Best Apps for Homeowners

These days, there's an app to help with practically every one of life's needs — and home design is no exception. As the number of options can be overwhelming, however, we've selected what we believe to be the best apps in the industry, including the best apps for new homeowners, home design and home renovation. We are confident adding a few of these useful apps to your phone or device will make your life as a homeowner significantly less stressful.

Best Apps for New Homeowners

If you just recently moved into your new home, there is likely a long list of tasks you'll need to tackle, which often include furnishing, decorating, landscaping and getting to know the local area. Luckily, there are apps to help with all these things.

Photo Measures

Many of us have experienced the frustration of buying the perfect piece of furniture, only to find out it's too large for the room — or won't even fit through the doorway. With the Photo Measures app, however, you'll never have to deal with these issues again. Whether you're an interior designer, contractor or homeowner just wanting to rearrange your furniture, this is a great app for saving and sharing the exact dimensions of spaces and objects. It's easy to use, and all you have to do is take some photos and write down the dimensions on top of them.

This app is available for $6.99 for iOS and $4.99 for Android.

IKEA Place

While many of us enjoy shopping at this Swedish retailer, it's often difficult to know what pieces of furniture will both fit in our homes and suit the decor — until we haul the items back home and go through the trouble of assembling them. IKEA Place is a room design app using photos that allows users to get a peek of what each item will look like in their homes by virtually placing any IKEA product in a 3D rendering of their living space.

This augmented reality app is available for both iOS and Android devices.

iScape

Landscaping design doesn't come naturally to all of us, but luckily there's an app called iScape that helps visualize the many ways to improve your home exterior. All you have to do is take a photo of the outside of your home and play around with placing flowers and shrubs.

iScape is free and available for iOS.

HomeZada

This app is a great way to organize and store all of your homeownership details in a single digital place. You can use it for home maintenance, home improvements, finances, and inventory, making it easy to get your home up and running quickly.

You can get the HomeZada app for iOS and Android free of charge.

ADT Pulse

This app allows homeowners to monitor all a home's security-related devices, including alarms, motion detectors, and security cameras. With this app, you'll be at ease knowing it will immediately alert you of any security issues.

ADT Pulse is a free app for iOS and Android.

NextDoor

When moving to a new neighborhood, neighbors are a valuable resource. The NextDoor app allows those new to the neighborhood to easily communicate with those around them, get recommendations and stay informed about local events.

This app is free for both iOS and Android users.

Best Apps for Home Design

When setting out to design your house, you no longer have to pull out pencils and graph paper. Numerous apps allow you to create your floorplan — and much, much more.

Houzz

Dubbed the "Wikipedia of interior and exterior design" by CNN, Houzz offers a database of more than 14 million high-resolution images of homes. The site organizes these images by room, style, and location, making it easy to browse and find what you're looking for. You can save your favorite ideas to your "Ideabook," which helps the app's professional design consultants get an idea of your tastes.

Houzz also features a sketch function, which allows you to make notes and draw directly onto the images. You can directly buy millions of products from the app, too.

This app is free for both iOS and Android users.

Adobe Color Capture

Have you ever fallen in love with the colors in a photo or painting, and wished you could use them for one of the rooms in your home? With the Adobe Color Capture app, you can do that very thing. No matter where you are if you happen to come across some color combinations you enjoy, you can take a photo of them with the app. The app will then provide you with customizable color schemes, vector graphics and 3D patterns that work with other design programs to help you create the interior you've always dreamed of.

Adobe Color Capture is free for iOS and Android.

Havenly

If you need professional guidance for designing your interior, this app will likely come in handy. Havenly offers a collaborative environment where you can share your renovation ideas with real-life, professional interior designers and get their opinions. Regardless of your budget or the extent of your project, this app is perfect for creating beautiful interior designs. Using the app involves these three steps:

1. Find an interior designer. You can do this by selecting one yourself or taking a quiz, which will match you with one.
2. Customize your design. During this step, you will collaborate with the interior designers, who will provide you with a visualization of your completed space based on your floor plans.
3. Browse a curated selection of products. Finally, you can shop a product list the design professionals have selected specifically for you and translate your design ideas to the real world.

Havenly is a free app available for iOS.

MagicPlan

Taking measurements and creating floor plans is typically is one of the more painstaking steps in homebuilding, but MagicPlan makes this process much more straightforward. To take a measurement, take a snapshot, and the app will compute the distance by analyzing the photo. You can also annotate your photos with the heights and widths of your spaces, so you'll never have to worry about a piece of furniture that's too big to fit through a doorway.

MagicPlan is available for free for both iOS and Android.

HomeStyler Interior Design

This app calls itself a "virtual fitting room," and the description could not be more appropriate. With HomeStyler Interior Design, you can experiment with different looks by virtually inserting 3D models of products in actual snapshots of your living space. There is also a "Design Gallery" feature where you can post your ideas and view those of other users. The app also allows you to find professional designers where you live and contact them for advice.

This app is free for both iOS and Android.

Home Design 3D Gold

With this interior and exterior design app, you can upload your floorplan and alter the space itself, which allows you to visualize new design possibilities. By dragging and dropping, you can create new openings, increase your ceiling height, remove walls and add furniture and fixtures. You can use this app in both 2D and 3D, and you can show your work to collaborators, who can suggest improvements to your ideas in real-time.

