Raymour & Flanigan Room Planner
The
Raymour & Flanigan Room Planner lets you draw up a floor plan using furniture from Raymour & Flanigan—a Northeast chain of stores with a selection so extensive you’ll probably have no trouble finding templates that match what you’re looking for. This program was easy to use and produced good results.
La-Z-Boy Room Planner
The
La-Z-Boy Room Planner uses the same system as Raymour & Flanigan, except with La-Z-Boy furniture templates. Once again, it was simple to use and the results were good.
Lane Furniture's Design-A-Room
Like the last few programs, Lane Furniture's
Design-A-Room is fun and easy to use. You even get to choose whether you want to use generic furniture icons or full-color images of Lane furniture.
Better Homes and Gardens’ Arrange-a-Room
Better Homes and Gardens’ Arrange-a-Room was easy to use, and the furniture templates are a little more detailed than the ones used by Raymour & Flanigan and La-Z-Boy—the furniture actually has color and finish to it. The system allows you to save up to 25 rooms, so you can rearrange pieces to your heart’s delight, then decide which layout you like best.
Furniture.com's Room Planner
I thought that Furniture.com's
Room Planner had a slightly longer learning curve than comparable programs, but it
does let you manipulate furniture pretty precisely--as long as you have a steady hand and a bit of patience. If not, you're better off with Raymour & Flanigan, La-Z-Boy or Better Homes and Gardens.
Pure Contemporary's Room Planner
You have to register before you can use Pure Contemporary's
Room Planner, but once you do you'll have access to a system that's adequate, but not as flexible or intuitive as some of the others. For instance, this system doesn't let you put a rug
under other furnishings, and furniture pieces are arranged in categories that don't always make sense. (For instance, coffee table templates are filed under "accessories.")
Century 21 Home Planner
Even after using half-a-dozen other programs, it took me a while to figure out how to work Century 21's
Home Planner. This was one of the more clunky systems: the floor plan is scaled too small and the furniture selection is limited and awkwardly labeled, making it hard to determine what an icon represents until it's already in your room. I
did like the little chart giving the total wall and ceiling area for the room--that would make it easier to calculate how much paint, wallpaper or carpet you need.
