IKEA's planning tools — the IKEA Home Planner, the Kitchen Planner, and the PAX wardrobe planner — are genuinely useful if you're furnishing with IKEA. They let you drop real IKEA products into a room, see them in 3D, and generate a shopping list you can take to the checkout. But they come with two catches. First, they only show IKEA's catalogue, so they're a shopping tool as much as a planning tool — you can't lay out furniture you already own or products from another shop. Second, the browser versions can be heavy: slow to load, occasionally clunky, and some steps nudge you toward an account.
If what you actually want is to plan a room to scale — regardless of where the furniture comes from — a general room planner is often a better fit. Here are six free alternatives to the IKEA Room Planner, starting with the lightest.
1. Free Room Planner
Free Room Planner is a browser-based room planner built around one idea: open it and start drawing, with no friction. There's no sign-up, no download, and no account wall — you land in the tool and begin. You draw your room to exact measurements, so everything stays properly to scale, then add walls, doors, windows, and furniture. Because it isn't tied to any shop's catalogue, you can plan around furniture you already own or anything you're considering buying, from anywhere. There are focused modes for specific spaces too — jump straight into the kitchen planner for a cabinet run, or the closet planner for wardrobe and storage layouts. It's the most direct swap if the IKEA planner felt slow or too locked-in. Open it here and you're drawing in seconds.
2. IKEA Room Planner
Worth keeping on the list, because for one job it's still the best tool: buying IKEA. If you're kitting out a kitchen or a PAX wardrobe entirely from IKEA, planning inside IKEA's own tool means every item is a real product with a real price, and the plan converts straight into an order. The trade-offs are the ones already mentioned — you're limited to IKEA's range, the interface can be demanding on older machines, and it's built to sell rather than to plan neutrally. Use it once you've decided IKEA is the answer, not while you're still weighing options.
3. Planner 5D
Planner 5D is a polished freemium tool with attractive 2D and 3D views and a large furniture library. It's a step up in visual richness from the IKEA planner and works across web and apps. The honest caveat: a lot of the nicer items and higher-quality renders sit behind a paywall or a subscription, and you'll generally need an account to save your work. Good if you want realistic-looking visuals and don't mind the upsells; less ideal if you just want a quick, free layout.
4. SmartDraw
SmartDraw comes at this from the diagramming world rather than interior design. It has solid floor-plan templates and precise drawing tools, which makes it a strong pick if you care more about an accurate technical plan than a styled 3D render. It's more of a general-purpose diagram app, so the furniture side is functional rather than lifelike, and it's really a paid product — the free access is limited and time-boxed. Best suited to someone who wants a clean, measured floor plan over a showroom visualisation.
5. HomeByMe
HomeByMe leans hard into 3D. You can build a room, furnish it, and produce genuinely realistic renders, which is satisfying if you want to see the finished space rather than just plan it. The cost is complexity and time: there's a learning curve, an account is required, free renders and projects are capped, and it can feel heavy — much like the thing you may be trying to move away from. A good option when the visual payoff matters more than speed.
6. RoomSketcher
RoomSketcher produces clean, professional-looking floor plans and 3D views, and it's popular with people who want a tidy plan to share. The free tier lets you try it, but the useful outputs — high-resolution plans, exports, and some features — are gated behind paid plans, and free exports can carry limits. Choose it if a presentable, shareable floor plan is the goal and you're willing to pay for the polished export.
Quick pick: which should you use?
- You want to start now, free, with no account: Free Room Planner. It's the closest thing to the IKEA planner's convenience without the catalogue lock-in or the weight.
- You're buying an IKEA kitchen or PAX wardrobe: stick with the IKEA Room Planner for that one purchase.
- You want photorealistic 3D and don't mind the effort: HomeByMe or Planner 5D.
- You want a precise, technical floor plan: SmartDraw, or Free Room Planner if you'd rather keep it free.
- You want a polished plan to present and will pay for it: RoomSketcher.
For most people just trying to lay out a room, the honest answer is to skip the catalogue-locked tools and start with a free, to-scale room planner — draw the space, drop in the furniture, and only reach for a shop's own planner once you've decided what to buy.