Rhino3D is a 3D modeling software used in processes of computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), rapid prototyping, 3D printing, and reverse engineering in industries including architecture, industrial design (e.g. Automotive design, watercraft design), product design (e.g. Jewelry design), as well as for multimedia and graphic design.
If you want to redesign your home or office, we’ve taken a look at the very best home design software for Mac in 2019. Whether you want a straightforward floor planner to map out an office layout or desktop interior design software for your Mac to create the home of your dreams, you’ll find a tool here to fit.
It’s important to be aware from the start that there’s a difference between floor planning tools and interior design apps.
Floor planning apps like the excellent SmartDraw are for exactly that – mapping out layouts for offices, real estate, homes etc.
Home design software such as the impressive Live Home 3D go much further however and allow you to visualize interiors in 3D, choose materials and even do Virtual Reality walkthroughs in some cases.
There’s also a difference between Cloud based apps i.e. those that are online and can be used in any browser and desktop software that work specifically on Mac. We’ve made it clear in these reviews which are Cloud based and which are desktop apps.
The important thing to bear in mind is that whereas almost all interior design tools also do floor planning, most floor plan software doesn’t do interior design.
However, floor planners have the advantage of being simpler, faster and usually cheaper if you don’t need all the features of a home planner.
We’ve made it clear in the reviews below what each tool is designed for to make it easier to choose the right app for your needs.
Note that if you’re looking for more technical CAD software suitable for professional architects, you may be better reading our guide to the best CAD software on Mac instead.
Although some of the apps here are suitable for landscaping, we also recommend checking out our look at the top landscaping software for Mac as this area has its own specific demands and requirements.
With this in mind, here then are the best floor planners and home design software for Mac in order of ranking.
1. Live Home 3D (Home Design – Desktop)
Live Home 3D (formerly known as Live Interior 3D) is a powerful but easy to use home design software for Mac desktops.
The interface to Live Home 3D is perfect for beginners to floor planning as it’s so clear and logically laid out without being overwhelming.
The graphics in general are also superb with high quality 2D objects and highly realistic 3D rendering. You can design in 2D and 3D with a selection of furniture and objects from the vast Trimble SketchUp 3D Warehouse which allows you to download thousands of objects and models.
You can switch between 2D and 3D at any time and with no waiting around to see how your floor plans look close up. Just click on “Walk” at the top of the interface to walk through your new office or home design.
The overall attention to detail in Live Home 3D is amazing with around 2,100 materials to choose from – if the building material exists then it’s probably in Live Home 3D. If an object isn’t in the library, you can also import them in Wavefront .OBJ format.
There are Arc Wall and Straight Wall tools for different shapes and you can easily drag and drop doors onto the walls to add them into your floor plans. You can also share designs directly to social media, as well as export to PDF, JPG, PNG, TIFF and HEVC encoding for making high quality videos.
Even more impressive is that you can export to USDZ format which means you can view any piece of furniture, a room or an entire house in AR using iOS Quicklook on your iPad or iPhone.
Live Home 3D is also very hot at keeping-up with the latest Macs and versions of macOS. It’s the only floor planning software for Mac we’re aware of that is optimized for using the Touch Bar in the latest MacBook Pros.
It’s also fully integrated for saving to iCloud and to take advantage of 64 bit architecture in the latest versions of macOS. Live Home 3D also supports the Dark Mode in the latest version of macOS Mojave.
Live Home 3D is available in two versions – Standard and Pro but the Standard version is very basic. For serious home design, we strongly recommend Live Home 3D Pro as it includes essential features like unlimited floor levels, furniture and impressive full HD walkthroughs.
You can also buy 600 additional add-on materials such as different types of carpet, wallpaper and bricks for a small fee.
You can find full details on Live Home 3D pricing here and there’s a 30 day money back guarantee if you’re not satisfied with it.
There’s also our full review of Live Home 3D for a more detailed look.
