So you’re after the best laptop for interior design either because…

You’re on your second year

Or…

You’re about join a new company so an upgrade to the old rig that got you out of interior design school is in order. 

Now…

I’m sure you’ve done plenty of research already and you’ve come to the conclusion that it all comes down to the graphics card and you’re sort of right, it does.

However…

There’s a LOT of conflicting information about WHICH graphics card you need for interior design software like Revit.

The scary part is…

Some websites recommend a ‘workstation’ graphics card which can shoot up a laptop’s price in the 1000s! 

In fact..

If you outsource the 3D modeling part (3DS Max , Blender, etc) or if you just rely on Revit or Sketch Up or any other drawing software you don’t even have to spend more than 600 dollars.

And if you do want to create stunning 3D visuals through 3D rendering software and even use renderers like VT-Ray chances are even a 700 dollar laptop with a 4GB vRAM GPU will be all you need. 

Anyways..

We’ll clear up all the confusion here. 

Me and my brother were in the exact same situation several years ago.

Since our father could not afford an expensive laptop back in college we researched EVERYTHING there was to know to spend the least amount of money while at the same time getting a very capable machine.

Basically…

Maximizing performance/money ratio depends on the kind of work you do. Some may need much less hardware (thus spend less money) and others may need to spend more (for high quality 3D rendering with VT-RAY and the like) , we’ll talk all about such cases in our laptop reviews.

Recommended Specs for Interior Design

Before we get to the best laptops for Interior Design let’s dwelve a bit more on the hardware you need based on the software you use as an interior designer. 

Software

You’ve probably heard about each of the following software: 

Because the last 3 are exclusively used for BIM models and walkthroughs which as the name implies are 3D simulations they will require a ‘dedicated graphics’ card .

Note: AutoCAD 3D is the least hardware demanding of the 3D modeling software group. If you’re just using AutoCAD and the rest of the non 3D-modeling software you can get away with very cheap laptops as outlined in my AutoCAD post.

GPU: 4GB vRAM minimum

a) If you’re using Revit, AutoCAD & all the software highlighted in blue including Lumion. 95% of you will be fine with 4GB vRAM such as:

b) If you’re on a low budget, you can grab those with 2GB vRAM. Things may be a bit slower IF YOU decide to use high quality 3D rendering software like blender & 3DS Max but that’s about it:

 On the other hand…

c) 3DS Max & Rhino (especially for high qualityt rendering) will work best with 6GB vRAM GPUs: 

***No need for 8GB vRAM GPUs or workstation GPUs. More details in the last section****

CPU: Min Core i5 or Ryzen 5

If you find two laptops with the same GPU but different CPUs, you pick the one with more ‘clock speed performance’ in other words ‘the faster one’*.

*It isn’t easy to tell by the numbers, see a comprehensive list of CPU hierarchy in the last section.

RAM: 8GB RAM Min

8GB: This is the minimum for Windows & Interior Design software to run fast.
16GB: It will improve performance whether that’s significant or not depends on exactly what you do. Regardless RAM is cheap to upgrade, you can get 16GB even after purchase.

Storage: SSD (Solid State Drive)

SSDs are an absolute MUST. They are found on every laptop now instead of HDDs.

They will load up projects/files/models and the software lightining fast. They’ll also boot up your machine in 5 seconds flat.

Thus if you’re building a desktop or upgrading a laptop’s storage, do not use HDDs (Hard Disk Drive) unless you don’t mind having clients waiting 5 minutes for things to load while they stand behind you breathing over your shoulder.

Display: 15-17” FHD

QHD: This is 2500*1600 resolution, much much higher than FHD. Why would you want more resolution?

More resolution lets you fit in more tools , interfaces, (which means less the drop-down menus to use) and of course a bigger canvas to draw. 

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Top 5 Best Laptops For Interior Design

Most interior designers work with Lumion , Revit & some of the creative cloud software for which you only need a 4GB vRAM dGPU which is also good enough for 3DS Max & Rhino.

It is very rare for someone to need 6GB vRAM unless they need to make very high quality walkthroughs through a 3D rendering software like 3DS Max or Blender.

