Where Oh Where is the Free Kitchen Design Software?

It's tough to find kitchen design software for homeowners and DIY'ers. Here's what you find instead:

• Incredibly expensive professional-grade software for kitchen designers.
• Generalized 3D CAD (computer assisted design) software that allows you to design anything.
• Off the shelf "home design" software for consumers that has kitchen design components.

In our article, we pretty much ignore the first category. We barely skate over the second category, and the only reason we do cover it is because it's free (Google SketchUp). And the third category is the one that we really cover, because it's most relevant to our needs.

One criticism of all kitchen design software (except the really high-end stuff) is that textures are limited. Or, if texture importation is allowed, it doesn't look right: it looks like it doesn't really belong in the space. Essentially, you're pushing around the basic building blocks of a kitchen--fridge, counters, kitchen islands, flooring, lights--but not dealing with the close details.

Image Copyright/Courtesy Encore