10 Best Free Furniture Design Software of 2024

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If you’re on the fence about designing furniture for a client, or a prospect, this is your sign to take it up. Can interior designers design custom furniture using furniture design software? Yes, but it needs a few skill sets and tools to translate your vision to a comfortable, and iconic piece of furniture.

Of course, if your client has a small budget, then purchasing their woodwork from IKEA or locally distributed markets could be a viable option. However, if you really wish to impress potential VIP clients with your design ideas, then get in touch with some furniture designers to create intricate design plans with the utmost functionality. Or, you could design them yourselves.

Kelly Wearstler, a renowned Interior Designer, Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Kelly Wearstler has designed several custom, ravishing furniture pieces throughout her career, by collaborating with furniture companies and custom furniture makers to build her pieces. You can make it happen too.

It is best to create custom 3D design plans with the help of user-friendly interior design software. Each design can be crucially personalized to blend in with your concept, floor plan, and layout, and appeal to the client.

We have curated a list of furniture design software that you can use to determine the design process, use different materials, and implement a poly board. Let’s take a look at how using furniture design software, along with, or instead of hand-drawn sketches can help you in the design process.

How is Furniture Design Software Used in the Furniture Design Process?

Furniture design follows the same process as interior design, except that there are more iterations and prototyping than others. This is because furniture that your client sits on, and uses regularly has a direct impact on their health and comfort. Let’s go over each stage in the process, and see how you can optimize it with furniture design software.

Step 1: Define Requirements

Andrea Trujeque, a renowned Interior Designer based in Canada says, “When it comes to furniture design, start with user comfort. You achieve it by knowing what the client needs, and what dimensions you need to cover when designing furniture pieces.

If you want to design a chair, you want to make sure that you know what are the minimum dimensions, width of the chair, height, depth, and angle of the backrest (tilted or straight). Carve out these details right at the beginning.”

Meet with your client at least twice to get as many inspirational photos from them, help them articulate what they’re looking for in terms of aesthetics and practicality, and jot down important details to help you brainstorm. Understand what type of materials would work for such a piece, and which ones would suit the interior design style you’re planning to install.

Step 2: Do the Research

Apart from the Pinterest saves and social media posts your client gave, scour the internet, magazines, and books to get your creative juices flowing. Look up exquisite furniture pieces in history, and take inspiration from anywhere possible. Take screenshots of them, and save them in one place. Even if you like only a few aspects of a furniture piece (say, backrest, leg, handrail, upholstery pattern, etc), save them along with a small text on what you love about it, so you can use them in your conceptualization phase.

If you use furniture design software in this step, you can hop onto the material library, whip out a bunch of products (of different brands, historical furniture of different styles, etc), place them on a mood board, or the design itself, and show them different possibilities of furniture that you can produce for your client. You can do this in real time. If your furniture design software has AR/VR capabilities, you can simply scan the space and show them how the piece fits in your client’s space accurately.

Step 3: Brainstorm, Ideate and Sketch

This is a major phase in the furniture design process, and having furniture design software helps more than you’d believe. Sketching is good too, and that’s the option most designers like you prefer, given how it comes naturally to you. But, you can do the same with cloud-based software too. You can get concepts down quickly, capture ideas and not get too involved in the process and miss out on the brain dump.

Tyler Nock, Industrial Designer and Furniture Designer says, “ This is the phase where you generate numerous sketches, and tiny drawings with the profile view, side and view and different forms of the furniture you have in mind. Get all ideas down so you can incorporate the right ones into concepts you choose later on.”

You like to overdeliver to your clients to delight them, as with most designers, and so, you generate hundreds of sketches to see what works and what doesn’t. This is important in the brainstorming phase, but if you do them on paper, you’d have to again reiterate them on the software. If you design them on traditional legacy software, you’ll be stuck in the process and miss out on tapping into the creative process.

Andrea Trujeque, a renowned Interior Designer based in Canada says, “Designers heavily rely on software to create the furniture pieces that have been previously designed on paper, and this takes a long time to get done.”

This is where you use cloud-based intelligent furniture design software like Foyr, to make note of sketches as ideas flow, adapt, course correct, and use elements from other sketches if you need them.

Step 4: Plan the Furniture Design and Pick Out Materials

Choose the design and concept you want to end up with. Take the ideas you brainstormed, and incorporate them into your design. As you shortlist and get to the final design, you may want to look at the specifics of the design. This is a crucial phase where you identify the materials you need to bring your furniture to life. Use 3D visualization software here extensively, before you finalize anything, so you visualize every inch of the space, and furniture and ensure it’s the right fit.