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1. HP Newest Victus

 

This is a  laptop with a very high specs per money ratio. The following explanations may be a little too complex for some of you if that’s the case give the last section a good read if you want to understand everything that comes next.

Long story short:

 

GPU: GTX 1650 (4GB vRAM) vs 3050Ti (4GB vRAM)

This laptop has a 1650GTX and yes there are laptops with a 3050Ti which is on paper a BETTER graphics card but unless you care about GPU-rendering based work taking less time (25% less time) , they’re both equally useful when it comes to drafting, viewport and basically the most tedious part of interior design (drawing the model as opposed to waiting for the final render).

Why? Because they both have the same vRAM (4GB vRAM) and as I explain in the last section this is the single most important spec for a quick workflow along with the CPU as far as interior design goes.

CPU: 12th gen Intel Core i5-12450H

The reason why I favor this laptop over any other laptop with a 3050Ti is that it HAS a 12th gen Core i5 12450H. I go over in more detail in the last section but basically CPU clock speed (GHz) is the single most important spec be for modeling (drawing & designing) and this CPU has significant more performance than 11th gen Core i5 laptops that may come with a 3050Ti.

Add to the fact that Revit & AutoCAD barely use the graphics card, then the CPU becomes even more important if you rely on those two as your 3D modeling software (all the other non-3D modeling software can run on pretty much any modern laptop).

Now if you can find 3050Ti laptops with a 12th gen Core i5 CPU for the same price, all power to you. They’ll usually be 200-300 dollars more expensive.

Performance: 3D Design Softare + Renderer

The above work was drawn with SketchUp and rendered with Enscape 2.7. But if you use Revit and say VT-Ray T instead, you will get the exact same quick workflow. Revit, just like Sketch Up, is CPU-dependent only through the whole design process: drawing, viewport, rendering,etc and well you’ve got one of the highest clock speed (fastest) CPUs out of a 12th gen Core i5 here.

As for the renderer, the above ALSO used a GPU-base renderer like Enscape 2.7 which works the same way as VT-Ray T, it took about 20 min with a 4GB vRAM GPU (although the one used in the video was a very old GPU, though similar in performance to the modern 4GB 1650GTX, specifications are outlined in the description).

How far can you go with this GPU+CPU combo until you start noticing lag?

There’s only going to be SOME lag when you go way past 15 storie buildings for walkthroughs in 3DS Max.

Back then we used a 940MX (a 2GB vRAM GPU) which is way weaker (1/3 the speed of the 1650GTX) and we started to notice lag on walkthroughs with 15-20 story buildings. Just walkthroughs, because for everything else there was no lag whatsoever.

Design: Thin & Easy to Upgrade

Just like every laptop with a 4GB vRAM dedicated GPU, this one is upgradeable. 

I talk about it in the last section but ideally you want 16GB when rendering large high quality designs. This laptop supports up to 32GB (the limit for rendering) and you can also add an additional SSD. I have not upgraded this laptop in particular but if you check around this site, you’ll see tutorials on how to upgrade RAM & SSD on a similar model.

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2. Lenovo Ideapad i5 

Best Cheap Laptop For Interior Design

  Intel Core i5 11300H

  8GB RAM DDR4

   NVIDIA MX450 2GB vRAM

  512GB PCIe NVMe SSD

  15” full HD IPS

  4.4 lbs

   3 hours (Interior Design) / 8 hours (Basic Tasks)

Most interior designers do not need to render high quality walkthroughs of entire buildings (perhaps only one floor/apartment walkthroughs).

GPU:  MX450

Thus if you are on a budget, you can go for 2GB vRAM dedicated GPUs which are anywhere from 100 to 200 dollars cheaper than 1650GTX or 3050Ti laptops.

in fact, you can go even lower, if you’re mostly working on small projects (houses) with just  Revit + AutoCAD & Sketch Up then you might not even need a dedicated GPU to begin with. 

