Chief Architect Home Designer Suite 2025 review

There are many reasons why you’d want to explore architectural software. The most obvious one, is because you’re a builder and need software to plan your next project.

But in my experience, even some of the best architecture software is aimed at the more casual designer. The ones who have fun visualising their existing home, with new furniture, or perhaps planning with a new extension.

Although Home Designer Suite can easily deal with the latter, despite being the cheapest in Chief Architect’s range, it’s clearly more aimed for the former, and best of all, it’s available for both Mac and Windows. How does it compare to the best interior design software (and even the best landscaping software)? I tested out the latest version to find out.

Chief Architect Home Designer Suite 2025: Pricing and plans

• Compared to its most expensive alternatives, the Home Designer Suite is affordable software, and the tools it offers are quite extensive, but if you're still unsure, download the trial version

Home Designer comes in three flavours, Suite, Architectural and Pro. The prices for the two higher end models can feel pretty steep, with Architectural clocking in at $249, while Pro is almost eye watering at $595 (although that one also has a rental option for $59 a month).

By contrast, at $129, Suite feels much more affordable. But don't be lured into thinking a cheaper versions means fewer available tools: the standard set which is available across the range, is quite extensive, and includes features such as smart cabinets (objects know where they are in relation to the walls and to each other, and automatically face the right way as you add them), and the automation of building walls, roofs, stairs, floors, and even external landscaping, including customised elevation and vegetation. Various 3D views and CAD tools are also part and parcel of even the cheapest version.

If you’re looking for more custom options, such as specific wall types, custom backsplashes and countertops, and features such as curved decks, then Architectural will be better suited to you, and if you need printable construction document layout sheets, a master list material, pricing management tool, and advanced customisation, then Pro would be the only way to go. But if your needs are more, shall we say, modest, you’ll find Suite to be incredibly capable. Even better, Chief Architect has a free trial of Suite, which you can get by handing over your email address.

• Score: 4/5

Chief Architect Home Designer Suite 2025: Interface

• The designers have managed to cram all the tools you’d need in a small interface. It can make it a bit daunting at first, but once you get used to it, you’ll be flying - or rather, building…

Looking at the latest version of Home Designer Suite, you’ll be hard pressed to notice what's different this time. As before, your screen is divided into multiple sections, the largest part of which is dedicated to your design, with all the tools you need crammed in a sidebar to the left, rows of icons at the top, and a library on the right. It’s not an unfair assessment to state that if you’re new to design software, you could easily feel intimidated, but not only will you be able to find your way around pretty quickly, Chief Architect also offers a series of tutorial videos to help you hit the ground running.

Home Designer was made to hide the complexities of what you’re building, helping you focus on the fun part: creating. Walls are created by clicking and dragging, or by clicking on an existing wall’s dimensions to fine tune its length, or by dragging said wall to another position. If you add another wall close to an existing one, Home Designer is clever enough to seamlessly join them together. The beauty here, aside from the nearly effortless design process, is that a list of all the needed materials, although mostly hidden from you, is available to let you know how much to order, be it bricks, insulation, felt, timber, etc.

Not only that, once you've completed the walls for your house, the software automatically adds a basic roof, framing and foundations for you. If this feels like too much hand-holding, rest assured you remain fully in control over the entire design process: click on an item to select it, and drag its edges to resize it, or double-click on it to open a new window containing the chosen object’s changeable parameters, which you're obviously free to alter.

• Score: 4/5

Chief Architect Home Designer Suite 2025: Tools

• You have a vast array of tools and views to work with, which allow you to design an entire house, both inside and out, with surprising ease

By default, you’re working in a top-down view, just as if you were designing blueprints, although whichever view you choose, even a 3D one, you’ll still be able to work on your design, and add and amend any object you bring to it. You’re also able to label parts of your creation, making it easy to see where everything will go, and what everything is supposed to be.

Additional views include ‘Doll House’, which removes the roof and lets you get a bird’s eye view of each floor. ‘Perspective’ includes the roof along with any outdoor landscaping you’ve created. ‘Glass House’ is perhaps the oddest one: everything, and we do mean everything, is now made of glass and is therefore see through.

Now fun though it is to add walls, windows and doors, choose their materials, height, thickness, etc, if you really want to bring your design to life, you need furniture, and rest assured: on that front, Chief Architect has you covered. They have a massive library of every conceivable piece of furniture. Not all of them are available by default, but you can easily download the ones you’re looking for as and when you need then (you’ll need to set up an account, but this, along with many objects you’re able to download, is also free). Additionally, a visit to the site's gallery will also reveal a slew of extra items you can download. Every item you add is fully customisable.

One such customisation is being able to choose the material an object is made of. You get to do this with the ‘Material Painter’ tool (cheekily represented by a spray paint icon). Such decoration can be applied to absolutely anything: tea pots, pianos, windows, walls, you name it. Home Designer doesn't care: you want a wall made out of grass and bluebells? Spray away.

And speaking of grass and bluebells, designing a house from scratch and furnishing it to your liking is already pretty impressive, but Home Designer also lets you go beyond, and create the surrounding gardens. You can alter the elevation, add paths, and plants - although we did notice that unlike many of the indoor furniture we experimented with, it seems most plants come at a cost.

• Score: 4.5/5

Chief Architect Home Designer Suite 2025 : What’s New

• Aside from the Undo History panel, which is useful for any project, none of the new features are truly must-have additions, but they do add welcomed improvements to an already impressive application

All of these tools have been available for a few years now, and although version 2025 isn’t radical in terms of new features, it does bring some interesting features to the table. Some of which affect the software system-wide, such as gaining access to the 'Undo Action History’, which is very similar to how Photoshop does it, and makes it easy to go through multiple undo's in a single step.

Other improvements include being able to choose a thumbnail for a plan file, or select how often files are archived. When it comes to designing, you have more automation when building a deck for instance, corner shelves are now a thing, as are electrical connections for fixtures. It’s not earth shattering, but every tweak, every improvement, adds to an already highly impressive application.

Should I buy Chief Architect Home Designer Suite 2025?

Buy it if...

You need to design a building, need to be as meticulous as you can, as well as being able to decorate your project as you see fit with a plethora of objects to furnish your virtual home.

Don't buy it if...

You just want to play around, in a SIMS-like way, and don’t really need all the professional tools that come as standard with this software.