You can watch how to create a floor plan in Live Home 3D below:
2. SmartDraw (Floor Planning – Online)
SmartDraw is a remarkably slick and easy to use online 2D diagramming software that’s excellent for creating 2D floor plans and blueprints.
Note that unlike Live Home 3D, SmartDraw is Cloud based so there’s no desktop app and costs $9.95 per month.
SmartDraw used to be a Windows only application but the release of SmartDraw Online Edition (formerly SmartDraw Cloud) means that Mac users can finally use it too in any browser.
SmartDraw Online feels like something that was designed for macOS which isn’t surprising since the developers created it mainly using Macs as a user friendly alternative to Visio in mind.
SmartDraw is extremely slick, easy to use, logical and makes it very easy to draw floor plans on Mac. One of the things that’s really impressive in SmartDraw is the sheer number of templates available.
There are literally thousands of templates including a huge number of ready-made floor plans which you can customize very quickly.
The other really clever thing about SmartDraw is that it automatically snaps objects and shapes into place to keep floor plans neat and symmetrical.
This is surprisingly time-saving rather than having to manually align and adjust shapes. If you want to import Visio floor plans on your Mac, SmartDraw will also import Visio VSD and VSDX files and it’s the only tool for Mac that can export to the latest Visio 2016 VSDX format if you want to send it to a Visio user.
Most recently SmartDraw’s floor planning tools have has been updated to make it easier to:
- Set angles just by typing
- Show the distance between a corner and openings like doors and windows
- Print the grid
- Adjust dimension lines
- Adjustment walls easily
- Improve the rotation of shapes attached to walls
You can get started now with SmartDraw for free to judge for yourself.
You can also read many more reasons why we like it in our review of SmartDraw.
3. Lucidchart (Floor Planning – Online)
Lucidchart is another easy to use cloud diagramming software that makes designing floor plans very easy on all platforms.
Lucidchart is similar to SmartDraw although it has a Chrome extension which allows you to work offline as well. Although it has less templates than SmartDraw, it still has plenty to complete most diagramming tasks quickly and easily.
There are several Floorplan templates that you an customize and adapt for your own designs. You can also import and even export to Visio format although you’ll need a Team subscription or higher in order to do this.
Lucidchart also has an iPad app which allows you to create floor plans on the move (see our review of the Lucidchart iPad app for more).
Overall, Lucidchart is a simple, convenient and fast way to draw floor plans on macOS.
You can read more in our Lucidchart review and you can also sign-up for a free account.
You can watch an overview of how to create a floor plan in Lucidchart below:
4. Homestyler (Home Design – Online)
Homestyler was originally made by Autodesk, the makers of the industry leading AutoCAD for Mac software and was an incredibly powerful floor planning software for Mac and PC.
It discontinued the product in 2017 but it has been continued as a somewhat lighter version under Chinese ownership by Easyhome.
The surprising thing is that Homestyler is still completely free to use but still feels like a professional floor plan app. The only requirement is that you sign-up for an Easyhome Homestyler account.
The latest version of Homestyler has recently been given a facelift with a new interface that’s streamlined and more responsive than the old Flash based one.
Creating floor plans in Homestyler is simply a case of dragging and dropping elements in your web browser. You can add small details like grass, gravel and water elements to add realism to your floor plans. It even allows you to import and export DWG files.
When it was owned by Autodesk, Homestyler could even provide pricing for your mock ups although unfortunately that is no longer possible. However, the new owners have added some interesting touches such as 3D walk throughs, an enhanced furniture library and mobile apps with Augmented Reality.
These allow you to take a photo of a room and then start decorating it with products immediately from the Easyhome catalog which really brings things to life.
You can also share designs made in Homestyler to social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc.
It’s really amazing that Homestyler is a free application and if you just want some fun redesigning your home, you can’t do much better.
5. Floorplanner (Floor Planning – Online)
Floorplanner is a very slick dedicated online floor plan software that makes creating floor plans or redesigning your home fun. Floorplanner is designed with beginners in mind that need help creating professional and striking floor plans on Mac.