Laptops with integrated GPUs which are MUCH MUCH cheaper:

Will work too. Just be sure to get an 11th gen Core i5 or 5th gen Ryzen 5 with it, otherwise you will lag massively (viewport is highly dependent on CPU clock speed too).

Simple Remodeling Projects: 2GB vRAM GPUs

Anyways, back to this laptop. It’s only 100 dollars more expensive than laptops with integrated GPUs (such as the example above) so it is sort of like bullet proof for most of the work you’ll do (leaving huge walkthroughs in 3DS Max aside) 

Simple remodeling gigs are a good example and what I mean by this is:

• Construction documents for kitchen remodeling.
• Cabinet elevations.
• Some 3D sketch up work
• Use PhotoSHop, Illustrator and have all their  extra features unlocked.

For the kind of work above, the 2GB vRAM dedicated GPU is OVERKILl but again we’re assuming you can afford being bullet proof.

I can’t even afford this one, any other options?

You can use laptops with the integrated GPUs like the one I linked previously.

You MAY lag a bit when using viewport (with integrated graphics) however everything else including “simple remodeling” is doable.

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3. HP Victus 16

The Best Laptop For Interior Design in 2023

  Core i7-12700H

  16GB RAM DDR5

  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 6GB vRAM

  512GB SSD PCIe NVMe

  16” FHD IPS 

  5.44 lbs

  4 hours Web Surfing / 2 Interior Design gaming

The is going to the most powerful windows laptop on this list and mostly tailored for professionals (not students) but only a small subset of interior designers: those working with remodeling projects of very large buildings where all floors and rooms must be on the same file (presentation) as opposed to split into sections (different files).

I’m referring to the walkthrough part of the process because the modeling and drafting process of very large , even opera-like auditoriums or stadiums run well on any laptop with dedicated graphics (the ones we talked about berfore) .

3060RTX: Walkthroughs & VT-Ray T Rendering

Thus the only reason why you should opt for a 6GB vRAM dedicated GPU or this laptop is for pretty much: high quality large walkthroughs on 3DS max or to maximize performance with GPU-based renderers like VT-Ray T (reduce the time it takes since ths 3060RTX has several thousands more ‘CUDA’ cores to speed up rendering’).

One more thing…

If you’ve landed here because you’ve already been using a 4GB vRAM laptop, let me tell you that you don’t need to go for 3080Ti or 3080RTX laptops, yes they may be useful for architecture work (in very special cases such as working on an extremely large collaborative project for the specific remodeling of say a concert in Rhino) but not for interior design. 

No one will need more power than a 6Gb vRAM as far as interior design is concerned regardless of the software you use.

Core i7 12th gen+ QHD + 16”

Now im sure you can find DOZENs of 3060RTX laptops perhaps some of them might even be cheaper but beware of the EXTRA specs this laptop has:

• 16” QHD: This resolution is MUCH higher than FHD and paired up with the 16” display, it’s going to give you a MASSIVE amount of extra space for interfaces, menus and your canvas. This is exactly the same resolution and size you find on the most expensive MacBooks at almost half the price.
• 12th Core i7, is probably the number one reason to choose this laptop over other 3060RTX laptops. There’s very few CPUs that are faster than the one here since the 12th gen have been released quite recently (for laptops) and it’s only superseeded by Core i9 and Ryzen 9 CPUs.

If you can’t afford this laptop but still want the extra speed for GPU rendering & walkthroughs check the following laptop:

Note that you’ll be giving up the high clock speed & display though.

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4. Surface Pro 9

Best 2 in 1 Laptop For Interior Design

  12th gen Intel® Evo Core™ i5 or Core™ i7

  8GB-16GB RAM DDR5

  Intel Xe Graphics

  128GB-1TB PCIe NVMe SSD

  13” IPS ‎2880 x 1920

  1.96lbs 

  +10 hours

And lastly, if you plan on doing 3D GPU rendering work through Blender or 3DS Max or any GPU-based renderer, you have to buy a model with a dedicated GPU and as of 2023 that would be the Surface Laptop Studio shown below:

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5. MacBook Pro

Best Mac Laptop For Interior Design

  12‑core CPU

  16 GB RAM DDR4

  19‑core GPU

  512GB  SSD

  16.2” Liquid Retina

  4.5lb

  +15 hours (Basic Tasks)

MacBooks can be useful for interior designers too. In fact, if you watch the tutorial below, it’s obvious the guy’s using a MacBook:

That is as long as you use Blender for your 3D work (3DS Max is not available on Macs) and do not rely on Revit  for drawing and sketching and use SketchUp, InDesign, PhotoShop, etc.

