IKEA Home Planner Helps Reimagine Your Rooms In 3D

Sure, some of us may not have the creative genius that lets us re-imagine rooms like the finest designers, but that's a-ok with us. We can't think of many friends' spaces that don't have one or two things from the Swedish blue and yellow solutions giant, so why not take advantage of their newest planner software that helps you turn that dated kitchen, bedroom, or home office into showroom status?

We've been using Google Sketchup for a while to do our designing needs, but we've always had trouble finding the exact IKEA piece in the Sketchup database. With IKEA's Home Planner, you can pick and choose stuff you see in the store, toss in the product number, and build your own fully-customizable space without having to frantically hunt the internet for a compatible "placeholder."

The download site lists 3 separate program downloads, but it seems to lead to the same exact program when you start clicking through to download it anyway. It's for Windows only for now, so you Mac lovers out there might have to get some Bootcamp action going on in order to get this to work on your rigs.

Oh, and like Google Sketchup, this simple yet powerful tool is free for the masses.

[via Lifehacker]

Comments (2)

Still doesn't work on a Mac : (

posted by Chad on March 6th 2009 at 10:58am
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Great idea, bad execution... I have used this in the past, and you are very limited in what you can do. IKEA should really allow you to find a choose all the pieces they sell regardless of the category it falls in. Anyone who has visited one of their stores knows that they interchange rooms all over the place. It would be nice to be able to plan a living room on this software, and pull pieces from the bedroom or office lines if you want.

posted by jpriley75 on March 6th 2009 at 11:09am
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