Why I buy this one ?
- All-in-one design solution based on the top-rated Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer; for interior, exterior and landscape design projects
- Choose from over 1,500 sample floor plans; design and visualize with 3D Models and Virtual Tours
- Features powerful building tools like automatic roof generation, dormers, stairs, framing, foundations, and Plan Check; import photos for realistic background views
- Deck Designer lets you design single or multi-level decks; deck foundations automatically generate to match sloped lots
- Choose from over 1,200 plants with the Plant Chooser; use Sprinkler Designer to lay out sprinkler zones quickly and easily

K & L Halliburton offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $115.00 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

What our customer's say!

"Very Pleased", I think this product is great! I don't know any "technical" lingo when it comes to architecture so I was a true novice. I could still navigate the program and, thanks to the tutorials, I managed to find my way around the program and learned how to use the tools. I was interested in a remodel to our current house and had no idea of what I wanted for sure and how it would work and look with our current house plan. This program enabled me to do this work on my own without hiring it done and I was able to make decisions and change that decision and then change that decision again! I do wish it had a few more options that I was looking for, and maybe it does and I haven't stumbled across them yet. It does the job -- it gives me the basic house plan to take to the contractor and they can give it the fine tuning it needs.

"great programs and any any one can use and design his own house in plans ", its easy program i am happy in the first time i like to decorate and renew my house by design it and decorate and built another 2 floors i can see by trying and drwong in 3d thats is easy and any any body can use this program you can make a plans and can build your own house from exterir and enterior desighn and biuld its great and its include all the furnutures and beds and kitchen products to complete the house its very very nice to see how is you house will be befor you do it thanks for this program

"A very helpful program for remodelers", I purchased Home Designer Deluxe to help remodel my home. My wife and I are doing a major kitchen remodel and are considering moving some interior walls and bumping out an exterior wall. In addition to exploring different floor plans, we wanted to try different furniture arrangements for the living and dining rooms. Rather than hiring an architect up front, we figured we could explore many options on our own and minimize the architect's time. Home Designer Deluxe enabled us to do all of this. It is an excellent product for the price. It has a low learning curve and allows creation and modification of floor plans very quickly. But its biggest benefit was the ability to get a three dimensional view of walking through the house. The camera views give one a sense of proportion and mass, of openness and closeness. In the kitchen we tried different cabinet layouts and appliance locations and found some of the ideas we thought would be great looked terrible; and vice versa. I feel Home Designer has been instrumental in evaluation of a wide variety of remodel ideas and has given us a much better idea of what we want; and what we don't want.

With any program there are limitations, most of which I could get around and most of which are included in the Home Designer Professional version. For example, I could not change the thickness of the walls so I found either the size of the interior rooms would be off by a couple inches or the overall dimensions of the house would be off. I opted to make the rooms their exact size so I would have their exact interior dimensions for the architect and let the overall length and width of the house be a bit off. I was not able to draw our angled walls in something other that 7.5 degree increments. But this was not a part of the house I was changing so it didn't matter. I was not able to create an angled staircase. Home Designer has some CAD tools but it is not a CAD program. When trying to so a site plan I found the dimension tools would attach to the roof lines rather than the ground level sidewalks I was trying to dimension. I also found dimension lines could not be attached to an arbitrary point on an object, the program always wanted to determine where to end the dimension line. So I drew my site plan with other tools.

There is one major item that would be very helpful to include in this version of Home Designer Deluxe. The inability to change multiple similar items at the same time was very frustrating. I wanted to be able to change all the kitchen cabinets along one wall to add 4 inches to their depth, and I wanted to change their materials. I had to change every cabinet individually which was a lot of work given how many parts of each cabinet I had to change, multiplied by the number of upper and lower cabinets. It became very time consuming to evaluate more than a few different cabinet ideas. The ability to change multiple objects at one time would add a lot to this version of the program.

Overall, it's a very helpful program.


"Good Program for Initial Layout", I have owned this product for about two weeks, so this is a very preliminary "first look" type review. Background.. I am an aerospace engineer (not an architect) but have some experience with simple generic drawing programs (eg, Visio), and am very computer savvy. The reason for this purchase is my wife and I are buying an abandoned 10 acre farm (with a very rough, 1880s style farmhouse) and I wanted to sketch out possible floor plans for renovation and additions to the house.

Why this program? I struggled over this and really the only other option, Punch Home Design Arch Series 18 in this price range. Reviews from various sources had these two about equal. I chose the BHG/Chief Architect app simply from the website information available. While the BHG site listed all of their various home design program applications and a detailed feature list with checkmarks, I never did find the same level of information on the Punch website - it was more glittzy than informative. So I went with BHG.

OK first off, I am the type that DOES read the instruction manual :). So the first thing I did was read through the book. It wasnt that bad, maybe an hour or so to get the "jist" of how the program worked.

It installed flawlessly. My system: 2.4MHz Intel, 4GB RAM, 40GB HD, Win XP. I did not bother with the tutorials - never opened the CD case that held them. The program immediately (upon online registration) identified that a patch was available, and this also downloaded and installed without a hitch.

Since I had read the instruction manual, and also was familiar with how toolbars worked, I had no real difficulty in sketching out the outside walls of the house (I had previously taken actual dimensions of the old house). To me, it seems very intuitive. You click, drag and it appears. Interior walls are easy to create and they snap to the closest outside or inside wall. Click on a wall and drag it one way or the other and watch the inside dimension arrow until you get it where you want it.

I have spent about 16 hours with the program so far. The areas where I actually had to access the online help or go back to the manual were dealing with stairwells (they automatically generate but its a bit tricky to get them to "open" to the floor below), and the automatic roof generation (which works adequately, but not a lot of freedom to modify, but that may be a good thing). File size may be an issue. I have saved several different configurations of the overall plan, and each seems to take up about 3-5MB of hard disk space. Delete that old Sims game and all of its expansion packs before you fire this puppy up!

