You've just bought your first home in Denver, and the excitement of getting the keys has given way to a much bigger question: how do you furnish an entire space without second-guessing every purchase? You've saved dozens of sofas, rugs, and dining tables, but figuring out what actually works together is another story.
RoomLift offers a traditional approach, sending physical fabric swatches, paint samples, and design plans straight to your door. But spending hundreds of dollars on a single room design isn't necessarily practical when you have multiple spaces to furnish or want the flexibility to change your mind.
The best RoomLift alternatives offer different ways to bring your space together, from working with a professional designer to exploring digital room designs with furniture you can actually buy. This guide compares six options based on pricing, design flexibility, shopping support, and what you get for your money.
Key Takeaways
- The best RoomLift alternatives offer more flexibility in how you design, visualize, and furnish your space, without relying on physical sample boxes.
- Digital room design makes planning easier. Many alternatives provide 3D visuals, furniture layouts, and shopping lists so you can see how pieces work together before buying.
- Pricing depends on the level of design support. Free self-service tools work for basic layouts, while designer-led packages typically charge per room or project.
- Furniture shopping support varies. Some services provide design concepts and retailer links, while others help with sourcing, discounts, and ordering.
- First Chair is worth considering for multi-room projects, with unlimited designs, real furniture from multiple retailers, and shopping support under one membership.
Quick Comparison Table
1. First Chair
First Chair designs your room and connects every piece to a real, buyable product. It learns your taste from the images and rooms you upload, then designs around your actual space, your aesthetic, and your budget, pulling real furniture and decor from brands like West Elm, CB2, Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, Lulu & Georgia, and plenty you haven't shopped before.
The underlying difference between First Chair and a service like RoomLift is what you're paying for. RoomLift charges $900 to $1,500 for one design delivered once, in a box, with no further revisions baked into the fee. Unlimited designs mean a rug swap or a full directional change costs nothing extra, and the next room starts where the last one left off rather than behind a new invoice. Every concept connects to a real piece you can buy, not a render that dead-ends at a screenshot.
First Chair also carries insider pricing on most pieces, shown next to the standard retail price right in the app, and a Design Concierge who can hunt down that pricing and place the order for you. For anyone who bought an Architectural Designs house plan, First Chair builds a complete furnishing plan with estimated prices and suggested vendors.
Key Features
- Unlimited designs and product searches in the app
- Design built around your actual room, taste, and budget
- A Design Concierge that sources member pricing and places orders
- A $49.99 furnishing plan for Architectural Designs home plans
Pricing
Membership runs $59.99 for three months or $99.99 for six months, and it renews automatically until you cancel. Cancel anytime before your next renewal.
Why Members Choose First Chair
Members who furnish more than one room pay the same flat membership fee regardless of how many rooms they design. Members get insider pricing on the pieces they actually pick and a concierge to place the order.
2. Havenly
Use Havenly when the job calls for a single designer you can message, text, or call throughout the project, and a shopping list you can check off at the end. Havenly pairs each customer with a personal designer for either an online package or an in-person visit, and the deliverable includes a final design concept, 3D renderings, a custom floor plan, and support ordering and tracking pieces. Havenly's full package covers living rooms, bedrooms, and other main spaces; kitchens and bathrooms are outside the standard tier. The tradeoff against a physical design box is speed and revision count, since Havenly's online designers typically deliver first concepts digitally within days rather than weeks, but the room is still capped at one per package.
Key Features
- A personal Havenly designer assigned to the project
- One-on-one communication via messaging, text, or calls
- A final design concept with a personalized shopping list
- 3D renderings and a custom floor plan
- Access to a catalogue of 100+ home brands, including Interior Define, The Citizenry, Burrow, and St. Frank
How it differs from First Chair: Havenly sells one room per project fee with a single designer attached, where First Chair's membership covers unlimited designs and lets you move between rooms without a new purchase each time.