Jared Geddes, Design Engineering Lead & YouTuber says, “This is where I think of what type of joinery I want to use, how corners are coming together, how to attach two surfaces together. This is when I also start sketching the final details.”

Once the design is carved out beautifully, figure out what materials you need. Make a shopping list, experiment with different colored wood, and finishes in the furniture design software, see what works well, and then modify your shopping list accordingly.

Step 5: Build Prototypes

Prototyping is especially important for furniture, and you need proof of concept before you invest your client’s precious budget in hardwood, upholstery, and other materials. Start with the structural pieces and work your way up from there. Talk to woodworkers and builders to see if they’ll be willing to make a rough prototype for you, or gather some tools, and cardboard, or laminate and try making prototypes yourself. Test the prototype for aesthetics, comfort, angles, and aesthetics. Record all observations you make.

Use best free furniture design software to create ready-to-build designs of furniture with impeccable accuracy and detailing, so nothing goes amiss, and contractors have functional furniture to work with.

Step 6: Improvise and Finalize the Design

As you progress, course correct, and test out your prototypes, you’ll notice changes you need to make, and record them. Make quick changes with intuitive furniture design software at your disposal, so the end product is perfect – functionally and aesthetically.

How Does Using Furniture Design Software Benefit You?

Helps you translate ideas onto paper quickly, you need to be able to sketch instantly and generate as many designs as possible using furniture design software.
Generate 3D orthographic drawings to give accurate, photorealistic images of the product and furnish enough information, detail, and description for someone to actually make the piece.
Choose materials suitable for every type of furniture, including wood, upholstery, metal, plastic, MDF, and laminate when designing a piece of practical, durable furniture. Experiment with different lighting, seasonal looks, materials, and finishes and see how the furniture bodes well in the space.
Make any complex designs simpler and get them done in a few minutes.
Ensures every design has engineering principles and a balanced load path, edge margin, and safety factors.
Helps shortlist materials for the furniture without wasting time or cost in shopping or experimenting.

How to Choose the Best Furniture Design Software?

Before you proceed to choose the best furniture design software for your specific needs as an interior designer, you need to contemplate your expertise on the matter. The process of designing furniture can be very exciting and stimulating.

However, a basic knowledge of woodworking, different materials that can be used, and design programs can be very helpful. Most of these design software programs feature tutorials that can teach you how to use these on Windows, Mac, iPhones, or Android devices.

The learning curve is determinately easy as most of the free software for furniture design is user-friendly with multiple templates to simplify your work. Not only can you experiment with different materials and forms of woodwork but can also get an idea about the pricing of your 3D furniture design.

Therefore, you must evaluate your needs before choosing your design software. Here’s how you can do that:

✅Identify your exact requirement of the type, style, and pattern of furniture.

✅Determine your budget for the software. Some software offers a free trial while some need you to pay right away. Some are even free furniture design software. Choose the one that suits your needs as well as offers the necessary templates and software tools for your design process.

✅ Next, you must look at pricing for training the employees, software upgrades, maintenance, etc. If you can allot a budget for training and upgrades then it’s a viable choice. However, it is preferable to choose a design software that is user-friendly, easy to learn and allows sharing of different file formats easily.

✅Your Operating system plays a massive role in how the design software will run on your devices. Therefore check the compatibility of the software with Windows, Mac, Apple, and Android.

Now that you know what to expect from your furniture design software, let us take a look at some of them.

Artem Kropovinsky, founder and principal designer at Arsight says, “Find software that combines reality texture with graphics. In addition, sketches help familiarize with plans and make a client imagine a working space better.”

Best Furniture Design Software for All

1. Foyr Neo

Our first and foremost choice is Foyr Neo. Whether you are an interior designer or a professional furniture designer, Foyr Neo is certainly the best design software available in the market.

The versatile software programs are great for designing homes as well as serve a veritable function as furniture design software.

✅Foyr Neo offers multiple unique modeling tools and services.

✅We have a wide range of templates that you can use for all your design needs.

✅ Foyr Neo offers cloud-based services, which means you can use this multipurpose, adaptable software without having to clog up space in your phone or your computer.

✅They have a very simple interface that is easy to learn and adapt to, within a limited time.

✅ If you are in doubt, you can always refer to their array of tutorials to help interior designers and furniture designers learn how to get the most out of the design software.

Rebecca, founder and principal designer of Makemyhousehome has been using Foyr Neo for a long time. She elucidates how Foyr helps her in creating designs, “Showing how different things will look like in your client’s space, how it’ll fit into their lives and in their home is important, and Foyr helps me do that.”

