See the remodel, and the bill, before you commit
Most pages about remodeling are trying to sell you the remodel. These are not. RenoPeek covers the two questions that come before the money: what a room could look like, and what changing it actually costs — including the parts a rendered image will never show you.
AI design apps
Every one of these tools calls itself free, and they mean six different things by it. These pages read each free tier off the vendor’s own live page and print the date it was read.
Free AI interior design apps
What each free tier actually gives you before it asks for a card — design count, watermarks, resolution and the styles locked behind the paywall.
AI home design apps
Whole-home tools versus single-room ones, and why an app that redraws a floor plan is answering a different question than an app that restyles a photo.
AI room design apps
The apps that work from one photo of a room you already have, scored on what survives the free tier and what the render quietly gets wrong.
AI decorating apps
Decorating is furniture and finish, not construction. Which tools stay on the right side of that line, and which ones move walls you cannot afford to move.
AI exterior design apps
Siding, paint, roof and landscaping previews from a photo of the front of the house — and the lighting conditions that make every one of them lie.
AI virtual staging apps
Staging an empty listing has rules that decorating does not, including disclosure. What each tool costs per photo and which ones agents can legally use.
By room
AI living room design
The room with the most furniture and the least structure, which is exactly where a render is most useful and least likely to mislead you.
AI bedroom design
Small rooms punish bad furniture scale more than any other space, and a render that widened the room is showing you a bed that will not fit.
AI kitchen design
The most expensive room to get wrong. What a kitchen render can settle, and the three things it cannot see that decide the quote.
AI bathroom design
Renders are confident about tile and blind to drainage, which is the one constraint that decides what a bathroom layout can actually be.
Dining room from a photo
One table, one clearance figure, and a room that fails entirely if you cannot pull a chair out. The narrowest brief of any room in the house.
Home office from a photo
Renders put the desk where it photographs well, which is usually facing a window — the one position that makes a screen unusable for half the day.
Basement from a photo
The room where the render is least trustworthy, because ceiling height, moisture and egress decide what is legal and none of the three is visible.
Nursery from a photo
Every AI nursery render fills the crib with exactly what the NIH says to keep out of it, because bumpers and blankets photograph beautifully.
Garage from a photo
The one room where the render is honest about the walls and useless about the floor, which is the only surface anyone actually changes.
For professionals
AI apps for agents
Staging priced per image, plus the NAR standard that actually governs altered listing photos — which is not the one most guidance cites.
AI apps for flipping
Renders sell interiors and the resale data says exteriors pay. Garage door replacement returns 267.7 percent; a bathroom remodel does not come close.
AI apps for contractors
What a render is worth in a sales conversation, where it creates liability, and the sentence to put next to every image you hand a client.
Switching tools
RoomGPT alternatives
What to use instead, and the odd fact behind the search: RoomGPT publishes almost nothing a machine can read, including its prices.
Interior AI alternatives
It starts at $49 a month with no free tier at all. Every option here that costs less, and what you give up at each step down.
Modsy alternatives
Modsy shut down and its IP went to Lennar in 2023. What replaced it, split by which half of Modsy you actually miss.
Havenly alternatives
A designer per room at $199 list, against free tools and hourly consultations. What you lose at each step down, and why its own discounts disagree.
Decorilla alternatives
Online design services compared on what they publish, which in this corner of the market is remarkably little — including the prices themselves.
Planner 5D alternatives
Floor planners answer the fitting question that photo tools cannot. What else draws to scale, and which of them are genuinely free.
Homestyler alternatives
Free 3D design software aimed at professionals. Where it wins, where the catalog matters more than the renderer, and what to use instead.
AI or a real designer
A $24 subscription against $159 a room and $499 for someone in your house. What the two hundred dollars buys that software cannot.
What a remodel costs
A render shows you the room. It does not show you the invoice. These separate what a remodel costs from what the showroom photo implies, priced by the thing being bought rather than by the room.
Kitchen remodel cost
Where the money actually goes in a kitchen, why cabinets alone can be half the budget, and the three decisions that move the total the most.
Bathroom remodel cost
The smallest room with the highest cost per square foot. What plumbing relocation does to a quote, and where a cosmetic refresh stops being one.
Interior painting cost
The cheapest way to change a room, priced by surface rather than by room, plus the prep that separates a $400 quote from a $1,200 one.
Flooring cost
Priced per square foot by material, plus the two lines that surprise people: taking the old floor up, and what is found underneath it.
Tile installation cost
Labor routinely exceeds the tile, and that is not a markup. What the hours actually go into, and why cheaper tile barely moves the total.
Exterior painting cost
The quote prices the surface, not the color. Why uncovering rot can double the labor, and what prep costs before a brush is opened.
Designing from a photo
A photo-based redesign is convincing about surfaces and quietly wrong about dimensions. Knowing which half to trust is the entire skill, and it is learnable in about ten minutes.
Using AI on a room
The order of steps that produces a usable render instead of a pretty lie: what to photograph, what to ask for, and what to check before you believe it.
Designing from a photo
What a photo-based redesign can and cannot tell you — it will restyle surfaces convincingly and misjudge dimensions quietly.
Calculators
The calculators run entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, because there is nowhere for it to be sent — the pages are static files and the arithmetic happens on your device. Each one shows the formula it uses, so you can check it rather than trust it.
Remodel cost calculator
Room type, square footage and finish level into a budget range, with the low and high ends shown separately because the spread is the useful part.
Paint calculator
How many gallons a room needs, counting coats, ceiling and the doors and windows you are not painting.
Flooring calculator
Square footage plus the waste factor that every flooring type needs, which is the number most estimates get wrong.
Tile calculator
Tile count for a floor or a backsplash, including cuts, and why a diagonal layout changes the order quantity.
How this site is written
Who writes this, how each figure gets its date, and what happens when the app ships are on the about page. The terms of use cover the boring but real limit: no number here is a quote, and nothing on this site replaces a contractor standing in your actual room.
See the remodel, and the bill, before you commit.