House Madness vs RoomSketcher: an honest comparison (2026)

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Short answer: Choose RoomSketcher if you want polished floor plans and 3D images for selling or furnishing a home, a large furniture library, apps for tablets and computers, or LiDAR scanning with an iPhone. Choose House Madness if you are converting a loft, thinking about removing a load-bearing wall, or need a set of drawings with a site plan, sections and elevations, and if you want to work in the browser with open file formats.

Disclosure: We make House Madness. RoomSketcher is a good Norwegian product, and many people should choose it. This is our most honest view of where each one is better, as of September 2026.

What is the difference at a glance?

	RoomSketcher	House Madness
Background	Established Norwegian company	New product built for Norwegian houses, launching in 2026
Platform	App for Windows, Mac, iPad and Android tablets, plus a web portal	Any modern browser on any operating system, no install
Languages	Several, including English and Norwegian	English and Norwegian
Units	Metric and imperial	Metric only
Furniture and materials	Thousands of products and materials, many from well-known brands	A smaller selection of furniture, mouldings, colours and cladding
Scanning	FloorCapture with LiDAR on iPhone and iPad (beta)	No
Importing drawings	AI Convert from JPG, PNG or PDF. The first is free, then credits	Automatic tracing of scanned PDFs and images, with deskewing
Roofs and lofts	Sloped ceilings set by ceiling heights on walls, no roof tool	Parametric roofs, knee walls, collar ties and a one-click loft
Area	Total area tool	The 1.9 m line and measurable area under NS 3940, per room and floor
Load-bearing structure	Not found	Bearing walls, beams and posts, loads, rough pre-sizing and a work order
Drawing set	Floor plans to scale, no sections or elevations	Site plan, plans, section and elevations from the model, with a title block
Printing to scale	With Pro	With Pluss
Export	JPG, PNG and PDF	PNG, SVG, GLB (3D), PDF via printing and a project file
Real estate	Integrations with the Swedish realtor systems Mspecs and Vitec, and a floor plan ordering service	None
Storage	Cloud, synced between devices	Locally in your browser, with a project file you own

Where is RoomSketcher better?

Furniture and materials. RoomSketcher has thousands of furniture and material options, many from well-known brands. Our library is much smaller.
Apps and scanning. You can draw on Windows, Mac, iPad and Android tablets. FloorCapture scans rooms with LiDAR on an iPhone 12 Pro or newer and an iPad Pro from 2020 or newer. RoomSketcher describes FloorCapture as a beta. House Madness has no mobile app and no scanning.
Selling homes. RoomSketcher is built for real estate. Realtors in Sweden can order floor plans straight from the Mspecs and Vitec systems, and anyone can order finished floor plans.
Presentation. 3D floor plans, 3D photos, 360 views and Live 3D make strong images for listings. Some of this needs Pro or credits.
AI Convert. AI Convert turns an image or a PDF into an editable plan in seconds.
International reach. RoomSketcher has been on the market for many years, is available in several languages and supports imperial units. House Madness is metric only.

Where is House Madness stronger?

Lofts and knee walls. You choose the roof type, pitch and knee wall height, and walls under the roof take their shape from it. RoomSketcher makes sloped ceilings by setting ceiling heights on walls, but has no roof tool.
Headroom and measurable area. Under NS 3940, the Norwegian standard for measuring floor area, floor under a sloping roof counts where the headroom is at least 1.9 m, plus 0.6 m beyond that line. House Madness draws this line and computes the area as you change the loft. Outside Norway the rules differ, but the line still shows you at a glance where people can stand upright.
Load-bearing walls. You see a rough estimate of what each bearing wall carries, can replace a wall with a beam, follow the new posts down to a footing and get a work order that includes temporary propping. The numbers are rough estimates, and a structural engineer must check them before any work starts.
Sections and elevations. One click makes an A3 set with a site plan at 1:500, a plan for each floor, a section and four elevations, all generated from the model and showing existing, new and demolished work.
Browser and open formats. Nothing to install, and it works on Linux and Chromebooks, where the RoomSketcher app is not supported. You can export SVG, GLB and a project file. RoomSketcher exports JPG, PNG and PDF.
Old drawings. Automatic tracing finds walls, doors and windows in scanned drawings, including walls drawn hatched or as outlines. It is included in the free plan.
An assistant that edits the drawing. You can type what you want to change, such as “a window in the west wall of the living room”, and the assistant shows the change as a grey proposal that you accept or discard. It never removes a load-bearing wall without a beam or an explicit confirmation, and its structural answers remind you that an engineer must check them.

