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The Magic Plan App

September 8, 2011

You can tell via my posts on furniture and decor that I love Interior Design. I’ve always wanted to learn how to do a floor plan so that I can make sure that everything fits in a room, and I can visualize where everything will go before I start purchasing things. I thought I would have to take a special course on it, but guess what?!? Apple made an app (for iPhone4/iPad) that allows you to create a professional floor plan in seconds! (30 seconds per room to be exact!) The BEST thing about it is its FREE!!

I just died and went to housewife heaven when I heard about MAGIC PLAN from a friend (Silly me can’t remember which one of my fab twitter/FB friends I heard it from right now – but if you are the one, gimme a holler please! And thank you!!!). And immediately when I tweeted about it, my friends (Jenn, a realtor and sometimes speed decorator, and Tin who owns the very fabulous PLC107 furniture store) immediately downloaded the app and loved it. It really helps us thrifty DIY interior decorators.

It sounds almost to good to be true but here’s how it works- just take a picture of each corner of your room and Magic Plan does the rest. It measure the walls and doors of the room and creates a plan based off the pictures you took.
If you want to do your whole house you just slide the rooms around into place and Magic Plan takes into account the wall thicknesses for you.
via
  • It took me a few minutes to watch the tutorials and a few more to practice each tutorial. In under 30 mins I was using the app fairly well!
  • When you get a hang of taking the shape of the room, you must calibrate it to increase accuracy
  • After calibrating, if it’s still not correct then you can move walls until the dimensions are exact
  • Then you can start modifying the windows/doors and adding other fixed items (sink, counter, etc.)
Now you know what space you have to work with for furniture. The only thing is that there are no placeholders for actual furniture, so I use the counter (or was it table?) shape to hold the place for my different furniture. It’s so handy to have when shopping for or designing furniture!
  • Use it to get a rough estimate for square footage of material if you’re remodeling.
  • If you have a rental property you could post the floor plan online for potential renters to view.
Now I’ve to figure out how to print it for meetings with my furniture maker! Other apps that I find useful are the following:
  • Houzz (free) –  With over 60,000 photos and 130,000 idea books from professionally interiored homes you can save onto your personal idea book. The digital equivalent of clipping from magazines and placing them in an album.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGtQu91b50g]

  • Color Capture by Benjamin Moore (free) – Take a picture of anything you love and it will extract the colors (show you a gradient), then shake to coordinating colors. Awesome.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De67MmFi_hs]

  • Click here for a list of other super smart interior design apps for iPhone/iPad you may wanna check out!

7 Comments · Diplo Picks

Comments

  1. Rachelle says

    September 8, 2011 at 4:25 PM

    I love that your able to use the MagicPlan app! I still haven’t upgraded to a newer IPhone or IPad so I haven’t been able to try it out. Thanks for the other tips on Interior Design apps as well! Checking them out now.

    Reply
    • diplomaticwife says

      September 9, 2011 at 7:56 AM

      Thanks for dropping by Rachelle! You have a lovely blog! I hope that you get to check it out soon so I am sending you new iPhone/iPad energy! LOL! Lemme know what you think of the other apps!

      Reply
  2. (eye)candy says

    September 9, 2011 at 12:14 AM

    This is amazing! I do my floor plans on illustrator and it’s not that much fun. This is wild! (*nerd alert*)

    Now, the problem is, how do I get myself an iphone… haha.

    Reply
    • diplomaticwife says

      September 9, 2011 at 7:29 AM

      Hahaha no worries! I am SUCH a nerd myself. I get giddy at the thought of these “magic” apps! In the Philippines we are actually lucky coz they give out phones to subscribers with plans. Here it doesn’t matter, you must buy your own phones. No freebies! BOO! You will love all the amazing gadgets on iPhone and iPad so maybe you should hint to the hubby?!? =P

      Reply
  3. Atri says

    September 9, 2011 at 3:34 AM

    Argh! This sounds so cool, but I’m not an apple user -_-” Hope someone comes up with an android app like this! (Or maybe I should go look at the market, they might already have it :D)

    Reply
    • diplomaticwife says

      September 9, 2011 at 7:27 AM

      Hi Atri! Apple macs stuff fun and easy to do. Since I’ve converted to apple about a decade ago, I’ve never looked back. I sorta become an idiot when it comes to android hehe. Because everything is design to be easy to use on a Mac/apple. Yes you can try googling! Who knows? There might be a version for Android!? Thanks for dropping by and commenting on my blog!

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. The MagicPlan Blog » MagicPlan Review on thediplomaticwife.com says:
    September 12, 2011 at 1:26 PM

    […] VIew full article on DIPLOWIFE GADGET ⌨ The Magic Plan […]

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Hello! I’m Ayessa, trailing spouse to a diplomat, mama to DiploBaby and DiploDog and founder of Declutter MNL. I love talking about how to achieve a minimaluxe lifestyle one step at a time.

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