camera so I can snap a quick picture, a calculator so I can quickly figure the 35% discount of a pair of shoes, and a GPS in case I get lost.  I can check my email, keep up with my friends on social media, and play games when I am bored in a waiting room.  It seems as though there is an app for just about everything.   There are even apps that make my job as an interior designer a little bit easier, and can also be very helpful for people looking to remodel or redecorate. Here are a few of my favorites:

 

Houzz

There was once a time when gathering design inspiration meant flipping through design magazines and putting paper clips on the pages that caught your eye.  Or, you’d tear these pages out and stick them all in a bulky folder, but inevitably, you’d lose that one image that really spoke to your vision. Called “the Wikipedia of interior and exterior design” by CNN, Houzz is the new way to organize your design inspiration images and ideas.  The app, which features over 2 million high resolution photos, is a wonderful on-the-go resource for finding, saving, and sharing inspirational images in “Ideabooks”, so that you always have them handy.  I highly recommend that all my clients start an Ideabook for any project we work on together so I can get a better sense of their style and their desires for the space. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so having a plethora of inspirational images is invaluable.

 

Photomeasure Lite

This app allows you to take a picture of a space and then draw measurements right on the picture within the app.  While I prefer good old fashioned graph paper and pencil for typical measures, this app is great if you just need to take a few quick notes on a space. It is also good  for homeowners searching for furniture or art to determine if a piece will fit within the space and is a great way to always have these notes and measurements on the go.

 

 

 

 

Bubble

Level (or any free level app)–This one is pretty simple, but it is so great having a level always at your fingertips. It makes hanging wall art and pictures a cinch!

Color Capture

Let’s say you have a tea kettle in a pretty pale yellow color that you really want to represent in your kitchen design. You’d love to paint your walls that pale yellow color. The old method would be you take home a bunch of paint chips, only to find that none of them are quite right. The next step is you start bringing the darn tea kettle around with you to paint stores trying to find a coordinating color, but you just end up looking silly. Cue the Color Capture app! With this app from Benjamin Moore, you can take a picture of pretty much anything, and as long as it is properly lit, the app will provide you with a color match, as well as coordinating colors to choose from!

 

What is your favorite design app? Let me know in the comments below!