Software Compatibility Fix: Mac OSX

The entire Adobe Creative Suit is compatible with Macs. Sketch up is also compatible with Macs. The only real issue will come with Revit & 3DS Max which do not have a Mac Version. If you limit yourself to Sketch Up, Adobe Suite & Blender then you don’t need a Windows machine.

In the off chance that you need to run a software thats only compatible with Windows, you run Windows in two ways depending on what processor your MacBook has. If you are a running a Macbook with the the M1 or M2 Chips, you can revit through a Virtual Machine as shown in the video below:

There is a fear that running software on a virtual machine will be slower however from experience as long as you don’t work with anything that’s too big and complicated you can run AutoCAD,  Modo 901 , Revit and eve Rhino with no issues. 

Now…

If you have a model with an x86 chip, for example, the Intel Core series, you can install Windows on your Mac (you do not need to delete OSX) and then you can install any windows software you’d like:

The app designed to let you install Windows (without a VM – virtual machine) is called BootCamp. Going this route will be a much wiser choice if you plan on running very hardware demanding 3D models because BootCamp will make MUCH better use of hardware resources than a Virtual Machine Software.

Rendering with Macs

You can render with Macs as longas your renderer does not rely on the GPU.

VT Ray uses the GPU for rendering and although MacBooks MAY have better GPUs than NVIDIA GPUs, they are not compatible with VT-Ray.

Thus you have to use a CPU-based renderer instead. 

Blender is a good alternative.

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How to Choose The Best Laptop For Interior Design

Below is a list of the most commonly used software for interior design. The links will take you to the official site’s hardware requirements page.

Software

• AutoCAD 3D or AutoCAD Architecture: By the way AutoDesk Provides a free 1-year license
• Revit Architecture (AutoDesk provides a free 1-year license to students as well)
• Adobe Photoshop (Any version)
• Adobe Acrobat X Pro (or other PDF Creator)
• Google Sketch Up Pro 
• Podium
• Rhino
• 3DS Max

It isn’t likely you’ll use ALL of these. You’ll be limited to mostly three:

Sketch-up: simple 3D sketches.
AutoCAD or Revit: remodeling.
3DS Max or Lumion: walkthroughs. 

And web-based interior design software. Ex: HouzzPro which require nothing more than a laptop with a web browser.

Hardware Specs for Interior Design

Because Lumion, 3DS Max & Revit are the most hardware demanding software of the group (though most will just use Revit) we’ll only talk about specs for those three software.

CPU

This is what speeds up rendering and modeling. What follows is based on my experience with Revit and benchmark studies by Pudget Systems on 3DS Max.

Modeling or Designing

This is going to be a single-threaded task regardless of software. In other words, AutoCAD, Revit , Sketch up, etc, will only use ONE CORE thus you have to focus on picking up a CPU with as much ‘speed’ as opposed to a CPU with more cores.

 

Now…

If you do some research, you may come across some articles claiming that drafting/modeling in Revit is now multi-threaded and that’s true but that only applies to a few functions:

 Here’s a list of all the functions that are multithreaded for Revit.

Even then it does not use multiple core effectively….for example it will use mostly one core and about 20 10 and 5 % of the total power of subsequent cores (calculating walls and loading all elements in view).

What’s more is that most CPUs now have at least 4 cores and on average 6 cores!

Which CPU to pick for fast drawing then? 

Since modern CPUs are multi-core anyways, you want to pick the CPU with the highest clock speed.

Clock speed is measured in GHZ and turbo is the highest clock speed a CPU can go up to.

Below is a comprehensive list of the most common CPUs found on laptops in 2023.

