Better Homes and Gardens Interior Designer [OLD VERSION]

by Chief Architect

Product Features

• Powerful, easy-to-use interior home design software
• Includes interior design, remodeling, decorating, and floor/space planning
• Quickly place and arrange walls, windows, doors, and cabinets
• Choose colors, place furniture, and create kitchens and baths
• Design and visualize with realistic 3D models and virtual tours

Product Details

Data Sheet [2.55mb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B000AA879Q
• Item model number: 045-100L
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 30, 2006
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #781 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #11 in Software > Home & Hobbies > Home Design
  • #49 in Software > Home & Hobbies > Hobbies

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Interior Designer is loaded with tools for decorating, remodeling, interior design, kitchens & baths, space planning and more. You can quickly place and arrange walls, windows, doors, cabinets, choose colors, place furniture, create kitchens and baths. The exclusive Design Planning Center offers expert "how-to" Design Advice. Change colors and textures for walls, floors, countertops, and more with Material Painter. Point-and-click to choose from thousands of colors and textures or create your own with Color Chooser. Design and visualize your home with 3D Models and Virtual Tours.

Overview of features:

• Inspire your designs with the Better Homes and Gardens Design Planning Center
• Create a Virtual Walk-Through of your home design
• Design and visualize in 3D
• Choose from a Library of more than 3,000 items for your designs
• Generate an Automatic Material List for project cost estimating
• Includes over 30 How-To training videos

3D Models and Virtual Tours:

See dramatic 3D Dollhouse Views of your designs.

• Produce realistic images of your designs and remodeling projects
• The Glass House View provides a full translucent view of the interior and exterior, simulatenously
• Doll House View, a 3D view without the roof,provides a very effective overview tool for space planning to determine room size, furniture placement and traffic flow
• Create and take a Virtual Walk-Through of your house
• Take individual pictures (renders) of your design that can be saved in any image format
• Visualize your home with day and night views
• Print and assemble a scale model of your design with Model Maker
• Generate shadows from the sun for realistic 3D views

Design Tools: Use the Better Homes and Gardens Design Planning Center to help guide your designs with decorating guidelines, tips and advice Over 500 sample plans to inspire your design Create a virtual look and feel of the design before it is built with actual colors, wallpaper, flooring, furniture, windows and window treatments Material Painter allows you to apply materials to individual items. For example, change the counter top to Granite, change the cabinets to Cherry Wood, or paint the walls with your favorite color Define your own lighting and electrical plan

Advanced, precise, and easy enough for anyone to use.

Building Tools: Choose from 6 Better Homes and Gardens style templates The Build House Wizard provides a quick way to layout adjoining rooms to help create your design or remodeling project Quickly place and arrange walls, windows, doors, cabinets and architectural objects from a library of over 3,000 items to create a 3D model in minutes Automatically generate a Materials List into a spreadsheet for complete project estimating Complete automatic building tools for roof generation, framing, dimensioning, and foundations Easily design kitchens with plans and 3D layouts Create complete customized cabinets with drag-and-drop Detail cabinets with color, wood type, countertop material, door/drawer styles, open shelving, backsplash, crown molding, millwork, and cabinet hardware including hinges, handles and pulls Plan Check - automatically validates the design against standard building principles

Tools to take you from conception to reality.

Plan it, see it, make it happen.

What's in the box:
Design software on CD-ROM, instruction booklet.

Product Description

REVIEW: INTERIOR HOME DESIGN SOFTWARE
Design and decorate your dream home today with Better Homes and Gardens Interior Designer. Based on the top-rated Home Designer, it provides even more tools for interior home design projects including: Interior Design, Remodeling, Decorating, Kitchens & Baths, and Floor & Space Planning. Quickly place and arrange walls, windows, doors, cabinets, choose colors, place furniture, create kitchens and baths. Design and visualize your home with 3D Models and Virtual Tours. - It's Easy, and It's Fun!