Floorplanner conveniently snaps items and objects into place to keep your designs both geometrically correct and tidy with minimal effort. There are even convex tools to help you create complex rounded walls and dividers in floor plans.
Like Homestyler, you create designs in 2D but you can render them in 3D. This is a really nice touch as it allows you to better visualize what your floor plans will look like if you were standing in the room.
The good thing is that you can use Floorplanner for free although this only entitles you to one saved floor plan. You then need to pay $4.99 for each additional floor plan or you can pay $14.95 which entitles you to 5 floor plans per year with additional floor plans at $2.99 each.
The Pro version is $29.99 per year and gives you 15 floor plans and additional floor plans $1.99 each plus it allows you to brand floor plans.
Floorplanner is great for beginners and professionals alike and although it’s not the cheapest floor planning software for Mac, it’s probably worth it for those serious about creating professional floor plans.
You can watch Floorplanner in action below:
6. Roomle (Floor Planning – Desktop)
Roomle is a very attractively made 2D and 3D room planning app for Mac and iOS that makes it very easy to create floor plans.
Roomle is very slick and extremely well thought out making it easy for beginners to floor design to create professional and attractive looking floor plans.
Roomle is free to use although you need to register in order to save designs, send directly via email and work on more than design at once.
For professionals or furniture buyers, there are also business packages available.
Roomle has a surprisingly minimal interface with very few visible tools.
Roomle puts a big emphasis on walls and floors giving you full control over the thickness, material and type of walls and floors in your designs.
You can very easily change floorings, wall colors and drop furniture from Roomle’s extensive catalog of objects and materials.
The smart thing about Roomle is that it’s integrated with the furniture catalogs of major manufacturers such as Ikea, Samsung and Vitra meaning you can use (and purchase) objects from these brands in your designs.
You can plan in both 2D and 3D and use the 3D orbit view to get a birds eye or ground level view of how your floor plan would feel like for real.
There is less detail in the 3D view compared to most of the other floor planning apps for Mac featured here
The export options are limited – there’s no DMG support for example and you can’t share directly to social media but you can save floor plans in JPG format.
You can also print them directly from your browser or the Roomle iPad/iPhone app. The Roomle iOS app is one of the best mobile floor planning apps we’ve tried allowing you to pretty much everything you can do in the web version.
There’s even a Roomle Viewer VR app which allows you to view rooms with any VR viewer on iPhone.
Considering Roomle is completely free to use, it’s an amazingly accomplished floor planning app for Mac users.
You can see Roomle’s impressive 3D walk-through in action below:
7. OmniGraffle (Floor Planning – Desktop)
OmniGraffle is easily the best desktop diagramming software designed specifically for Mac and an excellent alternative to online floor plan software.
OmniGraffle is designed specifically for macOS (there’s no Windows version) so it naturally looks and works great on Macs.
OmniGraffle is extremely powerful and is a popular alternative to Visio on Mac although you’ll need to upgrade to the Pro version ($199) to get Visio import features and advanced diagramming tools.
However, the Standard version of OmniGraffle is more than enough to create floor plans.
OmniGraffle has a limited number of templates but the good thing is there is a mini-industry of user-generated OmniGraffle templates and stencils out there, many of which you can download for free.
Check out our review of OmniGraffle for Mac for more.
You can also watch how to create a floor plan in OmniGraffle below.
8. ConceptDraw Diagram (Floor Planning – Desktop)
Best Mac Network Tools
ConceptDraw Diagram (formerly ConceptDraw Pro) is a professional drawing tool which is suitable for creating complex diagrams of all types including floor plans and building designs.
ConceptDraw has a wide variety of templates for things such as office layouts, piping and instrumentation diagrams, heating and ventilation systems, air conditioning (HVAC) and emergency exit plans.
You can also just have a bit of fun with it such as map out the floor plan for the apartments in Friends but at $199, it’s an expensive tool to just indulge in a bit of doodling.
However, if you’re looking for an all purpose diagramming tool or an alternative to Visio for Mac users, it’s definitely worth taking a closer look.