Intel

**12th generation Intel CPUs seem to have more ‘cores’ but in reality a lot of these extra cores do not support hyperthreading. More detaiils in my upcoming post. Point is you should pick them because of their seemingly high clock speed not cores!

***Also when comparing an AMD vs an Intel CPU, you can’t just guide yourself by the numbers. For example a Ryzen 7 5800H (4.4GHz)  isn’t as fast as a Core i5 11300H (4.4GHz). In this scenario, you use benchmarks. However, CPUs with the same color have approx the same perfomrnace.

AMD

Rendering: Multi-Core

No matter what software you use, rendering will always be a multi-core task. That means, the more cores you have the faster it’ll be.

Since we spend most of the time drafting and modeling, it is always wiser to focus on ‘clock speed’ over number of cores. 

Add the fact that most CPUs have 6 cores, choosing an 8 core CPU isn’t going to give you mind-blowing rendering performance either. It may reduce the rendering from say 30 min to 20 min.

If you want to max out rendering performance too (if building a desktop), keep in mind that choosing more than 8 cores seems to give diminishing returns.

2. GPU (Graphics Card)

Here are the instances where the GPU plays a  big role:

AMD

Name	Shaders	vRAM	Speed	NVIDIA Equivalent
Pro RX 555X	768	2GB	855	MX150/MX250
RadeonRX 540	512	4GB	1219	~950M
Radeon RX 550	640	4GB	1287 – 1476	+950M
Radeon RX 560X	1024	4GB	1172 – 1275	1050GTX
RX 580	1536	6GB	1077	~1060GTX
RX 5500M	1408	8GB	1327 – 1645	~1660Ti
RX 6700M	2304	10GB	1792	~3060RTX
RX 6800M	2560	12GB	2116 – 2300	~3070RTX++

• Less bugs and glitches
• Official support from AutoDesk if something goes wrong.
• Need to use special plug-ins that only run on workstation laptops.

I urge you to check the following table:

And pay close attention to the ‘Equivalent’ column which tells you which consumer (or gaming) dedicated graphics card has the same power (CUDA Cores & vRAM). This is important to avoid being RIPPED OFF as vendors love to 

Workstation GPU	Equivalent	Cores/Shaders	Clock Speed	vRAM
P500	MX150-	256	1519	2GB
P520	MX150	384	1493	2GB
K2100M	GT 750M	576	667	2GB
K3100	765M-	768	706	4GB
P620	MX250/1050	512	1442	4GB
M620M	950M-	512	1018	4GB
M1000M	950M	512	1072	4GB
Pro WX 3200	RX 550	1082	640	4GB
M2000M	950M/960M	640	1197	4GB
M1200	960GTX	640	1150	4GB
P1000	1050GTX	512	1519	4GB
P2000	1050Ti	768	1468	4GB
T2000	1650/1660Ti	1024	1785	4GB
T1000	1650-	768	1455	4GB
RTX 3000	2070RTX+	1280	1380	6GB
RTX 4000	2070/2080	2560	1560	8GB
RTX 5000	2080RTX+++	3072	1350	16GB
RTX A2000	~3050Ti	2560	1200	4GB
RTX A3000	~3060RTX	4096	1560	6GB
RTX A4000	~3070RTX	5120	1560	8GB
RTX A5000	~3080RTX	6144	1695	16GB
RTX A5500	~3080Ti RTX	7427	???	16GB

3. RAM

RAM is actually a way more useful spec for interior designers than graphics card.

Here’s why:

Revit & AutoCAD: Draftting/Modeling

When you render the amount of details (data) is increased significantly, the software takes your MODEL and final work, and starts adding high quality pixels all over.

All this data is still stored on RAM and most of the time , the amount of data is SO large , that the software will not find enough RAM to fit ALL of into it. Thus , a large chunk of data gets queued. If you have a lot more RAM, there will be no queue and the only time constraint will be how long it takes for your CPU & GPU to do the ‘processing’. 

 

On average, people will find 32GB as the maximum limit to speed up rendering (most interior designers have to wait 25-30 min).