INTERIOR DESIGN

• Exclusive Design Planning Center for expert design advice from Better Homes and Gardens. magazine editors
• Choose from over 500 sample plans, use the House Wizard, or create your own custom design
• The Better Homes and Gardens. Design Inspiration Galley contains photos by room type for design and inspiration ideas
• Design and visualize with 3D Models and Virtual Tours
• Choose from pre-designed house style templates or create your own custom home interior designs

ROOM DECORATING

• Point-and-click to choose from thousands of colors and textures or create your own with Color Chooser
• Discover the secrets that architects and designers use to create beautiful homes
• Choose from a Library of more than 5,000 items for your designs including lighting fixtures, furniture, and window coverings
• Add all the accessories for your designs to create that perfect look and feel for your rooms
• Material Painter lets you to apply paint, wallpaper, and more

KITCHENS & BATHS

• The Design Planning Center provides expert planning and design advice to help you with your well-planned kitchen or bath
• Choose from several pre-designed kitchen islands or create your own custom cabinet combinations with the Cabinet Designer tools
• It's easy to draw walls, drop in cabinets, place appliances, fixtures, kitchens islands, add dimensions, place, and size furniture to create that perfect kitchen design
• Visualize your countertops- choose from Formica., Corian., Granite, or your own custom color
• Plan the layout of your bathroom with custom cabinets, sinks, showers, or garden tubs

FLOOR & SPACE PLANNING

• Design in a 2D Plan View - quickly place and arrange walls, windows, and doors on Virtual Graph Paper to create accurately scaled floor plans
• Place and resize furniture to help in space and room planning
• House Wizard will help with the basic design layout with drag-and-drop simplicity
• Doll House view will help you determine the flow of the room
• Over 30 Free How-To Tutorial Videos

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

104 of 108 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Easy to use-But very limited, July 26, 2006

By 

Woodshop Man (MINNEAPOLIS, MN USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Better Homes and Gardens Interior Designer [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

I bought this and the Punch interiors software. This software is easy to use compared to Punch, but I suspect thats partly because H&G is very limited in options. For instance in Punch you can design your doors exactly as they are. In H&G you choose a style and have a few options. Punch also has a large library of trees, shrubs and plants to use to landscape your design. H&G only has potted plants. With H&G there are few backgrounds to use, and most look like they were taken from the west coast; mountains, sand dunes and million dollar homes on the beach. Nothing for the average person living in a suburb. Punch allows you to import your own digital photos as background, or just use their sky background. Either works well. I imported several panoramic photos of my backyard and side, and you can then put them at any angle to completely surround your design. BUT, you better read the manual (342 pages), it's not an intuitve program, H&G is. With H&G you can basically start after just a little homework. H&G; easier to use with less options. Punch; harder to learn but more flexibility.

95 of 99 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Should be called CAD for Dummies...., November 22, 2005

By 

B. Hartford "Save the Cheetahs!" (Massachusetts - United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Better Homes and Gardens Interior Designer [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

I was a little skeptical about this program - until I tried it last evening for the first time. I am really impressed..... I did not even use the tutorial before I dove in and tried to play a bit. I created a single room in less than 3 minutes, using simple walls, doors, windows, and a fireplace. Adding flooring and coloured walls was so easy it was almost sinful! LOL

I am most anxious to do more with the program and learn about all its capabilities. Today I watched the tutorial and was really surprised at how much this program can do!

I was really happy and impressed with the simplicity of the Better Homes and Gardens version as the idea of CAD seemed intimidating. Not any more....

I whole-heartedly recommend this program to everyone who is considering designing their interiors or for students of interior design who have not yet attempted any CAD programs.

47 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but Limited Furniture Library, January 22, 2007

By 

Patricia Morris Craze (Phoenix, AZ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Better Homes and Gardens Interior Designer [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

I'm an interior designer and have Interior Designer 7.0. It's easy to learn, but I already had used similar programs and I know CAD, but you don't need any cad experience to use this program. Materials render well, but the library of furniture and accessories is fairly limited. For example I was creating a game room for a client and only had one style of pool table to choose from and no accessory items such as pool sticks, balls or wall racks. I've figured out some workarounds such as using round millwork items and sinking them into the pool table to look like balls. Bed styles are also very limited. I've downloaded all their bonus furniture, but it's still lacking. The fabric options are also fairly limited, but be sure to scroll down past "fabric" to find the category "BH&G Fabric". For colors, scroll down past "colors" to Benjamin Moore or download the bonus Sherwin Williams colors. Also the best plants are in the "Xfrog" category. To save time set your render quality to low for fast renderings, then change it back to high to place your accessories. The program does a good job allowing you to import your own images and textures. To show an image on a TV screen, define it as a new texture in your custom library with width set to 0 (so it doesn't repeat the image). Overall I like the program I just need to figure out how to get more furniture and accessories.