The best apps to help you househunt, renovate and decorate
These days finding the perfect location to buy a property – and some great options for decorating it – is as easy as flicking through your phone. This list of our favourite Australian location and decorating apps will help you both before and after you move in.
Houzz
Category: Interior design and renovation
Buying a house is just the start. Once you moved in, you’re going to want to make it feel like home. If you’re looking for inspiration, Houzz is a one-stop interior design shop. Highlights include eye-popping photos, helpful articles, an online furniture store, community forums and recommendations for professional help. A wellspring of ideas, tips, recommendations and suggestions for turning your house into a home, Houzz has every room covered.
Available for iOS and Android.
MagicPlan
Category: Interior design and renovation
This ingenious interior mapping app has lots of uses, including crime scene investigation! But chances are, if you’re decorating or renovating you’ll be using MagicPlan. Create a floorplan of your home simply by taking photographs of its rooms – all without the use of a tape measure. Draw up your own space on the app, then save it as a PDF or JPG file, or upload it onto a website. Easy.
Available for iOS and Android.
Paint My Place
Category: Interior design and renovation
The days of swatches and sample pots are over. Paint My Place lets you take photos of your house and apply commonly-available commercial paint colours to the image. It's designed to give you a sense of how the final result will look before the brush goes anywhere near the wall. It’s free, but the premium version lets you try multiple colours and save your experiments.
Available for iOS.
AroundMe
Category: Getting around
Moving to a new area means familiarising yourself with all the places you need to survive and thrive. Simple, effective and free, the AroundMe app helps you instantly find nearby points of interest by common categories, including restaurants, hotels, theatres, parking, hospitals and much more. View as a list or on a Google map. An ad-free, premium version is also available.
Available for iOS and Android.
Walk Score
Category: Getting around
Find out how close a specific address is to local shops, galleries and more, and see if you can cut down on petrol costs. From supermarkets and cafes to schools and parks, Walk Score gives you a list of nearby attractions and tells you how far away they are, lets you compare nearby suburbs, and gives every address and suburb an overall score out of 100. Walk Score is especially useful if you're new to the area.
Available for iOS and Android.
Buying a home is a journey. Make it easier with the tools in your favourite toolbox – your phone. When you’re ready to buy, talk to your mortgage broker.
