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Which Chief Architect Version?
Hey Chad. I’m ready to dive into designing my kitchen cabinets for order. Chief Architect offers a Professional version and one just called Home Designer. Your website references a Chief Architect Interiors, but I don’t see that offered. Can I get by with just Home Designer, or do I need Chief Architect Professional to access the downloadable 3D catalogs and cabinet schedule?
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5 Replies
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Yes, Home Designer should allow you to add our catalog. I don’t believe that version supports automatically downloading manufacturer catalogs or accessing the online catalog library that Chief Architect manages, but that doesn’t really matter since you can download our catalog directly from our website.
It’s been a long time since I’ve looked into the exact differences between Home Designer and the Professional version. In our tutorial videos, we use many of the features available in the Professional version, so some of those specific tools or workflows may not be available in Home Designer.
Overall, though, you should be able to use Home Designer and load our catalog without any issues.
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Thanks Chad. Home Designer is only $79 a month. That’s a big savings over Chief Architect Pro which is $229 a month, especially if it’s money for features I won’t need.
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Yeah, that pricing sounds about right.
Once you start using Home Designer, feel free to post back here with any questions, issues, or limitations you run into. Chief Architect generally encourages users to upgrade to the full Professional version, but if Home Designer can handle 90-95% of what we demonstrate in the introductory videos, then it’s probably the best value for most users designing their own projects.
Here at Barker, we needed the full version of Chief Architect because we were exporting catalogs and integrating them with Chief’s backend systems. I also need to spend some time with the newer versions to see what’s changed over the past few years, it has been a while since I created those introductory videos. I’m sure they’ve added some great new features that are worth exploring.
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I have almost finished the process using Home Designer 2026. Totally capable of laying out a kitchen using Barker objects. I also used it to build plans for the entire house for building permits, etc. I very seldom ran into limitations and always for fiddly stuff like modeling the exact trusses I have in the attic. Is that worth an extra $300? Same answer for me when considering whether spending $1K on a video card capable of ray tracing is worth it – they are not 🙂
In either version, be aware that you can configure cabinets in software that Barker can not manufacture. Check the product pages frequently to be sure you’re still in the real world.
