Mac lovers rejoice!  The long awaited Mac compatible IKEA Home Planner has launched in Denmark! Based on 2020 Software, the new planner allows both Macintosh and PC users to design their own kitchens from home, or in the store, save their plans to the IKEA servers or share through email. Customizability has increased tenfold and the options available are incredible.

Thankfully, it’s all in English for those of us who aren’t actually Dutch Danish (edited – thanks jamey015!) Looks to be fairly well documented, though I haven’t been able to download it and try it yet. My laptop is on its last legs, and my new Mac Quad Pro is coming this week – just in time!! w00t! Tons of screenshots and links to resources, articles and interviews with the IKEA Home Planner IT guy after the jump!

Quickstart Video and Guide

You can download the new IKEA Home Planner in Danish here: IKEA Home Planner Download in Danish or in English here: IKEA Home Planner Download in English. I’ve been told that the site and the download may not be available at times as it is still in Beta (i.e. 404 Page not available error) and is sometimes down for upgrading. But if you want a headstart, download it now when available and get going! We’d love to see your pictures, screenshots and planner files as soon as you can upload them!

Check out the Quickstart video and the Guide – this is in English for you to navigate easily.

IKEA Home Planner

According to the (Google translation of the Danish page) IKEA Danish site’s IKEA Home Planner’s page, the IKEA Home Planner is:

Planning tool from IKEA anyone can be his own decorator. You can quickly and easily plan how you will furnish your home and see the final result in 3D. You can choose to print your favorite, with all necessary details. You can also choose to save your drawing to an IKEA server so that you, along with an IKEA employee may review your subscription next time you visit your local IKEA store.

The new IKEA planner offers Setup your Room, Furnish your Room, Decorate your Room and Print your Plan options that are wholly different from previous versions of the IKEA planner software. Read on to learn what’s new!

NEW in this Version

There are hundreds of new functions, options, abilities and applications in this new version of the IKEA kitchen and home planning software. These are just the ones I noted when doing my overview – I haven’t actually been able to run it to see how it really functions – all of the screenshots below are from the IKEA Home Planner Guide, which looks to be highly informative and a great introduction to the new application.

Discuss the new IKEA Home Planner with IKEA Fans in the IKEA Fans Community Forum.

New Print Options

Excellent! Now you can print out elevations, overhead views and frontal views as well as the price and item list inventorying all the items needed to make up your new IKEA kitchen.

Predesigned Room Options

Now you can get a jump start on your planner by using a predesigned room as a start – make adjustments for your actual room size, the location and position of your utilities and then fine tune to your delight. Either fill in the room layout information in the sidebar, or click on a wall to resize it directly. Awesome!

New Start from Scratch Options

Or, start from scratch like always, but now you can do lots more to configure your room to the exact layout of your interior.

Wall and ceiling options: Change the wall height in the 2D view to create sloped ceilings. Add ceiling wedges, bulkheads, ceiling boxes, columns, partition walls and more. Also hide walls to create rooms with less than four walls. Great for greatrooms! Paint the walls, or add moulding, trims, skirting, crown molding, and other decorative finishes to walls. Choose wallpapers, various paint colors – even split walls up and add different finishes to the top or bottom.

Floor options: Add floor obstacles, vents, radiators and columns in addition to the partition walls mentioned above. In Decorate Your Room, customize the floor to help visualize what your kitchen might look like with parquet flooring, hardwood floors, carpet, tile, stone or granite.

Door and Window Options: Now, finally (!) you can resize door openings, create a 3 sided room, change the swing of a door, select from multiple window arrangements, change the size and material of the window and door casings, and even select a window background!

Additional Room Features: Add columns, radiators, air conditioners, vents, fireplaces, stoves and pipes in many configurations. Change the swing of a door, and the position of a door handle, even! You’ll have to add the appropriate utilities and pipes in order to add appliances later on, so spend some time getting the placement of these right. The nice thing is, you’ll have a blueprint for your plumber or electrician when you’re finished with your plan. Use the print option!

Resize Options: Click to change the height of doors, doorway openings, windows, obstacles like bulkheads, ceiling boxes, columns, partition walls and more.

Furnish Your Room

Ok, this is where the real awesomeness begins! Finally – options to change everything from the direction of the door swing on cabinets, to the legs or plinth (toekick) options, the cover panels, the filler pieces, the countertop and the appliances. Even add placeholders for own appliances! Add kitchen tables, chairs, bar tables, stools and benches, entire dining sets, cabinets and sideboards and cafe items.

