I find myself at a dead-end whenever I try to figure out what I want to do with my new kitchen. I mean, I have a general feeling and idea of what I want: industrial, heavy duty and still cosy but for the life of me, I’m not able to find any remotely close inspirational pictures on Google images. I guess it’s not easy…how the heck do you combine industrial and “still cosy” together aye? I know -_-
So I searched around the Internet for a software that allows me to design a kitchen without needing to know any 3D rendering skill. The most popular one seems to be the one from Ikea, but I found the kitchen planning tool limited and the 3D render not so impressive. I’ve also tried Google SketchUp before. Well, it’s not for the fainthearted as you’d end up with a gigantic fridge and a oven fit for the use of an ant. Crazy ratios -_-
After searching around more, I landed on a website called Free Kitchen Design Software. To be honest, I was very skeptical because of how the website looks like. It’s dated and looks more like a spam site then a genuine website. The URL alone screams spam central. I don’t know what possessed me but I thought I’d give it a try and I’m glad I did.
What I found far exceeded my expectations!!!
#1 – You can customise the size of your space, number of windows, doors and their positions.
#2 – Then you can drag all the wall cabinets, floor cabinets, appliances and other things onto the 2D plan of your kitchen.
#3 – You can also customise the colours of almost everything including cabinet handles, floor finishes, wall finish, cabinet material, worktop material etc. It’s awesomesauce to the max!
#4 – You can only drag the objects onto the 2D plan but you can view the results in 3D. This is my favourite part of the software :)
Think the colours are a bit depressing eh? No problem! Just click the Design button and fix it there.
#5 – Wooden cabinets for a fresher look. You can also rotate the 3D render to view it from a different perspective.
You see what I mean by how versatile this software is? It is also very stable, unlike the Ikea kitchen planning tool which have a tendency to hang on my computer. That said, there are still several things that I feel are lacking on it, primarily the objects. I want wall cabinets that suspend from ceilings as well as aluminum shelves, which they don’t have. I don’t like the gap between ceiling and cabinets cause it’s gateway to dusty-ville.
So, while I can kind of visualise more accurately how my kitchen will look like with this application, it’s still not 100%. I’m leaving that to a good friend who is a kitchen designer. Happy kitchen planning!