5 Helpful Home Apps that You should Download A.S.A.P!

Technology has made our lives so much easier. Whether you’re at the house building stage, ready to decorate – or redecorate – every room, or you’ve completely settled in and started nesting, there’s likely an app to help you to create a dream haven for yourself and your family. In no particular order, here are five (5) handy apps that will make your home, and your life, better at Exford Waters!

1. Houzz: For interior design and home improvements, this app is a wealth of information. It has over 20 million images of home interiors and exteriors that you can turn to for inspiration. You can filter these by your personal style, room or even location. You can also connect with local tradespeople that are right for the tasks you need to be completed or crowd-source advice on your ideas before you decide on a direction.
2. PaletteCam (ios) or Palette (android): Bring the colours of the world into your home. These apps both help you to develop complementary colour palettes based on real-world scenes. So if you love a friend’s kitchen, a certain piece of art or have a favourite travel location, these apps will draw a range of colours from them and provide exact details on the shades. You can then choose paint and styling elements for your rooms based on the palettes provided. Easy!
3. Homestyler: If you’re the type of person who needs to see exactly how things will look before you commit to purchase, this app is made for you. It’s a three-dimensional (3D) visual design and decoration tool. You can snap pictures of your real spaces, furnish the empty rooms with 3D examples of buyable items and even paint the walls and install lighting. Homestyler has a whole community of fans that use the app just for fun – like a grown-up game, or real-life sims, so it must be good.
4. PlantNet: Houseplants are on-trend right now, so this app has become our go-to for identifying gorgeous greenery for the garden, balcony or indoors. Simply take a close-up picture of a tree, shrub or seedling that you like the look of in real life, tap whether your picture is of the leaf, flower or the bark and the app will return a near 100% accurate result, educating you about what the plant is. You can then order seeds online or pick a pot up on your next Bunnings run, only 11 minutes away in Melton.  
5. Alfred DIY CCTV: There are plenty of DIY and professional security apps out there that help you to monitor your home in terms of unwanted visitors or even smoke and water detection. Many need additional specialist equipment to be purchased in addition to the app. But if you just want a simple video set-up, Alfred just works! All you need is an old smartphone (you probably have several lying about the place that you can repurpose). Alfred is fast to set up, alerts you when there’s movement and you can talk and view through the app in real-time. With this app, you can monitor your front door, your baby in another room or even your dog when you leave the house – it even works in low lighting conditions.