However, you may see an additional 3-5 min reduction with 64GB RAM depending on what you’re rendering (most laptops support up to 48GB though).

 

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4. Storage

Sketches and drawings (on Sketch Up, Revit , so on) don’t really take up much space. You can have a thousand of these and even the  storage with the lowest capacity will only be 20% full. 

Thus instead of worrying about how much storage you can get out of a laptop, you should instead focus on the TYPE of storage you’re getting IF you want to maximize performance.

Although I will say this: Storage type has a somewhat small impact on performance these days so it may not even worth your time worrying about which storage to pick for the following reason:

SSD vs HDD: Storage Speed

Everyone knows that SSD (Solid State Drives) are several times faster than HDDs and they will give you the following benefits:

• Opening files and saving files will happen in an instant.
• Revit will be up and ready in less than a min.
  • Consider that revit has a bucketload of libraries for diagrams, surfaces, textures, lightining ALL needed to load for you to use the software. 
• Opening large files in 3DS Max, Rhino, AutoCAD, will be several times faster (usually take 30 sec tops as opposed to several minutes with HDDs).
• Windows also launches in less than 10 sec, thus you can have your system up and ready to go as soon as you feel like using it and turn it on.

So why should I not worry about storage type with all these benefits?

Because virtually every laptop made within the past 4 years has a Solid State Drive now. They may be PCie NVMe, SATA III, etc, but they will all have the same benefits and almost equal speed for the tasks just mentioned.

If you want to be nitty picky about it and perhaps make sure all the above is done milliseconds faster then you look for PCIe NVMe SSDs with 4 lanes.

Hard Disk Drive Upgrade

It is likely a lot of people reading this are buying a new laptop because their current one is so slow but little do they know that  changing the HDD (if they have one) to an SSD can massively improve performance and may go as far as buying a new laptop useless.

If you’re buying a very old laptop with an HDD due to budget constraints, you can do the same too: upgrade your storage to an SSD. You’ll be surprised to know what a big difference an SSD does and if you add more RAM (16GB) the difference in performance will be massive. 

5. Display

There is a lot of specs when it comes to displays: constrant ratios, brightness levels, colorspace, gamut,etc

Those are useless specs to look out for. Virtually every display found on laptops has enough brightness, good constrant ratios and enough gamut (# of colors or colorspace) for interior design purposes. 

What you should be concerned is:

Why? Because it’s just easier to work on something when you have a bigger & more detail view of your work. Plus the amount of extra screen space also allows you to fit more toolbars and quick action buttons which eliminates the need to use drop down menus which at the same time increases your productivity as you’ll spending less time looking for a function and more time sketching.

Resolution

The obvious way to do this is by choosing a big display. Laptops are limited to 17” however and it may not be wise to choose a 17” display either because that adds a massive amount of extra weight making them too heavy to carry.

If weight is not an issue by all means go for it.

However, a much better way or an additional way (on top of a big display) to increase your workspace area is by choosing a high resolution display.

High resolution basically means more pixels and more pixels means more objects can be rendered withouth the needs to use much screen space thereby reducing icons & objects to smaller sizes yet still keeping them high quality.

HD & HD+ (768p and 900p): These resolutions are very very low and must be avoided at all costs, HD is obselete and you will only find them on cheap old laptops only. HD+ is common on laptops under 450 bucks, they are not as bad but you cannot settle for them if you look long enough you can find the next ones.

FHD (1080p): This is the minimum for any serious interior design work and its virtually available on every laptop with a dedicated GPU (+550 dollars). You can also find them under 550 dollars and will ocassionally be found on laptops around 350, the lower the price the lower the chances of finding it.

QHD (2.5k): This is becoming more and more common even on somewhat affordable laptops (See HP Victus selling for 650 dollars). Ideally you want this but this is rare rare to find under 1000 dollars. If budget is not an issue and this is your main tool of work, it’s definitely a good investment.

UHD (4k): the best and highest resolution found on laptops. Unfortunately, you’ll only find them on laptops over 2000 dollars. Not worth it, QHD displays are enough.