What is House Madness missing?

Knowing what a tool does not do matters as much. As of September 2026, House Madness does not have:

a mobile app, or scanning with LiDAR or a laser meter
a large library of brand-name furniture
realtor integrations or a service for ordering finished floor plans
dormers and roof windows, which are on our roadmap
stairs other than straight, L-shaped and U-shaped
imperial units
finished voice control, which is only available as a preview so far

House Madness is also new, while RoomSketcher has many years of operation behind it.

Does House Madness work outside Norway?

Mostly, yes. Drawing, importing old plans, roofs and lofts, the load-bearing planner, 3D and printing to scale work wherever you are, and the interface is available in English. Keep four limits in mind:

Site data. The address, property boundary and terrain lookups use Kartverket, the Norwegian mapping authority, so they only work for Norwegian properties.
Drawing conventions. The drawing set follows what Norwegian municipalities expect. Check what your local authority requires before you submit anything.
Area rules. The measurable area follows NS 3940. Other countries measure floor area differently.
Units. House Madness works in millimetres and metres only.

The structural numbers are generic rough estimates, not a design to any local code. Wherever you live, a qualified structural engineer must check any change to a load-bearing wall.

How much do they cost?

	RoomSketcher (September 2026)	House Madness (planned prices)
Free	Draw and furnish, with 2 credits and one free AI Convert	One whole house with every tool, and a watermarked preview of the drawing set
Personal	Pro: 144 USD a year (12 USD a month billed annually), with 5 credits a month. Monthly billing is also available	Pluss: NOK 79 a month, or a 12-month pass for NOK 590 that does not renew automatically
Business	Team: 420 USD a year for 5 users	Proff: NOK 499 a month per user, excluding VAT

RoomSketcher’s prices come from its pricing page and G2. Credits pay for exports and 3D products, among other things. House Madness launches in Norway first. Our planned international prices are 7.99 EUR or USD a month for Pluss, and 59 EUR or USD for the 12-month pass. House Madness uses no credits, and printing to scale is included in Pluss. The only thing we plan to meter is time with the AI assistant. See the pricing page for current prices and terms.

Which one should you choose?

You are selling or renting out a home: RoomSketcher.
You want to furnish rooms and show them in 3D: RoomSketcher.
You want to measure your home with an iPhone: RoomSketcher FloorCapture, or a scanning app such as magicplan.
You are converting a loft: House Madness, for the knee walls, headroom and section. See lofts and knee walls.
You are thinking about removing a load-bearing wall: House Madness to prepare, then a structural engineer. See load-bearing walls and beams.
You need a site plan, sections and elevations: House Madness. See application drawings and printing.
You use Linux or a Chromebook: House Madness.

You can also use both: House Madness to plan the loft and prepare the drawings, and RoomSketcher for the listing plan when you sell.

How did we compare them?

We compared features, platforms and prices in September 2026. The RoomSketcher facts come from RoomSketcher’s own website and help centre and from G2. RoomSketcher’s website could not be reached from our research environment, so we relied on search engine snapshots of the official pages. Where we write “not found”, we found no documentation of the feature. That does not prove it cannot exist. We have no agreement with RoomSketcher. The House Madness facts describe the product at launch, and its prices are planned prices. If you spot a mistake, we will gladly correct it.

Summary

RoomSketcher is better for furniture, apps, LiDAR scanning, presentation and selling homes.
House Madness is stronger for lofts and knee walls, measurable area, load-bearing walls, and sections and elevations generated from the model.
House Madness runs in the browser and exports open formats. RoomSketcher needs an app to draw.
House Madness is metric only, and its site data and drawing conventions are Norwegian.
Both have free plans. Neither replaces a structural engineer or the approvals your local authority requires.

To try it, open House Madness in your browser or import an old drawing.

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