How to Make a Floor Plan in Canva (and Better Alternatives)

Yes, you can make a simple floor plan in Canva: start from one of the floor plan templates or a blank design, draw the rooms with lines and shapes, add doors, windows and furniture from the elements library, and use rulers and grid guides to keep everything aligned. A Canva floor plan works well for a flyer, a real estate listing or an office seating chart, but Canva is a graphic design tool, so there are no walls with real dimensions, no automatic scale, no 3D view and no DWG export; for a real house plan, Plan7Architect is the better choice, and Sweet Home 3D is the best free alternative.

Many people open Canva because they already use it for social media graphics and presentations. For a quick visual layout, that is perfectly fine. Below you will first see how to make a floor plan in Canva step by step, and then which tools are better once the plan has to be accurate, three-dimensional or ready for a builder.

How to Make a Floor Plan in Canva

Canva describes its floor plan maker as a way to create floor plans for free with templates, shapes and drawing tools. This is the workflow that gives the cleanest result:

• Step 1, create the canvas: start a new design with a custom size. Canva lets you set the size in inches, centimeters, millimeters or pixels, for example a letter-size page of 8.5 by 11 inches (about 21.6 by 27.9 cm) if you want to print the plan.
• Step 2, pick a template or start blank: search the templates for floor plan. A template gives you a ready layout with walls, labels and furniture icons that you can rearrange.
• Step 3, turn on rulers and guides: in the File menu, open Rulers and guides and choose Show rulers and guides. You can also add a 3 by 3 grid or custom guides to line up walls.
• Step 4, choose your own scale: Canva has no drawing scale, so decide on one yourself, for example 1 inch on the page for 4 feet in the room (about 1 cm for 0.5 m), and size every shape accordingly.
• Step 5, draw the walls: use thick lines or narrow rectangles for the walls. Lock them once they are in place so they do not move when you add furniture.
• Step 6, add doors, windows and furniture: search the elements for door, window, sofa or bed icons, or sketch furniture with the Draw tool.
• Step 7, label the rooms: add text boxes with room names and sizes, such as Bedroom 12 by 14 feet (about 3.7 by 4.3 m).
• Step 8, download or share: export the plan as PNG, JPG or PDF, or share a link with others.

The result is a clean picture of a floor plan. Every measurement, however, is only as accurate as your own math, and the plan does not know that a rectangle is a wall.

Canva Floor Plan Alternatives Compared

Why People Look for a Canva Alternative for Floor Plans

Canva is excellent for marketing graphics, and a floor plan made in Canva can look very good. As soon as the plan is meant for a remodel, an extension or a new house, these limits become a problem:

• No real scale or dimensions: walls are shapes, sizes are text labels, and you calculate the scale yourself. One wrong number and the plan no longer matches reality.
• Every change is manual: if you make a room 2 feet (about 60 cm) wider, you move every wall, door, label and piece of furniture by hand.
• No 3D view: you cannot see the rooms in 3D or walk through them, so it is hard to judge proportions, ceiling heights or the roof.
• No construction drawings or CAD files: there are no sections, elevations or DWG/DXF exports, so an architect, engineer or builder has to redraw the plan.

Drawing a Picture vs. Planning a Building: The Key Difference

Canva places graphics on a page. A house planning program builds a model of the house. In Plan7Architect, a wall is a wall with a thickness, layers and a height, a window creates its own opening, and the floor plan, the 3D model, the sections and the elevations all come from the same model. This is what it means in practice:

If a floor plan is only for a flyer, Canva is fine. If you are not sure what a complete plan should contain, our guide What Should Be Included in a Floor Plan gives a good overview.

1. Plan7Architect: Best Canva Alternative for Real House Plans

Price: $259.99 Original price was: $259.99.$169.99Current price is: $169.99. one-time purchase, lifetime license, no subscription
Platform: Windows desktop software, activation on up to 3 PCs
Best for: homeowners, self-builders and contractors who want an accurate floor plan, a 3D model and permit drawings

Plan7Architect is a dedicated house planning program made for beginners without CAD experience. You draw walls with exact lengths, place doors and windows, add floors, stairs and a roof, and the program creates the floor plan with dimensions, the 3D model, the sections and the elevations at the same time. Nothing is drawn line by line, and nothing has to be measured twice.

Accurate Floor Plans Without Doing the Math

You enter exact lengths, angles and distances, and the dimensions appear automatically. Room areas, living area and usable area are calculated for you. You can work in feet and inches or in meters and switch at any time. If you want to try a different layout, you create a plan variant instead of starting over.