Filler pieces: Accurately visualize a refrigerator encased in cover panels. Understand the warnings about filler pieces with improved warnings.

Appliances and Hobs: Change the look and feel of cabinets surrounding ‘built-in’ appliances such as ovens and refrigerators (keep in mind that this Dutch version of the IKEA Home Planner has appliances that are not available in North America) by changing the cover panels, legs, handles and cornice options. Add hobs (cooktops and stove tops to us in North America).

Cover Panels: Select cover panels for the right or left side of your cabinets. Planner conveniently reminds you of the additional space taken up by cover panels and the need to plan for that in your overall length of the cabinet run.

Sinks and faucets (taps): In this new IKEA Home Planner, you can only place appliances and fixtures where you’ve previously indicated that the appropriate utilities or pipes exist to support them. Add sinks and faucets in your plan, plus mix and match to see how different taps would look with various sink options. I don’t see an option to add your own sink like you can with appliances, but I might be overlooking it.

Cabinets: Place and move cabinets with ease. Select from the regular lineup of cabinets with additional options for open shelves, microwaves, horizontal cabinets and roll-front cabinets. Make changes to any individual cabinet options such as the handles, the fronts, the cover panels legs, cornice or deco strips.

Worktops: Finally a way to put a countertop where there is no cabinet! Think accesibility for wheelchair users, open spaces for stashing footstools, work stations, breakfast bars, built-in table tops and more. Woo-hoo!

Move multiple items: You could always multi-select items and move them around, though it was always a little sketchy as to what would actually move and where it might go. Move multiple items with precision in this new planner.

Tables, chairs and other dining furniture: Now add your dining furniture to the room. Sideboards, bar tables, dining sets, tables and chairs. Make your room complete! Visualize an eat in kitchen easily by adding these items to your design.

ADD YOUR OWN APPLIANCES! What if you don’t have IKEA appliances? How many of us do, anyway? Now you can set placeholders – resizable placeholders for dishwashers, extractor hoods, microwaves, ranges, refrigerators and even washing machines. This increases the flexibility of the planner to the extreme.

Decorate Your Room

This is an awesome development* for the new IKEA Home Planner. Now you can change the wall color, add wallpaper, decorative trim, moldings, skirting boards, and more to your walls.  Add carpet, stone, tile, granite, hardwood or other types of flooring to your design to really get a feel for how it will look.

*Ironically, this is a feature that was in early versions of the IKEA Home Planner, but was removed because people using the computers in-store to design their kitchens spent WAY too much time trying to get the wall color *just* right. Now, do it at home then save it to IKEA’s servers!

Using the New IKEA Home Planner

Understand what the warnings mean, and how to avoid kitchen planning errors by leveraging the knowledge available in the IKEA Home Planner guide. The warnings will actually now make sense, and you can make relevant changes to your plan ahead of time to avoid mistakes and safety hazards in your new IKEA kitchen!

Learn how to save your plans to the IKEA server, then print or share via email. Of course, we share files here on IKEA Fans Kitchen Planning forum all the time. (FREE Kitchen Planning advice!)

Print your plan: This is a really great aspect of the new planner. Once you’ve completed your design, click on File>Print>Print all design views and you’ll get a printout of the front view, the overhead and the frontal elevation (!) as well as the list of items in your order with a total. Almost like having your own architect!

IKEA Home Planner Resources

A few weeks ago, we did an IKEA Home Planner Resource Roundup in which we reviewed all the available resources for the kitchen and home planner software.  Don’t miss our IKEA Home Planner forum for peer-to-peer support if  you have questions or problems, or need help with troubleshooting the software, new or old. We also have a wide array of articles on using the IKEA planner, understanding the IKEA Kitchen systems and more.

Learn how to save and post plans from the planner to our forums and read up on 9 Ways to Break the Creativity Block

Thanks again goes to Hadirajan, our IKEA insider who slipped us the info on this new planner being available. Don’t miss the interviews we did with Jesper on the planner:

IKEA Home Planner Sneak Peek Exclusive

New IKEA Home Planner – a Q&A

Tags: 2020, hadirajan, IKEA Home Planner, IKEA Home Planner Software

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 3:46 AM by Susan and is filed under IKEA Furniture, IKEA Home Planner, IKEA Kitchens, IKEA Websites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.