​Some Top Digital Tools for Interior Design and Layout

A new apartment or single-family home offers you a clean slate in terms of layout and interior design. However, it's oftentimes difficult to imagine how your possessions will fit in a new space. The many stresses of the move are more than enough to worry about, so why not use some nifty digital tools to streamline the organizational process of your new space? Which tools will help you? Here are the top tools for home design and layout.

Learning the Basics

If you've never used Evernote, download it now on your mobile device. This free app lets you organize notes, pictures, and voice recordings. Plus, you can make lists and keep track of your inspirational concepts for your new home. Most handy of all, however, is the search option that lets you search your notes––even the handwritten ones––for the bit of information you need when you need it most.

Another great app for inspiration is Houzz, which allows you to browse designer homes and save pictures to your account for later reference. Much like Pinterest, Houzz is more geared toward the high-designed inclined people.

Putting in the Hard Work

Once you've settled on a space, work your magic on matching styles, colors, and more in your new pad. When you're out and about, how can you tell if a piece of art has the correct shade of gray to complement your walls or horizontal lines that complement your aesthetic?

Color Capture, by Benjamin Moore, lets you snap a picture of any color while you're at a store or simply on the street. The app then matches the color with a paint shade. This is perfect for those always looking to complement their space and have a color scheme in mind.

There's no use in analog levels anymore, as your smartphone can act as one for you. iHandy Level, Chairish, and 1stDibs, are just some of the most basic apps for home design, but it's also one of the most important––after all, nothing sets the vibe of your home off more than crooked pictures.

Conceptualizing Your Plan

If you have a difficult time conceptualizing a new space, you may need a 3-D home design app. These are best used on a top-of-the-line tablet like the iPad 10th generation. This retina display tablet gives you the screen space and capacity for intricate home design while on the go or even in the space you are considering. Some apps even let you design a wholly new space from scratch.

With Home Design 3-D, you can design a floor plan in 2-D and then create a fully rendered 3-D model. Change the thickness of walls, add specific styled corners and add windows and doors with ease. Another great app is MagicPlan. This app is more suited for those who already have a space but plan to remodel or redecorate, as it measures rooms, draws floor plans and estimates space all from a picture you take. This app also lets you add digital markers to the picture, annotate ideas, and then export the image.

Meanwhile, Room Planner Home Design is an app similar to Home Design 3-D, with one major twist: You can enable Bluetooth laser devices to input exact measurements. You can also make top-down models and export them to the Chief Architect desktop software, the mothership of this app.