You can check out our full review of ConceptDraw Diagram for more.
You can also try a free trial of ConceptDraw before buying.
9. SketchUp (Home Design – Online/Desktop)
SketchUp (formerly Google Sketchup) has evolved from a free online 2D design tool that was once owned by Google to a very powerful 2D and 3D modelling software that produces professional floor plans.
SketchUp might look familiar because it’s used by Chip and Joanna Gaines in the HGTV show Fixer Upper.
SketchUp was known as Google Sketchup until 2012 when Trimble Navigation bought it and turned it into a powerful, professional 3D architectural software.
The professional version of SketchUp is SketchUp Pro which is a professional tool costing $299 per year and there’s a more limited version SketchUp Shop which costs $119 per year.
However, there is also a basic free version for non commercial use called SketchUp Free which works online allows you to model in 3D for free with a generous 10GB of online storage.
There are also far fewer floor plan templates in the non Pro versions of Sketchup to get you going although it’s very easy to create them from scratch. One thing that Google SketchupPro really excels in is furniture and objects – there’s an enormous database of 3D models of just about any type of furniture or object – for chairs alone there are 35,000 choices.
SketchupPro isn’t cheap at $695 but it’s a very powerful professional floor planning and interior design tool. There are many SketchupPro video tutorials to help you get started and you can watch how to get started with Sketchup Pro below:
10. Ikea Home Planner (Home Design – Online)
It’s hardly surprising that furniture giant Ikea has gone into the world of floor planning software and Ikea Home Planner is Ikea’s way of helping you re imagine your home (and then buy its furniture of course).
Ikea Home Planner is actually a plugin for Chrome, Safari and Firefox that allows you to create floor plans in your browser.
Although it’s nowhere near as advanced as most of the other software featured here, it is completely free to use and fine for creating simple mock-up floor plans.
Ikea Home Planner allows you to place objects around a floor space to rearrange your home in 2D and 3D. The smart thing is you can “look” around the room at ground level in 3D mode to see exactly how your new home design would feel.
Of course, because it’s an Ikea product, you can get pricing for all of the objects so that you can order them in store or online where available.
Of course, you are limited to objects and furniture in the Ikea catalogue although as anyone that has been to an Ikea will know, that’s pretty extensive. It’s also limited to lounge and kitchen floor plans.
You can watch Ikea Home Planner for Mac in action below:
11. Sketch (Floor Planning – Desktop)
Sketch is a beautifully designed digital design application that’s mainly aimed at user interface and UX designers but it can also whip-up some pretty good floor plans.
Some of the companies that use Sketch for web design include Google, Apple and Facebook so that gives you an idea of how highly rated it is.
Although it’s not cheap at $99.00, it’s definitely worth a closer look if you’re a UI or UX designer or if you like your apps designed specifically for Mac.
Sketch is Mac only and features state-of-the-art boolean operations, multiple pages and boards and makes things quick and snappy when working on multiple projects with symbols and shared styles.
You can see how you can use Sketch to design floor plans when one Sketch user decided to redesign her apartment using it. She even created a useful free Sketch floor plan template to save you time creating your own.
There’s also a growing collection of free Sketch plugins created by the devoted Sketch community to enhance your floor plans. You can try a free trial of Sketch before deciding whether it’s the right floor planning software for you.
12. Sweet Home 3D (Home Design – Desktop/Online)
Finally there’s Sweet Home 3D Which seems to have been around forever on Mac.
Sweet Home 3D is a free interior design application for Mac which allows you to create 2D and 3D floor plans. Sweet Home 3D is unusual in that it has both a Mac desktop client and a web version.
However, unfortunately we can’t recommend using Sweet Home 3D anymore because both the web version and Mac desktop client use Java.
There are too many problems with Java on OS X, not least that it’s impossible to uninstall Java on Mac that it’s not worth the hassle anymore. Apple is gradually phasing out support for Java and so we don’t recommend going for a Java based solution like Sweet Home 3D when there are so many other options available.
