Best Bathroom Design Software in 2026: 7 Programs Compared

What to Look for in Bathroom Design Software

Some bathroom planners are mainly decoration tools, others are made for kitchen and bath studios or for complete houses. Whether you are remodeling a small guest bathroom or planning a master bath in a new house, these are the features that matter:

• Exact room dimensions: wall lengths, wall thicknesses, ceiling height, window and door positions and irregular shapes such as niches or angled walls. Our guide How Big Should a Bathroom Be? lists typical sizes.
• A complete fixture library: bathtubs, walk-in showers, toilets, washbasins and double vanities, mirrors, storage, radiators and towel warmers, adjustable to the sizes of the products you plan to buy.
• Plumbing and electrical in the plan: water supply, drains, outlets near the vanity and lights decide where fixtures can go, especially in a remodel.
• Sloped ceilings: attic bathrooms under a pitched roof only work if the software knows the roof and shows the headroom in 3D.
• A realistic 3D check: tiles, materials and lighting are much easier to judge in 3D than on a flat plan.
• Plans for the trades: dimensioned floor plans and elevations as PDF or DWG/DXF for the plumber, the electrician and the tiler.

Decorating a Room vs. Planning a Bathroom in the House: The Key Difference

Many online bathroom planners treat the room as a simple box: you set the size, drop in fixtures and get a 3D picture. That is fine for trying out colors. House planning software places the bathroom inside a real building model with walls, openings, ceilings, roofs and utilities, so the plan also works on the construction site. This is what changes in practice:

1. Plan7Architect: Best Overall Bathroom Design Software for Homeowners and Remodelers

Price: $169.99 one-time purchase, lifetime license, no subscription
Platform: Windows desktop software
Best for: homeowners, remodelers, contractors and interior designers who want to plan a bathroom precisely, alone or as part of a complete house

Plan7Architect is a house planning program that lets you design a bathroom in 2D and see it in 3D at the same time. You enter the exact wall lengths, ceiling height and wall thickness, place windows and doors with exact width and height, and the openings are created automatically. Angled and curved walls, niches and irregular shapes are no problem. You do not need CAD experience to get started.

A Large Library of Bathroom Fixtures

The object library is made for bathroom design. It includes freestanding, built-in and corner bathtubs, walk-in showers and shower cabins, toilets and bidets, washbasins and double sinks, mirrors and mirror cabinets, vanity units, shelves and wall cabinets, radiators and towel warmers, lighting fixtures and accessories such as towel racks. Every object can be resized, rotated and duplicated, so you can match the exact sizes of the fixtures you plan to buy, and you can apply materials such as wood, stone, chrome or ceramic. More models can be imported from the SketchUp 3D Warehouse.

Small Bathrooms, Large Bathrooms and Attic Bathrooms

Whether you are fitting a walk-in shower into a small bathroom of about 6 by 7 feet (1.8 by 2.2 m) or planning a spacious master bath, you work with exact dimensions and can switch between feet and inches and meters and centimeters at any time. Because the roof is constructed automatically, a bathroom under a pitched roof shows the real sloped ceiling, so you can check the headroom at the shower and the toilet before you decide. Our step-by-step guide Drawing a Bathroom Floor Plan with Plan7Architect shows the workflow.

Plumbing, Electrical and Heating

A good bathroom plan is also a technical plan. In Plan7Architect you plan drain and water supply lines, electrical outlets and switches, lights, ventilation and heating directly in the project. With the detailed layer management you keep each trade on its own layer. Placing outlets and lights early helps you avoid conflicts with mirrors and cabinets and makes communication with the installers much easier.

The Bathroom as Part of the Whole House

Plan7Architect is a complete house planning program, so you can plan several bathrooms on different floors or the whole house around them, and try different layouts as plan variants. The building tools are the same for every room:

• Walls with thickness, layers and height, plus floors, ceilings and slabs
• Doors and windows that create their openings automatically
• Automatic roof construction for gable, hip, shed, flat and mansard roofs, including dormers
• Stairs, foundations and unlimited floors and buildings in one project
• Electrical, heating and plumbing planning
• Automatic dimensioning and living and usable area calculation

3D Views, Renderings and Plans for the Trades

You can walk through your bathroom in 3D at any time and compare tiles, colors and materials. For photorealistic images and videos, you export the model to Twinmotion with all textures. For the construction work, you create floor plans, sections and elevations from the same model, print them to scale, save them as PDF or export them as DWG/DXF for your plumber, tiler or contractor.

Pricing

Plan7Architect Pro costs $169.99 once and can be activated on up to 3 PCs. For comparison: after three years, SketchUp Pro has cost you $1,197 and Chief Architect Premier $5,985.

