Lighting plan designer: design a lighting plan online, free, in your browser

A lighting plan designer is a tool that takes a floor plan — usually the builder's PDF — and lets you place every downlight, LED strip, wall light, switch and sensor exactly where it will live in the finished house. The good ones do it in the browser, need no CAD skills, and turn the finished plan into a materials list and a quote.

That last part is the difference between a drawing tool and a business tool. A pretty plan is nice; a plan that becomes an itemised, priced quote the same afternoon is how jobs get won.

Who actually needs a lighting plan designer?

• Electricians — walk the job, place the lights on the plan with the customer watching, and leave with a design they've already fallen for. The upsell does itself when they can see LED strip under their kitchen island.
• Homeowners and renovators — work out where the downlights should go before the sparkie arrives, so the site walk is a confirmation, not a negotiation.
• Builders and designers — hand every client the same professional lighting layout instead of a highlighter markup that photocopies badly.

What to look for in a lighting plan designer

We built robot® Plan after years of quoting high-end residential electrical work, so this checklist is opinionated but earned:

• Starts from the plan you already have. Upload the builder's PDF or a photo. If a tool demands DWG files or a 3D model, it was built for engineers, not for Tuesday afternoon.
• Real products, not clip-art symbols. A placed switch should know it's a 4-gang with two dimmed circuits; a strip light should know its length, wattage and the transformer it needs. That's what makes the materials list trustworthy.
• Layers and floors. Lighting, power, data and security on separate toggles, multiple storeys in one plan, one combined bill of materials.
• A share link, not a software install. Customers open the plan on their phone, tap any fitting and see what it is. No app, no account.
• Plan → quote in one step. The layout should price itself at your rates. Counting symbols off a printout at 9pm is how downlights get missed and margin disappears.

How long does a lighting plan take?

With a browser-based designer, a typical four-bedroom home is 15–25 minutes: drop the plan in, work room by room through lighting, then switches, then power and data. The how-to videos show a full house done in real time.

What does it cost?

robot® Plan's designer is free to try for 30 days with every feature on — plans, share links, PDF export and automatic quoting. After that it's a simple monthly subscription (current pricing here).

If you've got a builder's PDF on hand, start a lighting plan now — you'll have a shareable design before your coffee goes cold.