What does a 3D floor plan or a furnished floor plan cost?
There is no single price, because there is no single product. Four different things get sold under the same name, and they sit at four different price levels — and the most expensive line is often the one nobody mentions: the survey.
Short answer: four different products get sold under the name "3D floor plan", and they cost vastly different amounts. A furnished 2D plan is the cheapest; a 3D plan seen from above typically costs one and a half to two times as much; a photorealistic interior render is priced per image and quickly becomes the most expensive, because five images cost five times as much, not a bulk discount; and virtual furnishing of photos of empty rooms is the cheapest of all, but needs the photographs to already exist. All four prices assume a measured floor plan already exists — if it does not, the survey is often the single largest line on the bill.
The four products — and what they are used for
The first step is working out what you are actually asking for. These are four different jobs, each with its own amount of work behind it.
- Furnished 2D plan. An ordinary floor plan with furniture drawn in as flat symbols, often in colour. Used in sales listings because it shows that the rooms can actually be furnished. It is a redraw: the cheapest of the four, when a measured plan already exists.
- 3D plan seen from above. The house with the roof removed, seen at an angle from above, with walls at full height and furniture in 3D. Sells well because it can be read by people who cannot read a floor plan. Typically costs one and a half to two times a furnished 2D plan.
- Interior render. A photorealistic image from one camera position in one room, with materials, lighting and furnishing. Priced per image — and that is the single most important sentence on this whole page. A project with five images costs five times as much, not a volume discount.
- Virtual furnishing of photos. Furniture inserted digitally into photographs of empty rooms. The cheapest of the four per image, because no model gets built. Usually has to be disclosed in the marketing, so a buyer does not think the furniture comes with the home.
Within each product, the price swings with the size of the home, the number of rooms, and how many rounds of revisions are included. Always ask how many revisions are included — that is where budgets run away.
The hidden assumption: a measured plan has to exist first
Every price for a 3D drawing assumes somebody already knows where the walls stand. If a measured floor plan does not exist yet, a draughtsperson has to go out and survey the home, and that line item can easily exceed the drawing work itself on an ordinary house.
That is the reason a quote starting with the word "from" often ends up double the figure in the advert: the low price applies to redrawing an existing plan. So the very first question to ask is whether the survey is included in the price, or whether it is assumed you will supply it.
If you already have a measured plan with real room dimensions, wall thicknesses and openings, you are past the most expensive line before you even ask for a quote.
What you can make yourself — and what you cannot
You can make a 3D model of your own home that is geometrically accurate: the shape of the rooms, where the walls sit, ceiling heights, openings and where the furniture goes. That is enough to understand the home, plan a layout, see how the light falls, and show a contractor what you mean. In HouseSense, the model comes free with the plan: scan the rooms with the iPhone's LiDAR, or draw them with a finger and type in the measured numbers, and the model is built from the same geometry as the floor plan — same dimensions, no extra survey. Sunlight is calculated from the home's location and orientation to north, so you can see when the sun reaches the living room in the middle of winter, not only in summer.
You cannot make the photorealistic render a design studio sells. The difference is not in the geometry, but in materials, lighting, camera choices, post-processing, and the hours a visualisation artist spends making an image look like a photograph. If the image is going into marketing where it competes with professional property photography, that is the one you buy.
When 3D is worth the money
Buy 3D when:
- The home is hard to read as a flat plan — split levels, sloped ceilings, many floors
- The home is being sold as a project before it is built, and the buyer cannot walk through it
- The home is empty, and buyers struggle to picture how it would be furnished
- An expensive renovation decision needs two options compared visually by several people
Skip 3D when:
- The home is small and simple, and photographs already show the layout clearly
- All you need is numbers — areas, wall surfaces and lengths for ordering and quotes. A 3D model does not make the numbers any more correct
- The home is being sold for a gut renovation, where the buyer is going to erase the furnishing from their mind anyway
Five questions to ask before you order
- Is the survey included in the price, or do you assume an existing plan? This is the biggest price driver, and it is usually the one nobody mentions unprompted.
- How many rounds of revisions are included? Two rounds is normal; one round is tight; unlimited does not exist.
- What file formats do I get, and can I use them freely? Some suppliers only deliver finished images, not the model — so you cannot reuse the work for anything else afterwards.
- Is the furniture and are the materials generic, or the actual ones? An image with furniture that does not exist can sell a dream, but cannot be a basis for decisions.
- How is it marked that the image is a render? When selling, a buyer has to be able to tell what is real and what is drawn.
The warning that applies to every 3D model
A 3D model always looks convincing, even when it is wrong. It shows walls placed exactly where a draughtsperson put them based on the measurements they were handed — and if those measurements were guessed, the guessed model looks every bit as tidy as the measured one. So always ask where the dimensions came from. If they came from an on-site survey, the model is something you can make decisions from. If they came from a sales listing or an old archive drawing, it is an illustration.
The same goes for the model you build yourself: it is only as good as your own measurements. The drawing may be dressed up; the numbers may not.
And however detailed a 3D model is: it cannot tell you whether a wall is load-bearing. A model shows where a wall stands, not what it is holding up. That takes a building surveyor or an engineer looking at the actual structure on site.