This app is available for $9.99 for iOS.

MyPantone

Have you ever argued with a friend over whether a shade is teal or turquoise? That is where MyPantone can come to the rescue. This company decided to put its vast library of colors into a useful app that allows users to communicate to design professionals precisely what colors they want to use. It can also identify the hues in your photos and will provide complementary color palettes.

Android users can purchase MyPantone for $7.99.

WikiHow

WikiHow is a crowdsourced compendium of home improvement advice, featuring visual guides and step-by-step instructions on how to tackle practically any home improvement project. DIY interior designers can learn a wide variety of skills, from installing kitchen cabinets to putting down flooring.

WikiHow is free for both iOS and Android.

Sun Seeker

All interior designers understand the importance of lighting and how it can affect a living space. Although the people who built the Sun Seeker app did not do so specifically with interior design in mind, it is valuable when it comes to designing your home. This app shows you the path of the sun, when it rises and sets and a visualization of the direction of sunlight for each hour of the day. This information helps designers decide on everything from how to cover windows to the placement of artwork.

This app is available to iOS and Android users for $9.99.

Best Apps for Home Renovation

Remodeling your house can present unique challenges, but luckily, many app builders have designed their programs with remodeling needs in mind. Keep reading to learn about the best apps for remodeling your home.

Smith Home Remodel

No matter how much work and planning you put into your designs, you can probably still benefit from the guidance of a professional. This app allows you to find contractors to help you complete your projects, regardless of the size of the project.

This app is free for both iOS and Android.

iHandy Level

Great interior design is partly dependent on mastering the subtle details, which is where the iHandy Level helps. This app helps you with everything from aligning pictures and measuring angles to checking a wall's verticality and aligning furniture.

iHandy Level is a free app for iOS and Android.

Vivid Paint Colors

While updating your wall color might seem like one of the easier DIY tasks out there, the overwhelming number of color options makes this task harder than you'd think. Luckily, thanks to the Vivid Paint Colors app, you will no longer need to browse paint swatches at the hardware store. The app allows you to search for hues from reputable brands such as Sherwin-Williams, Glidden, and Benjamin Moore, save your favorite colors for later and directly order the paints you want to buy.

This app is free for iOS and Android users.

ColorSnap Visualizer

The ColorSnap Visualizer app by well-known paint brand Sherwin-Williams is similar to Adobe Color Capture in that it allows you to take a picture of anything and use its color palette to design your new interior. This app will tell you which Sherwin-Williams colors would best match those in your photo. It also offers a vast library of 1,500 shades, which you can apply to virtual sample rooms. You get an idea of what the color would look like both during the day and at night, and calculate exactly how much paint you will need for your space.

ColorSnap is available for free for iOS and Android.

Housecraft

Housecraft is one of the many examples of how augmented reality is transforming the world of interior design. With the Housecraft app, you can drop 3D renderings of furnishings and fixtures into a virtual space, then resize and place them in the right location. You can even walk around the space in 3D to see how they look from any angle you want. Save your favorite layouts and compare them to arrive at the best solution for your home.

Housecraft is a free app for iOS.

Handyman Calculator

This productivity app boasts a whopping 140 functions and meets all your calculating needs. The app allows you to easily convert measurements and also includes a feature to keep track of your to-do items and log the time you spend on each task. It's free for both iOS and Android devices.

Home Improvement Calcs

This app is similar to the Handyman Calculator and features more than 170 unit converters and calculators, but it also has one distinguishing function: You can save and email your results, so you don't have to do anything over again. It's available for $1.99 through the Apple Store.

RoomScan Pro

If you need a 3D rendering of your home's entire floorplan, there's an easy way to get it: the RoomScan Pro app. All you have to do is open the app and touch all your walls using the phone — and the app draws your floor plan just like that. The plans include the approximate lengths of your walls and the square footage of each room. This app is free for iOS users only.

iFixIt

iFixIt, "the free repair guide for everything," is one of the best apps for home renovation and teaches you how to complete practically any DIY project you can think of. It does so using a variety of helpful resources, including step-by-step instructions, illustrations, videos and guides you can download and use offline. It's available for both iOS and Android devices at no cost.

Handy

Handy makes the renovation process more manageable for homeowners by allowing them to easily find and book reputable repair and remodeling professionals. You can even use the app to pay them securely. It's a free download for both iOS and Android users.

Contact SK Builders and McAlister Reality

If you're planning to build a home in upstate South Carolina, look no further than SK Builders. Our family-owned company has served the upstate South Carolina area for more than 24 years and is passionately committed to high-quality craftsmanship, efficient design, and our customers' satisfaction.

We offer a wide selection of floor plans, but also give our customers the freedom to customize their plans to suit their specific needs and tastes. From smaller starter homes to large custom-built mansions, we can build homes for any budget. We believe our company is just the right size — it's large enough that we can negotiate reasonable prices from suppliers and contractors, but small enough that we can listen to the needs of every customer.

For over two decades, SK Builders has enjoyed a close partnership with McAlister Realty, which has helped make the construction process much easier. To find out more about our services, feel free to give us a call at 864-292-0400 or fill out our contact form.