From Floor Plan to Complete House

Plan7Architect covers much more than the room layout:

• Automatic roof construction for gable, hip, shed, flat and mansard roofs, including dormers
• Stairs, slabs, foundations and beams
• Decks, terraces, balconies, railings and garden objects
• Terrain modeling with contour lines and sloped lots
• Electrical, heating and plumbing planning
• Unlimited floors and buildings in one project, with detailed layer management

3D Walkthrough and Furniture

You can walk through your house in 3D at any time and furnish it from an extensive object library, including models imported from the SketchUp 3D Warehouse. For photorealistic images and videos, for example for a listing or a presentation, you export the model to Twinmotion with all textures.

Plans You Can Give to a Builder

Sections, elevations and plan sheets with title blocks are created from the model, which makes creating building permit drawings much simpler. You can print to scale, save as PDF and export DWG/DXF for your architect, engineer or builder.

2. Sweet Home 3D: Best Free Canva Alternative for Floor Plans

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

Sweet Home 3D is the best free step up from Canva. You draw real walls and rooms in 2D, place doors, windows and furniture from a catalog and see everything in 3D right away. Room areas are shown, and plans can be printed or saved as PDF.

For a house project it reaches its limits: there is no real roof tool, no terrain, no sections or elevations and no DWG export without additional plugins. Read more on our Sweet Home 3D alternative page.

3. Floorplanner: Best Online Floor Plan Tool

Price: free basic plan; Plus about $5 per month; Pro about $29 per month
Platform: web browser, plus mobile apps
Best for: quick 2D and 3D floor plans in the browser, for example for real estate listings

If you like that Canva runs in the browser, Floorplanner is the closest floor plan tool. You draw rooms with real walls, the sizes are shown while you draw, and you can switch to 3D and furnish the rooms.

The free plan limits projects and floors, and exports are low resolution with a watermark. PDF and DXF need credits or a paid plan, and roofs, terrain and sections are not included.

4. SmartDraw: Best for Clean 2D Floor Plan Diagrams

Price: Individual $7.95 per month billed annually (introductory price for new customers); Team $6.95 per user per month, minimum 3 users
Platform: web browser
Best for: office layouts, simple 2D floor plans and electrical diagrams

SmartDraw is a diagram program like Canva, but with real floor plan tools. Walls are drawn to scale, dimensions are shown automatically, and there are symbol libraries for furniture, electrical, plumbing and HVAC, plus a tool to measure areas.

It is a 2D tool with no 3D view, and it is only sold as an annual subscription. For a complete house with roof and sections, it is not the right program. See our SmartDraw alternatives for more options.

5. Planner 5D: Best for Interior Design on Any Device

Price: free plan; Premium $59.99 per year; Professional $399.99 per year
Platform: web browser, iOS, Android, Windows and Mac apps
Best for: furnishing and decorating rooms in 3D

Planner 5D is almost as easy as Canva, but builds a real 3D room. You draw rooms, place furniture from a large catalog and see the result immediately in 3D, on a computer, a tablet or a phone.

The free plan only includes part of the catalog, CAD export is limited to the Professional plan, and the focus is on interiors. Roofs, terrain and permit drawings are not part of it.

6. RoomSketcher: Best for Polished Real Estate Floor Plans

Price: free plan with up to 2 projects; Pro about $144 per year
Platform: Windows, Mac, iPad and Android tablets
Best for: real estate agents and homeowners who want attractive 2D and 3D floor plans

RoomSketcher creates clean, professional-looking floor plans with real walls, measurements and furniture, and 3D views of each room. The free plan includes more than 4,000 furniture and material items and low-resolution 3D snapshots.

Measurements, total area and printing to scale are part of the paid plan, and RoomSketcher is made for floor plans and interiors, not for roofs, sections or construction drawings. See our RoomSketcher alternative page.

7. SketchUp Free: Best Free Tool for 3D Concepts

Price: free web version for personal use; SketchUp Go $129 per year; SketchUp Pro $399 per year
Platform: web browser
Best for: quick 3D massing models and personal projects

SketchUp Free adds what Canva is missing most: the third dimension. Push and pull turns a floor plan sketch into a 3D model, and the 3D Warehouse offers a huge library of furniture and objects.

It is a general modeling tool, so walls, openings and roofs are geometry you draw yourself, and exact floor plans with dimensions take a lot of manual work. Drawings and DWG export are reserved for the paid plans.

How to Choose the Right Canva Alternative

• You only need a nice-looking plan for a flyer or a social media post: stay with Canva.
• You want a free floor plan with real walls and a 3D view: Sweet Home 3D, or Floorplanner if you prefer to work in the browser.
• You need clean 2D office or electrical layouts: SmartDraw.
• You want to furnish rooms on a phone or tablet: Planner 5D.
• You want to plan a real house with dimensions, roof, sections and permit drawings: Plan7Architect is the best choice.

Plan Your House with Plan7Architect

When your floor plan has to be accurate, Plan7Architect gives you walls with exact dimensions, a 3D model, roofs, sections, elevations and permit drawings in one program, 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, so you can try it on your own project and simply cancel your purchase by email if it is not right for you.