Not a consumer render app and not heavy BIM. Decato is professional software that carries a project from floor plan to a sourced, fit-checked, rendered room — with a client-ready spec and a tracked budget. Start free: the agent runs on your own ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini subscription, and floor planning is unlimited.
The plan lives in CAD, the model in a renderer, the products in a wall of retailer tabs, the deck in slides — and the same room gets rebuilt at every step. Decato runs that whole pipeline in one place, so a change in the room updates everything.
5 tools · 4 handoffs · one room, rebuilt five times
Every stage reads and writes the same room. Move a wall — the layout, bundle, render and deck all update. No exporting, no re-keying, no rebuilding.
One project — not five.
They are sold as competitors and they are mostly not. Each class refuses a different part of the job, and the refusals are what decide which one you need.
Drawings somebody builds from
AutoCAD, Archicad, Revit, Vectorworks. Precise, documented, and the right answer when the deliverable is a construction set. They model the building rather than the room, which is why furnishing one in them feels like using a lathe to butter bread.
Will not Telling you what a sofa costs or whether it is in stock.
Showing the room before it exists
SketchUp, 3ds Max, Blender, and the AI render tools that have grown up beside them. Enormously capable, and the output is an image — which is the deliverable often enough that this is the biggest class of the five.
Will not Guaranteeing anything in the image is real, available or the size it appears.
Deciding what fits where
Planner 5D, Floorplanner, Live Home 3D, RoomSketcher. Fast, cheap, and genuinely good at the layout question. This is the class most people mean when they say interior design software, and the one most over-served by free options.
Will not Carrying the layout through to something orderable.
The schedule the client signs
Programa, Fohlio, Studio Designer, and a great many spreadsheets. Where the furniture list becomes a document with prices, lead times and approvals attached to it. Unglamorous and the part that actually gets billed.
Will not Deciding the specification. These manage a list you have already made.
The gap between three and four
Reading a floor plan, choosing real products against it, checking each one clears the walls and door swings, and producing the priced list. It is the step that has stayed manual while everything around it was automated, and it is the one Decato is built for.
Will not Structural work, construction drawings, and restyling a photograph.
Import a floor plan and set the brief and budget once.
Real, in-stock products matched to the space and style.
Every piece checked against dimensions and the running total.
A render and client-ready deck built from orderable furniture.
However you categorise the tool, the job is the same: turn a plan into a buyable, presentable room.
Workflow software for interior designers: plan, lay out, source, render and present a room in one tool instead of five that never talk to each other.
OpenAI software built for interior designers, not consumers: a floor plan becomes a laid-out, sourced, fit-checked room with a client-ready spec.
OpenAgentic software for interior designers: an AI agent lays out, sources and renders a room from your floor plan, then hands back a deck you adjust.
OpenA lighter Archicad alternative for interior designers: skip heavy BIM and go from floor plan to a sourced, fit-checked room with a client-ready spec.
OpenA Revit alternative for interior design work: skip heavy BIM and go from floor plan to a sourced, fit-checked, rendered room with a priced spec.
OpenThe steps the software runs, each proven on a real room.