3. Decorilla
Use Decorilla when a project benefits from seeing more than one designer's concept for the same room before picking a direction. Decorilla's packages run on a flat rate, and the deliverable includes a realistic 3D model, unlimited communication with the design team, and concepts submitted by multiple accomplished designers rather than just one. A concrete example of the structure: the Bronze tier starts the process, while the Platinum tier scales up for larger or more complex spaces, and restaurant, retail, or other commercial jobs get a custom quote instead of a standard package. The tradeoff is the same per-room cap that applies across most of these services, and payment isn't released to the designer until the client signs off on the work, which adds a layer of built-in accountability but also means the project has to reach approval before it closes.
Key Features
- Unlimited communication with the design team
- A realistic 3D model of the finished room
- Concepts submitted from multiple designers
- Member pricing on eligible pieces
- Payment held until the client approves the final work
Multiple concepts help when you're genuinely undecided on a direction, but they slow delivery relative to a single-designer service.
How it differs from First Chair: Decorilla sells one room through a flat project fee with multiple designers weighing in, where First Chair's subscription covers unlimited rooms and product searches without a new fee per project.
4. Spacejoy
Use Spacejoy when a photorealistic 3D render of the finished room matters more than a physical sample in hand. Spacejoy pairs customers with an expert designer after a short photo and style questionnaire, then delivers a photo-realistic render of the room with shoppable products attached, so the path from concept to checkout stays inside one screen. A concrete tradeoff: design delivery runs 7 to 10 business days depending on the tier, and the number of revisions included ranges from 2 to 4, with the design itself available to reference for 2 to 4 months before it expires. Like Havenly and Decorilla, the package covers one room.
Key Features
- 1:1 work with a professional designer
- Photorealistic 3D render of the finished room
- Shoppable products linked directly to the final design
- Video consultation with the assigned designer
- 2 to 4 design revisions depending on the package
How it differs from First Chair: Spacejoy's render and shopping list expire after a set window tied to one room, where First Chair's designs and product searches stay available without an expiration as long as the membership is active.
5. Collov AI
Use Collov AI when the job is staging a listing or visualizing a floorplan for a real estate audience, not furnishing a room you plan to live in day to day. Collov AI generates virtual staging images, 3D floorplan visualizations, and virtual tours from an uploaded room photo or floorplan file. The platform runs on a photo-credit system, and usage resets each month rather than rolling over, so the pricing tier has to match how many images a project actually needs. It covers JPEG, PNG, and PDF file types for uploads and exports.
Key Features
- AI virtual staging and multi-angle staging
- AI chat edit for adjusting a generated design
- 3D floorplan visualizations
- 360-degree panorama and 3D tour generation
- Human-assisted multi-angle staging option
How it differs from First Chair: Collov AI is built for staging and listing visuals on a credit meter, where First Chair is built around furnishing the room you're standing in, with unlimited designs tied to a flat membership rather than photo credits.
6. IKEA Kreativ
Use IKEA Kreativ when the budget is zero and the room is going to stay entirely IKEA. The tool is a free virtual room designer that lets you start from a room photo, a 3D scan on a LiDAR-enabled phone, manually entered dimensions, or a pre-built starter room, then erase existing furniture and redesign the space on top of your real layout. A concrete example of the ceiling here: everything placed in the scene comes from IKEA's own catalog, and the only purchase path is adding pieces to an IKEA shopping bag. For anyone furnishing with other brands in the mix, that's a real limit rather than a workaround.
Key Features
- Free virtual room design tool
- Room photo, 3D scan, or manual dimension input
- Erase existing furniture and redesign over your real room
- More than 50 starter rooms for inspiration
- Add selected pieces directly to an IKEA shopping bag
How it differs from First Chair: IKEA Kreativ designs with one retailer's catalog at no cost, where First Chair designs across more than 100 brands with member pricing built into the purchase.
Best Alternative for Each Budget and Design Need
A single $1,500 RoomLift box and a free IKEA Kreativ session sit at opposite ends of a spectrum, and most people land somewhere between them. Collov AI's credit system is built around staging and listing visuals rather than personal furnishing. Havenly and Decorilla each structure their service around a single room with a dedicated designer and a shopping list, at the cost of paying again for the next room.