The 3D views are cool, but they do take a while to redraw. My simple plan already has over 50,000 surfaces, that need to be redrawn with each view. Watch out for rooms that do not start their elevation on the same "baseline" or have the same room height. This was a pain to deal with non-standard 9-foot ceilings, and changing the foundation height after the entire plan was constructed was a bad idea on my part.

Overall, I am very pleased with how this has turned out. The files generated will transfer to other more robust architectural programs. Our plan is to give this to our architect electronically so that she can "fix" the problems in my design. Four stars because I'm sure there are better, more expensive programs, but this is just the right level of complexity for me that balances with the capability I need.

"designing a home", Home Designer is a great tool for preparing to build a home. The hard copy manual has a lot to be desired. Also this program should have a laminated quick chart for the symbols on the design page.
There are a lot of things that the program takes for granted that you should know. I guess if you would have started with one of BH&G cheaper versions there may have been a better learning curve that would carry over to the deluxe.

It's like taking Chemistry 2 without taking Chemistry 1. Hope that makes sense.

Overall....very happy I purchased this software...
Dan Manley
Commercial Photographer
Plano, Texas

Read this reviews before You buy...

"cosmetic improvements only", I have used the much older version of this product '3D Home Architect Deluxe' for several years. I am in the midst of a complete remodel of my home, and wanted more capabilities. After reading the description for BH&G Home Designer Deluxe, I thought I would give it a try, as there were several limitations to my version that I wanted to get fixed. I have been very disappointed in this new version. While the user interface is much improved and the 3D objects are much more realistic looking, basic functionality has not improved much in my opinion. The stairway tool still needs much work, printing is cumbersome, and some very simple capabilities are only available in the PRO version. For example, changing the size of your floor joists is not possible in this version, which seems like a very minor thing to add. That's pretty significant when trying to plan stairs and riser/tread sizes. Dimensioning is confusing. The tool, in trying to do things automatically, won't let you draw things the way they currently exist. Some capabilities have actually been lost in moving to this new version. Concrete piers for foundations for example. You can draw them, but the dimensioning tool will not recognize them.

I know pickin's are slim for affordable tools, and this tool does give you the basics and is useful especially if you have never used a program like this before. However, if you have used similar tools in the past, I don't see much to gain other than glitz.

Most of the online help and tips are directed to the PRO version, and the solutions offered do not apply to this Deluxe version.

I have been tempted to move up to the PRO version, but have low confidence that it will provide the features and fixes I am looking for.

"good product", I have used other product of this kind and have never used any easier one. The video tutorials are the greatest help of all. The home plans they already have in the program are lacking but you can change them to what you want, but that is not the easiest task. I would recommend this product to anyone wanting to make their dreams come true!

"Very workable for floorplans, but has annoying limitations", I bought BHG Deluxe 7.0 software to plan an addition. I talked to the companies and shopped around before purchasing. I did not talk to IMSI about floor plan 3D, I gave up after trying to get through to a human. I would bet a guess the software is as good as IMSI's telephone skills. I talked to Punch Software and was warned away from their product by their own tech as I have integrated video on my computer. Apparently you need a video card with a minimum of video memory to render drawings with any usable speed using punch software. Punch Software's loss, not mine as that's a ridiculous issue for a consumer software product. Chief Architect offered a money back guarantee for their Better Homes and Gardens products, even if purchased via vendors like amazon. I'll keep this better homes and gardens home designer deluxe software, even though it does have it's annoying quirks. Even for a lesser package from the pro version, the library of items it very limited. I would guess there are quite a few more in the pro version, but it is odd to not include more of the most standard items that many home owners would need when laying out a home. You learn to just use a nearly matched symbol to fill the space, even though it is not the correct symbol or size of item. Since I am not interested in the 3D view, this is not a big issue for me. The item I needed most was floorplanning. 3D modeling is an extra item that I may play with, but is not essential for me personally. If you are truly interested in the 3D aspect, this is an issue. I would recommend visiting the product forum to see what is the best choice. [...] For quick and easy floor plan software with a few extras, this software does better than OK. No experience necessary, and the short tutorial videos will get you started quickly. I have issues with not being able to have more control of wall types, and there are some odd roof design limitations even for a mid to low priced consumer package. These are annoying enough to urge an upgrade to pro if you want more control of all aspects. Since I will be laying out the floor plan, then turning it over to an architect with real softare, it's not a problem for me. I have had a few restarts due to drawings getting all wild and messed up, but by ignoring the autosaved drawings, I was able to go back to my last manually saved drawing and start from a known good point. This software does have upgrade options to download from the company site. Just like any good software company, they do provide spftware patches to download. I would definately recommend this software as a quick way to do floor plans. Adding walls, doors, windows, and other items is very simple. Just don't plan on perfection, as it's based on prefabbed walls and is limited to whole inches, not fractions. Angles are an issue as well. If you need specific angles, this is not the package, it does preset increments only. I wish it had default preferences a user could select as well. Being able to preset your roofing style preferences or other items would eliminate quite a bit of redo's. I hope the software companies read these reviews. There is alot of good information on how to improve the products.

"takes time to learn", Really neat program and it may be a tad over my head right now. The tutorial is helping a great deal. I am positive that I will find all the right buttons.

"must patiently do the tutorial", We tried to just dive in and do our dream house, but it takes a little more time to get into it. But, once you do the tutorial, you can do almost anything. I bought the product so we could see what our dream home would take. We are almost too amateur for it. We probably didn't need to spend this much to be pleased, but it's worked great for us.