Sweet Home 3D

One of the hardest parts of a renovation is imagining whether the living room will feel empty once that wall comes down, or whether there is still room to walk past the sofa. Sweet Home 3D makes that concrete: draw the plan on top, watch the 3D build below, and switch to a first-person walkthrough whenever you want.

The workflow is plain. Import a floor plan as a background image, trace the walls, drag in doors and windows, then pull sofas, beds, cabinets and appliances from the furniture library. Every piece takes exact dimensions, so "will this 2.4 m cabinet fit?" is answered on the spot rather than on delivery day.

For non-professionals that is the whole value: it does not require CAD knowledge. The entire interaction is dragging things and typing numbers, and an afternoon is enough to reproduce your own home. Compared with commissioning renderings or using commercial home design software — which usually wants an account, sells asset packs and watermarks exports — this is free, open source, offline and ad-free.

Other genuinely useful capabilities: dimension and area annotations, multiple floors, adjustable lighting and materials, respectable rendered stills plus a walkthrough video, and imports of downloaded 3D models to extend the furniture library.

Things to note:

• It is a Java application. The official installers bundle a runtime, but startup speed and visual polish are plainer than a native app — a look it has kept for years.
• It is not professional architecture software. Structure, construction drawings and building services are out of scope; it is for planning and previewing your own space. For construction drawings, use LibreCAD or FreeCAD.
• There is an official web version for trying it without installing, though the desktop build is more comfortable for a serious project.