You can see Sweet Home 3D in action below:
Mac Home Design & Floor Plan Software Checklist
There are a few things to be aware of when choosing home design software on Mac.
- Most of the best floor planners and interior design software for Mac is online and although some have already moved to HTML5, the majority still use Adobe Flash. It’s therefore recommended to use Google Chrome rather than browsers such as Firefox or Safari as it tends to perform better and be more stable with Flash based software. Although Firefox and Safari both work with Flash, they are more prone to block elements especially if your version of Adobe Flash needs updating. Chrome generally works better with Flash and is faster and more responsive when running Flash based applications such as floor planning software.
- Avoid Java based home design software on Mac. There are simply too many problems with Java on Mac, not least that its impossible to fully uninstall Java from Mac. Although there isn’t much floor planning software on either Mac or PC that still uses Java, Sweet Home 3D still does and is one of the most popular which we mention at the end of these reviews.
- Floor planning software doesn’t need to be expensive. The great thing is that some of the best software for creating blueprints on Mac is completely free to use. Homestyler and Roomle are perfect examples of professional 3D floor planning software for Mac which are professional interior design software for Mac which don’t cost a cent. Others like Live Home 3D are produce high quality results and are very reasonable priced at around $30 while most of the rest use a subscription based pricing model. Some like Floorplanner offer freemium versions which limit you to just one saved floor plan and then charge you for each additional floor plan you create. The days of needing expensive CAD software or dated apps like HGTV Home Design For Mac are gone.
- Although VR is still a fledgling technology when it comes to floor plans, it’s ideal for doing walk-throughs of 3D floor plan designs. So far however, only Roomle supports VR with a VR Viewer app for iPhone which works with any VR viewer. This is likely to change though as more floor planning apps embrace VR on Mac.
Conclusion
As we’ve seen, there’s some really excellent and free floor plan software for Mac out there both desktop and online.
If you want a floor plan or home design software with a Mac desktop client,Live Home 3D is slick, easy to use and makes interior design fun.
If you’re in a hurry and just want a 2D floor plan with nothing to download or install, you can’t do much better than SmartDraw for its huge number of floor plan templates, ease of use and slick interface.
For professional floor planners, we’d have to say Homestyler is the best as it’s made by the same makers of AutoCAD for Mac, is incredibly powerful yet is totally free to use.
Roomle is an excellent intermediate option and far more accessible for those starting out in floor design plus it has the best mobile apps for iPad and iPhone of any floor plan software out there.
Finally, Floorplanner is also really well done but it can be expensive as you have to subscribe to a monthly subscription fee and doesn’t offer any major advantages over the other floor planning software for Mac featured here.
If you have any comments, experiences or suggestions for other floor plan or interior design software on Mac, let us know in the comments below.
We have evaluated over 20 free HTML editors for Macintosh against over 40 different criteria relevant to professional web designers and developers. The following applications are the best free HTML editors for Macintosh, both WYSIWYG and text editors, rated from best to worst. Each editor listed will have a score, percentage, and a link to more information.
Best Value: Komodo Edit
What We Like
Lots of add-ons available.
Built-in FTP client.
Auto-complete and syntax checking features.
What We Don't Like
Slow to load.
Feels cluttered.
Difficult to install color schemes.
Komodo Edit is hands down the best free XML editor available. It includes a lot of great features for HTML and CSS development. Plus, if that isn't enough, you can get extensions for it to add on languages or other helpful features (like special characters).
Komodo Edit is not the best HTML editor out there, but it is great for the price, especially if you build in XML. I use Komodo Edit every day for my work in XML, and I use it a lot for basic HTML editing as well. This is one editor I'd be lost without.
There are two versions of Komodo: Komodo Edit and Komodo IDE.
Best for JavaScript Developers: Aptana Studio
What We Like
Integrated debugger.
Build-in Code Assist feature for tags.
Built-in terminal emulator.
What We Don't Like
No longer in development.
Minimal support for PHP.
Some dependencies.
