Not what the software companies say. What is actually open on the screen in a working studio, stage by stage.

The honest headline: most interior designers use four or five tools, and one of them is a spreadsheet. The stack is less exotic than software marketing implies, and the interesting question is not what exists but what each stage genuinely requires.

Concept and moodboards

InDesign or Affinity Publisher for concept decks. Photoshop or Affinity Photo for image work. Canva more often than designers admit, because it is fast and the output is fine for an early-stage board.

Milanote and Pinterest for gathering, though gathering is not presenting — a moodboard sells a feeling and a concept presentation has to sell a decision.

The tool matters much less here than the order of the slides.

2D documentation

AutoCAD remains the default for interior fit-out documentation, and the reason is speed. For plans, elevations, sections and joinery details, drawing in 2D is simply faster than modelling and extracting.

Revit appears where the project demands BIM coordination with architects and engineers. This is common on commercial work, less so on residential. Designers who work with Revit generally did not choose it — the project did.

Vectorworks holds a genuine share, particularly in the UK, Europe and in exhibition and scenography work. It handles 2D and 3D in one application and is Mac-native, which is why it appears more in Mac-based studios.

3D modelling

SketchUp is the interior design default and has been for fifteen years. It is fast, forgiving, and the extension library covers most gaps. If you learn one 3D tool, this is it.

3ds Max is the visualisation industry standard rather than the designer's tool. Studios that produce their own high-end renders use it. Designers who commission renders rarely touch it.

Blender is rising, particularly among younger designers and anyone doing product work, because it is free and the ceiling is very high.

Rhino for curved and complex geometry — bespoke joinery, sculptural elements, anything SketchUp handles awkwardly.

Rendering

Enscape and Twinmotion dominate designer-side rendering because they are real-time: you model, you look, you adjust. For client walkthroughs and quick sign-off imagery, that loop is worth more than absolute image quality.

V-Ray and Corona are where the visualisation studios live. Slower, far more control, and the difference shows on a final presentation image.

The practical split we see: designers render their own work-in-progress views to make decisions, and commission final imagery when it is going in front of a client or a planning committee. Those are genuinely different jobs and it is reasonable to use different tools for them.

FF&E and documentation

This is the least glamorous part of the stack and the one that consumes the most hours.

Excel or Google Sheets is what most studios actually use, and it works. A schedule is a structured list; a spreadsheet is a structured list.

Programa, Fohlio, Design Manager, Studio Designer add procurement tracking, client-facing presentation and order management. They earn their subscription above a certain project volume and are overhead below it.

What matters more than the tool is whether the schedule has a lead-time column. Without it you have a furniture list rather than a procurement document, whatever produced it.

The stack most studios actually run

  • AutoCAD — drawings
  • SketchUp — modelling
  • Enscape or Twinmotion — rendering
  • InDesign or Affinity — presentation
  • Excel — schedules

That is it. Five tools, and the fifth is a spreadsheet. Anything beyond this is a specialisation rather than a requirement.

If you are on a Mac

Almost all of the above runs natively. The exceptions are Revit, which has no Mac version, and 3ds Max, which is Windows-only. Everything else — AutoCAD, SketchUp, Enscape, Twinmotion, V-Ray, Blender, Rhino, Vectorworks, Adobe, Affinity — has a native macOS build.

We go through this in detail in best interior design software for Mac, and the AutoCAD specifics in can you run AutoCAD on a Mac.

What to learn first

If you are starting: SketchUp, then AutoCAD, then a real-time renderer. In that order, because the ability to show someone a space is worth more early than the ability to document it precisely, and documentation is easier to learn once you can already think spatially.

Everything else can wait until a project demands it.