HGTV Home & Landscape Platinum Suite – Interior Design

Ok, I’ve finally got the interior HGTV software feature review ready for you – it took a while, because the interior stuff was tricky for me to figure out.

First of all, in case you missed it, we’ve been looking at this cool HGTV Home & Landscape Platinum Suite software. Besides a basic look, I also showed you how you can design your own home. The house I designed was ok, but you can do a lot better if you’ve got the time. I wanted to share two of the HGTV sample home creations with you, to give you an idea of how extreme you can get design wise.

One sample home:

And this cool mountain home below, which I’ll be using to show off some interior features.

About the interior design features:
I thought the interior design features were a little tricky. However, I was being a smarty (or trying to) and launched into the program before reading over the directions. I like to learn software on my own. That said, I should have read the booklet section on interiors, because the process would have been quicker.

In any case, once you get going on the interior features, it’s pretty fun. You can change anything – floors, wallpaper, curtains, lighting, fixtures, and furniture. Below are some blank slate interior shots of the mountain home, to give you an idea of what the interior looks like, although, you can also view and decorate in 2D as well, not just 3D.

Living room:

Kitchen:

Loft area:

Something cool about the interior views is the hover feature. As you hover your mouse over the floors and walls, it tells you the materials used – like hardwood maple, 2×4 log frame walls, and so on. I took a stab at bedroom decor. Below is the empty bedroom before I started playing around.

Don’t forget, you can change interior views by turning the camera or using a walk-through feature as well. First of all if you don’t read the instruction manual, stuff like this happens…

Yup, I accidentally deleted the entire bedroom. That’s a punk rock decor choice for sure, but not all that realistic. Once I got the bedroom back, I decided to add lighting and a bed. This process was where I got stuck. There are plenty of furniture and lighting choices, and finding something I liked was a non-issue. However, placing the pieces correctly was a little iffy. The rotate feature is touchy, but after a bit, I got it working like I wanted it to. Basically, what I’m saying is that you’ll be able to use this software just fine, but it takes a little practice.

Here’s a bed and some lighting added:

Now, if I had the time, I could have made this super custom. You can go in and change everything, sheets, colors, wood grain on the bed, even how many pillow you want. This is just one bed choice too – there are all types available.

As for the lighting; this was my favorite interior feature hands down. I don’t know how easy it is to tell from the image above, but the lighting actually lights up the space. I must have played with the lighting for an hour. You can place a floor lamp in a corner, and it shows where in the room the light will fall. I messed around with track lighting, hanging lights, and more. It was very cool. Lighting a home is so tricky; you want lights to be properly placed for your home activities, and this software helps you make smart choices.

I could have done oodles more, but I don’t currently have all day to play with software (I wish). The other major interior feature is that you can upload your own images and then redesign them, as shown below:

This is a really nice feature for remodeling and simple to extreme decor projects – you don’t have to be building a house to need this software.

In the next post the round up of all the features, plus what I love about this software and what I think is missing.

Visit HGTV to learn more about this handy software.