For anyone furnishing more than one space, moving through a few life transitions in a short window, or simply not ready to commit to a single static design, First Chair's membership covers unlimited designs and product searches for less than the cost of one RoomLift box, with insider pricing attached to the pieces you actually choose.
Digital 3D Design vs. Physical Samples and Design Boxes
RoomLift's box of paint chips and fabric swatches gives you something to hold, but it's a slower format with no digital visual to reference once the swatches scatter. Baymard Institute's research on furniture shopping found that written dimensions and dimension images matter more to purchase confidence than any single physical touchpoint.
The same research found that most users largely avoid AR features when furniture shopping, since the feature tends to create doubt rather than resolve it. On the design side, visualization tools help clients see a space more clearly and speed up approvals, according to an MK Workshop cofounder quoted by Architectural Digest, and concepting a room can take minutes rather than days once a digital tool replaces manual sketching.
None of this means a physical sample has no value, but it does mean a design delivered as a static box, with no digital version to fall back on, is working against the grain of how most people now confirm a purchase before committing.
Coverage for Kitchens, Bathrooms, and Full-Home Projects
Not every alternative covers every room type. Havenly's full package does not extend to kitchens or bathrooms, so those projects need a different arrangement.
Decorilla's packages cover rooms, multiple rooms, and business spaces, with custom quotes available for restaurants, retail, or other unique spaces. RoomLift, Spacejoy, and Havenly's standard packages each price per room, which means a full-home project turns into several separate purchases.
First Chair's unlimited designs mean a full-home furnishing plan isn't a bigger bill, just more rooms designed under the same membership.
Why First Chair Stands Out
Most of the services on this list sell you one room, once. First Chair sells you the ability to keep designing, room after room, without a new invoice every time your taste shifts or your lease changes. The pieces shown are always real and buyable, sourced across more than 100 brands rather than locked to one retailer's shelf, and insider pricing is visible next to the retail price before you ever check out. Add a Design Concierge that hunts down that pricing and places the order, and the distance between "I like this room" and "I own this room" gets a lot shorter.
RoomLift's box format works if you want to hold swatches once and purchase at retail price on your own. The alternatives covered here each trade that format for something digital, something cheaper per room, or something more automated.
First Chair is the one built to cover the whole furnishing job, not just one room: unlimited designs and product searches, insider pricing on real pieces from more than 100 brands, and a $49.99 furnishing plan available for anyone working from an Architectural Designs home plan. For a membership priced under $100, that's a different kind of value than a single $1,500 box.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best alternative to RoomLift?
The strongest overall alternative depends on what you need delivered, but First Chair covers the most ground for the price: unlimited designs and product searches for a flat membership fee, compared to a single room per purchase from services like Havenly, Decorilla, or Spacejoy.
What is the difference between RoomLift and Havenly?
RoomLift ships a physical box of samples and layout plans for a one-time fee of $900 to $1,500, with no digital visuals, and customers place orders themselves through retailer links, though RoomLift provides access to trade discounts where available. Havenly works through online messaging or in-person visits with a personal designer, delivering 3D renderings, a shopping list, and ordering support, though its full package does not cover kitchens or bathrooms.
Does RoomLift provide 3D renderings or physical samples?
RoomLift provides physical samples, including fabric swatches, paint chips, and layout plans mailed in a box, but it does not include digital 3D renderings as part of the deliverable.
Does RoomLift help with ordering and purchasing furniture?
No. RoomLift's product cards point customers to the retailer's own purchase page, and customers buy directly at standard retail prices without discounts or ordering support built into the service.
Do online interior design services offer member pricing or discounts on furniture?
Some do. Decorilla applies member pricing on eligible pieces. First Chair shows insider pricing next to standard retail prices in the app and provides a Design Concierge who sources that pricing and places the order. Havenly and Spacejoy do not include built-in trade pricing.
Can RoomLift or its alternatives design multiple rooms or an entire home?
Most of the services covered here, including Havenly, Decorilla, and Spacejoy, price and deliver one room per purchase, so a full-home project means buying multiple packages. First Chair's unlimited designs cover a full-home project under one membership instead of a new fee per room.