2. 2020 Design Live: Professional Software for Kitchen and Bath Studios

Price: no public price, subscription on request from Cyncly
Platform: Windows 10 and 11, with cloud catalogs
Best for: kitchen and bath dealers and designers who sell products from specific manufacturers

2020 Design Live, now offered by Cyncly as Design Live, is a standard tool in kitchen and bath showrooms. Its strengths are the large selection of manufacturer catalogs, renderings and panoramic views that help to present a design to a client.

The program is built for businesses. The price is only available as a quote, the subscription is designed for professional use, and the focus is on the bathroom or kitchen itself, not on the house around it.

3. Chief Architect Premier: Professional Residential Design for Kitchen and Bath

Price: $1,995 per year or $229 per month
Platform: Windows and Mac
Best for: professional residential designers and builders who produce construction documents every day

Chief Architect Premier has strong bathroom tools: smart vanity cabinets, custom countertops, showers and tub platforms, wall elevations and cross sections with automatic dimensions, name-brand fixtures and materials, schedules and several rendering styles. It is also a full residential design program.

For a private bathroom project, the subscription is the main drawback: one year costs more than ten times the price of Plan7Architect Pro, and the program takes time to learn. If you are comparing both, see our Chief Architect alternative page.

4. SketchUp: Flexible 3D Modeling for Custom Details

Price: free web version for personal use; Go $129 per year; Pro $399 per year
Platform: web browser; Pro also as desktop software for Windows and Mac
Best for: designers who want to model custom vanities, niches and details

SketchUp is easy to start with and very flexible, and the 3D Warehouse offers countless models of tubs, toilets, faucets and vanities. For custom furniture and unusual details it is a good choice.

For a bathroom plan, everything is geometry you draw yourself. Walls, openings, dimensions and elevations are created by hand, and drawing sheets need LayOut, which is only included in the paid plans.

5. Planner 5D: Easy Bathroom Layouts on Any Device

Price: free plan; Premium $59.99 per year; Professional $399.99 per year
Platform: web browser, Windows, Mac, iOS and Android
Best for: beginners who want to try bathroom layouts and colors quickly

Planner 5D is very easy to use. You drag walls to set the room size, add windows, doors, bathtubs, showers, toilets, vanities and storage and switch between 2D and 3D at any time. It runs on almost every device.

It is an interior design tool, not a planning program for construction. Some objects and advanced features require a paid plan, and CAD export and your own 3D models are only included in the Professional plan.

6. RoomSketcher: Clear Floor Plans and 3D Views

Price: free plan; Pro about $144 per year
Platform: desktop and tablet apps
Best for: homeowners and real estate users who want clean 2D and 3D floor plans

RoomSketcher makes it easy to draw a bathroom floor plan, furnish it with fixtures and see it as a 3D floor plan or in Live 3D. The Pro plan adds measurements, 3D photos and printing to scale, and the symbol library includes electrical and HVAC symbols.

RoomSketcher focuses on floor plans and visualization rather than construction drawings for the trades, and many important functions are only available in the subscription.

7. Sweet Home 3D: Best Free Option for Simple Bathroom Layouts

Price: free, open source
Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux and a browser version
Best for: simple bathroom and apartment layouts on a zero budget

Sweet Home 3D lets you draw walls and rooms in 2D, place bathroom furniture from the catalog and see the result in 3D right away. For trying out a layout for free, it is a good choice.

For a real remodel or new build it reaches its limits quickly. There is no real roof tool, and sections, elevations and DWG export are not available without additional plugins. See our Sweet Home 3D alternatives page for a detailed comparison.

How to Choose the Right Bathroom Design Software

• You are remodeling or building and want a bathroom plan the trades can work with: choose a house planning program like Plan7Architect, with exact dimensions, plumbing and electrical planning and construction drawings.
• You only want to try a layout for free: Sweet Home 3D or the free plans of Planner 5D and RoomSketcher are enough.
• You are planning a bathroom in the attic: pick a program that constructs the roof, so you see the sloped ceiling and the headroom.
• You run a kitchen and bath studio: 2020 Design Live or Chief Architect Premier, if the subscription fits your business.
• You want to plan the bathroom and the whole house without a subscription: Plan7Architect is the only program in this list that combines both with a permanent license.

Plan Your Bathroom with Plan7Architect

With Plan7Architect you design your bathroom with exact dimensions, a large fixture library, plumbing and electrical planning and 3D views, and you create the plans your plumber, electrician and tiler need, without CAD experience and without a subscription. Our video tutorials take you from the first wall to the finished plan. Every purchase comes with a 14-day right of withdrawal: if the software is not what you expected, you can simply cancel your purchase by email.