What stops you from making changes to the decor of your home? My answer would always be that I hesitate because it can be difficult to visualise the final look. Well, I have found a very clever tool that will change this. dmlights is an online shop for lighting fixtures, accessories and electrical supplies and they sell and ship worldwide. On their site they have an amazing 3D Homeplanner tool, which is completely free to use.
I decided to give this tool a go to help me plan my kitchen makeover (obviously wish I had the kitchen above but, alas, I do not!). I’ve been struggling with whether or not to remove the cabinets above the worksurface and replace them with open shelves – you can see what my kitchen currently looks like here. With the 3D Homeplanner tool I was able to draw out the exact dimensions of my room, plot where the doors and windows are and then add the wall colour and floor surface (as you can see below). As I was doing this there is a camera tool that I could position so that I could see the room in 3D (top right corner).
I could then fill the room with the furniture and lighting of my taste and choose from thousands of existing home products. I found near exact replicas of my kitchen cupboards and sink, as well as open floating shelves that I was able to add to my room layout. I then added three pendant lights from dmlights’ lighting range and the really clever part is I could turn the lights on to see how they would illuminate the room – genius!
After designing the room I was able make a 3D render with realistic lighting effects and the image was emailed to me within a couple of minutes. The first time round I wasn’t completely happy with the pendants I had chosen and how they emitted light so I was able to edit it and get a new 3D render just like that.
My ‘new’ kitchen with open shelves and Lightyears Bulb Fiction lights. After seeing this I am now considering removing the top half of the full height cupboard on the left and extending the worktop. This would really open up the space. By the way, the other side of the kitchen has plenty of cupboard space, don’t worry!
This is a game changer for anyone who does not feel completely confident about designing a room from scratch or making changes to existing rooms. It has really helped me to figure out that open shelves will look better than the cabinets I currently have and I love the idea of adding these lights to the room as an added feature; I love their soft, balanced light. It would also work really well for anyone struggling with room layout.
I will warn you though that playing around on this tool can be quite addictive!
Katy x
*This post was written in collaboration with dmlights.
This is SUCH a good idea! We’ve just renovated our whole house and it is so tricky to visualise things. We went to Howdens to look at kitchens and they had something similar which was really helpful, but this would be so useful to be able to use at home.
Wow, this is brilliant. I am currently trying to turn our spare room into a study and definitely going to use this to figure out where to place the desks, shelves etc. thanks so much for the tip 🙂
What a brilliant idea. I’ll definitely be using this when we eventually come to remodel our kitchen. When we did up our bathroom recently the hardest thing was working out if the storage solutions would work, if I’d have known about this app then it would have made things easier!
I am utterly useless at being able to visualise a space, so this would be perfect for me! We’re getting a new sofa soon which is going to mean a little jiggery-pokery in our living area, so will keep this is mind!
Thanks!
Jiggery-pokery – I don’t know where that came from! ha!
Wow! This is the way I’d have to go if I were designing a big change as I just don’t have the imagination to visualise.
This sounds really useful and easy to use. I definitely need to plan things out more (and not on the back of an envelope)!
What a great idea! I am terrible at picturing what things will look like so this would be perfect for me. Now I just need a house to decorate! x
I also find visualising a space really tricky when it comes to renovations, this looks like a brilliant tool to do so! x
What a great idea. Need to give this a try for my living-room redesign. Thanks for sharing.
xx, Stephanie