You have found your new home, and now it’s time to decide how you are going to arrange all of your furniture. It’s best to give this some thought before the actual move so the full service movers can unpack everything in the right place the first time – saving you hours of back-breaking rearranging after they leave. While the fortunate few are great with spatial reasoning and can plot furniture arrangements in their heads, others of us could use assistance in this area. Thankfully, there are now several apps that now give you the ability to test different furniture arrangements with the swipe of a finger. Of course, you’ll need to know the measurements of your new space. Many apartment complexes and condo units have this floorplan information posted online, but if you are moving into a house, you’ll need to take measurements. Here we give you a quick run-down on some of the best room arranging apps out there to get you started.

Figuring out your Floorplan

First, you need a floorplan. Do you know the shape and measurements of your new rooms? These are a couple of apps we found that can help you figure out the dimensions of your room without pen, paper, or a measuring tape:

RoomScan by Locometric (3/5 stars*)

Though criticized by some for being difficult to use, this is a really neat concept! Rather than busting out a measuring tape to create an accurate floorplan, you simply open the app and scan the room, tapping the phone on each wall, to create a floor plan that includes measurements and even door and window placement. Might be good to have this app along when you’re doing a walkthrough of your new home.

MagicPlan by Sensopia (4.5/5 stars)

Instead of scanning the room and tapping walls, MagicPlan creates floorplans using pictures and indicates openings for doors and windows and pieces the pictures together to create a whole map of your room. This app is an all-star with an impressive resume in the apps world.

Arranging Your Furniture

Once you’ve nailed down your floorplan, you can focus on decorating by dropping your room dimensions into one of the following apps, adding furniture and even doing some remodeling:

Room Planner by Chief Architect (4/5 stars)

The Mercedes of room planning apps, this software enables you to get a 3-D glimpse of your rooms in just minutes. Beyond just arranging furniture, you can also play with color palettes and textures, letting you visualize blending some new décor with your old to transform your new home. Maybe you decide that some furniture would just fit better if you knocked some walls down – well you can also dabble with remodeling with this app. While the basic tools are free, you can also pay for add-ons to conquer projects that go beyond simple arranging.

Home Design 3D by Anuman (4.5/5 stars)

Used by millions, this gem of an app offers an easy to use 2-D floorplan where you drag and drop objects into place to create your ideal layout. Upgrade to the 3-D version to explore unique features like round-the-clock views of various rooms to see where the sun will shine at different points during the day.

Amikasa by INDG (4.5/5 stars)

It’s obvious why this app was winner of the Webby Award in the category of lifestyle mobile sites and apps. Simple-to-use and aesthetically pleasing, this app lets you either create your own room and play with arranging furniture and designs or use the camera on your phone to capture what a piece of furniture or design element would look like in a particular space.

I decided to decorate using the existing furniture in my house. While the table is real, the app superimposes a vase with tulips in the view finder of my camera so I can see if I like them. Then I decided to create a whole new room:

Here, I chose to create a new living room. I selected the room shape and dragged the walls to the correct dimensions, finishing off the room with a door and window in approximately the right places.

I selected the “living room” setting and picked out furniture similar to my current pieces to see how they would best fit in the new space. I even dreamed about putting in sleek new hardwood floors and adding a splash of seafoam green to the walls.

Here’s my final product. This was all in the span of about five minutes. I highly recommend!

Rooms by List Logic Software (3.5/5 stars)

One of the coolest features of this app is it lets you lock a configuration of furniture in place so you can move it all at once (if only we could do that in reality!). So if you know you want those two chairs on the same wall with a side table in between them, you simply lock the furniture together and drag all three pieces around in one easy swipe. Like the other apps, Rooms also lets you choose from a variety of colors and makes it easy to see the room from different angles.

Hopefully you’ll have some fun experimenting with these apps and envisioning yourself happily moved into your new space. When the time comes to do the heavy lifting, give us a call at Apple Moving and let the moving pros get you settled in!

*Ratings from Apple App store