Aptana Studio offers an interesting take on website development. Instead of focusing on HTML, Aptana focuses on the JavaScript and other elements that allow you to create rich internet applications.
One thing I really like is the outline view that makes it really easy to visualize the document object model (DOM). This makes for easier CSS and JavaScript development.
If you are a developer creating web applications, Aptana Studio is a good choice.
A Full Featured Java IDE: NetBeans
What We Like
Version 9.0 released by Apache after acquisition.
Supports the Jigsaw Module system.
Supports Java Shell, new in JDK 9.
What We Don't Like
Needs high-memory computer to run quickly.
Not many plug-ins.
Auto-completion is buggy.
NetBeans IDE is a Java IDE that can help you build robust web applications. Like most IDEs, it has a steep learning curve because they don’t often work in the same way that web editors do. But once you get used to it you’ll be hooked.
One nice feature is the version control included in the IDE which is really useful for people working in large development environments. If you write Java and web pages this is a great tool.
Best for LAMP Developers: Bluefish
What We Like
Auto-completion and auto-tag closing.
Powerful search and replace.
Quick to start and load files.
What We Don't Like
Not for novice programmers.
User interface looks intimidating.
Too many tabs and toolbars.
Bluefish is a full-featured web editor for Linux. There are also native executables for Windows and Macintosh. There is code-sensitive spell check, autocomplete of many different languages (HTML, PHP, CSS, etc.), snippets, project management, and auto-save.
It is primarily a code editor, not specifically a web editor. This means that it has a lot of flexibility for web developers writing in more than just HTML, but if you’re a designer by nature you might not like it as much.
A Powerful Multi-Language IDE: Eclipse
What We Like
Robust debugging and profiling profile.
Code-completion feature.
Fast deployment and implementation.
What We Don't Like
Slow when working with large files.
Not recommended for large businesses.
Steep learning curve for novice programmers.
Eclipse is a complex, Open Source development environment that is perfect for people who do a lot of coding on a variety of platforms and with different languages.
Eclipse is structured as plug-ins, so if you need to edit something just find the appropriate plug-in and go.
If you are creating complex web applications, Eclipse has a lot of features to help make your application easier to build. There are Java, JavaScript, and PHP plugins, as well as a plugin for mobile developers.
A Swiss Army Knife IDE from Mozilla: SeaMonkey
What We Like
Tabs for WISIWYG editing, HTML tags, HTML code, and browser views.
Suitable for building simple, basic websites.
What We Don't Like
Composer element no longer being maintained.
Generates HTML 4.01 Transitional code.
SeaMonkey is the Mozilla project all-in-one internet application suite. It includes a web browser, email and newsgroup client, IRC chat client, and Composer, the web page editor.
One of the nice things about using SeaMonkey is that the browser is built-in, so testing is a breeze. Plus it's a free WYSIWYG editor with an embedded FTP client to publish your web pages.
A Basic HTML Writer: Amaya
What We Like
Useful for up to HTML 4.01.
Supports SVG and MathML.
What We Don't Like
Last updated in 2012.
No longer in development.
Amaya is the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) web editor and web browser. It validates the HTML as you build your page and displays your Web documents in a tree structure, which is useful for learning to understand the DOM.
Amaya has a lot of features that most web designers won’t ever use, but if you want to be certain that your pages follow the W3C standards, this is a great editor to use.
Straightforward and Stable: BBEdit 12
Best Web Design Tools
What We Like
Supports HTML5.
Opens large files.
Great customer support.
Rock-solid software.
What We Don't Like
Advanced features require paid version after 30-day free trial.
Must search menus for features and options.
BBEdit is a paid program that has a set of free capabilities (the same capabilities that the now-defunct TextWranger had. While Bare Bones Software, the makers of BBEdit do offer a paid version, you may find the free version does everything you need. You can review a feature comparison here.
Note
Mac Tools For Sale
If you're using TextWrangler, it is not compatible with macOS 10.13 (High Sierra). However, the free (and paid) version of BBEdit is.