I Use CubiCasa to Create Floor Plans for My Home (and You Should Too)
Buying a home can be a daunting task. From the moment you decide you want to buy a particular property, things move very quickly. You are bombarded with information and questions, so it is no surprise that many, including myself, find themselves owning a home without knowing some key details, such as the floor plan of the house.
Why is a floor plan so important? As I learned shortly after buying a house, having a good floor plan makes everything so much easier. Furniture shopping ( will the couch fit through the front door and is there room for a coffee table?), the placement of outlets and switches on a circuit breaker, planning a renovation —all of these things are easier when you have a clean floor plan. And if you ever decide to sell your home, a floor plan is often a useful resource to include in your listing.
The best part is that creating a floor plan is quite easy, especially if you use the CubiCasa app.
Scan and save
When I bought my house, I didn’t have an app, so I measured the area by hand and drew on graph paper like a caveman. For years, I updated the floor plan every time we changed something, and recently started using CubiCasa to do that. CubiCasa offers a free, lightweight version for iOS and Android phones and tablets, and it’s incredibly easy to use:
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Install the app and create an account (you only need a valid email address).
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Grant the app some basic permissions (camera access and location access are required, but you can manually enter the location if you want).
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Prepare the space: open the doors and curtain the windows if possible.
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Click “Scan”.
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Hold your phone or tablet in front of you, tilting it down slightly, and begin walking around the room at a measured pace. I simply start at one end of the house and walk to the other.
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Once the scan is complete, you can watch the video and then download the scanned file. In the free version, it takes about 24 hours to restore the layout.
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If there are any imperfections in the scan, you can make some basic edits and edits (in a web browser), such as adjusting the dimensions or adding simple text captions. I usually have to make at least a few edits to fix uneven walls or incorrect dimensions, but these are usually relatively minor.
You can download the floor plan as a PDF or image and use it as you wish. This video was shot by a professional using the paid version of the app, but it gives you a general idea of how it works.
CubiCasa offers paid subscriptions for real estate professionals, interior designers, and contractors, as well as a host of additional services like furniture placement or 3D renderings that you can pay for if you want. But if you just want a simple floor plan that looks good and doesn’t require fiddling with a tape measure, this is the app for you.
Alternatives
There are other floor plan apps out there, but most have a steep learning curve and are more geared toward professional use. For example, RoomSketcher offers a free version, as does Planner 5D , but both require you to master a set of tools and enter measurements, unlike CubiCasa’s scanning tool. Magicplan offers a free room scanning tool, but it’s only available for iOS devices; there’s an Android app that’s great for manually creating floor plans, but it doesn’t support scanning with your device’s camera.
And, of course, you can just grab a tape measure and a pencil and do it the old-fashioned way if you don’t trust all these newfangled tools. However you do it, an accurate house plan is worth the effort—the next time you need to rearrange your living room furniture or quickly turn off the power to an outlet, you’ll be glad you took the time.