She also goes on to explain how Foyr Neo eases her business workflows as well, “Clients want me to deliver at least 4 different photos of each view. Most 3D modeling tools can only give me cartoonistic images, which clients won’t be satisfied with. With Foyr Neo, I can deliver images for each view and show a clear walkthrough video, which helps me move the sales cycle faster.”

2. SolidWorks

This is another furniture design software that helps you create unique CAD software models using different materials and templates.

✅ SolidWorks accommodates the prototyping of furniture and fixtures for all home furnishing needs.

✅ Be it to design something for your living room, home office, corporate office, or wherever else, you can bring your design ideas to life with 3D modeling and run simulations.

3. CAD Pro

CAD Pro is new-age design software that allows you to create and share your design ideas easily and instantly.

✅This furniture design software offers various templates along with a facility to scan and upload customized ones. Not only can you decorate the preset furniture designs, but you can upload a hand-drawn one and continue your design process digitally.

✅Aside from this, CAD Pro also allows you to share your designs via email. That means you can convert your furniture designs to different file formats and share them with clients or furniture designers instantly.

4. SketchList 3D

This furniture design software is a good addition for professional furniture designers for games and other such online forums as it offers an immense range to choose colors, grains, and patterns.

✅Since this software mostly aids in online design processes, you can easily share the workflow and furniture designs in a PDF format with Adobe 3D.

✅The Sketchlist 3D design software is more suited for designing game rooms but furniture designers can also utilize the software tools to generate photorealistic 3D models for home furniture as well.

5. PRO100

PRO100 is more of a software for professional furniture designers only. The software tools offered in the design programs allow for very intricate detailing.

✅You can add all manners of furnishing accessories such as drawers, shelves, handles, fittings, etc. as per your needs.

✅You can also upload your furniture designs to Virtual Reality facilitators, websites, mobile phones, and wherever else you want and view them more prominently.

However, if you are a homeowner or amateur designer, we do not recommend this design software as it may confuse and demotivate you.

6. Sketchup

If you want to create a 2D drawing or some 3D models of your furniture design, then Sketchup could be more your style.

✅It is a versatile software that allows users to design landscapes, interiors, as well as 3D furniture.

✅Sketchup is fairly easy to use for beginners and professional furniture designers. You can use the design tools to create photorealistic designs of your ideas of the woodwork and share them with clients and furniture designers.

✅You can also convert all your designs into a presentation board to add a professional flair to your ideas.

7. Master design art shop X-Lite

As the name suggests, the X-Lite is design software for professional furniture designers. The design tools available on the software programs can pose a bit of a challenge as there is a steep learning curve associated with the process. However, it makes it worthwhile when you can position the angles of the camera for a 360-degree view of your design ideas.

✅If you have experience and knowledge of the design process and a will for woodworking, then you can use this furniture design software with ease.

Now you have a list of the best furniture design software to choose one that suits your requirements perfectly.

8. Sweet Home 3D

If you are an interior designer with basic knowledge, then the Sweet Home 3D design software may be more to your liking.

✅It does not really have a broad range of features or design tools, but it is good for free, beginner-level work.

✅The furniture design tools on the free version of the software may not be as you expect but it does make a good addition if you need to design the interior for your home or corporate space.

✅There are multiple templates in the library from which you can choose your desired options and work on the floor plan and design process.

9. Wood Designer

A simple and straightforward woodworking software is Wood design.

✅It allows you to create furniture as well as stairways as per your liking.

✅There is a free version available for this furniture design software that you can use to create a one-off home design, but if you wish to further your designing career, then this software tool may not be for you.

10. SmartDraw

If you are looking for simple and easy design software, then SmartDraw will fit the bill. It is not exactly a free furniture design software, but if you are on the fence about it, you can always test-drive with the free trial to see if this design software suits your needs.

✅ It allows you to create various interior and furniture designs using the many templates that are available under the software programs.

✅You can definitely create some unique designs with it.

Design Aesthetic Furniture Arrangements with Foyr Neo

There you have it. A viable list of the best furniture software tools available in the market that can help you bring your design ideas to life.

If you ask for our personal opinion, we would suggest you choose Foyr Neo and run with it, because it can do just about everything and it is compatible with almost all operating systems. The spectacular cloud technology adds to its appeal as well.

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Nichole Samuel

Interior Designer

Blog Reviewed By

Goddess Interiors LLC

goddessinteriorss@gmail.com