Kitchen Design Online | Kitchen Floor Plans and Layouts

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If imaginary kitchen floor plans are ever going to see the light of day, they have to get out of your head to where other people can see them onto paper, usually. There are several tools to help you do that, from good old paper and pencil, through cardboard cutouts you can place on an outline of your kitchen and move around and 3D kits to help you make models, to desktop and browser-based software. Here Im going to review mostly free kitchen design software, interactive kitchen design tools which help you create a virtual kitchen design on the computer which you can then print out and discuss with your team. You can also use them just for play to carry out a virtual kitchen remodel when you can do one yet in real life. After all, we can dream, right?

If youve already decided on a cabinet line, check the manufacturer or retailers website to see if they have a kitchen planner tool featuring your chosen cabinets.

• Free, browser-based
• Works only with Internet Explorer, not Foxfire or other browsers, and requires installation of an ActiveX tool.
• How it works: you choose a basic layout (galley, L etc), then choose from a range of pre-built plans for that layout. You can then customize the products (appliances, etc) used in your plan, but not the layout. The separate layout planner tool is used to create a plan for your own kitchen: I was not able to see a link between the two modes.
• Very product-oriented
• You can save your designs and product lists by creating a free account. You are supposed to be able to do this after creating a plan, but I had problems doing it this way round and recommend you create your account first. Signup requires a valid US address and zip code.
• Slow (even on high speed cable)
• Flaky refused to display my chosen base plan until Id viewed the tutorial, then every time I tried to save a plan, it told me the name was in use, no matter what I typed in.
• If you have a small kitchen, youll need to choose a larger size to begin minimum size in the Layout Planner is 10 x 10 then adjust the size downwards later on.
• Definitely not intuitive to use.

Paid tools can be browser-based or desktop software. Most have a free trial available so you can try before you buy.

3D Home Design Tool: Create custom kitchens, bathrooms, landscaping, etc. online  www.Plan3D.com

As well as kitchen design online, there are other paid tools which run on your own computer, including Chief Architect, SoftPlan and SmartDraw. A followup article will describe these tools.