Compare the Top Free Lighting Design Software as of December 2025

What is Free Lighting Design Software?

Lighting design software is software used to create detailed plans and simulations for any type of interior, exterior, landscape or other architectural lighting projects. It allows for the specification, calculation and modeling of various variables such as position, distribution, intensity and control. This software can help to save time and resources when designing complex lighting systems. Compare and read user reviews of the best Free Lighting Design software currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

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    Coohom

    Coohom

    Coohom

    Coohom is a leading global cloud-based, 3D design platform that provides all-in-one software and services to empower designers and businesses to design a professional project in minutes, and get photo-realistic 3D visualizations in seconds. With a presence spanning the United States, China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia, Coohom's innovative solutions have garnered the trust of over 10 million customers from 200 countries. With the aim of facilitating the digital transformation of customers in the interior design, furniture & home decor, and Kitchen & Bath industry, Coohom provides a comprehensive suit of software encompassing design, rendering, marketing, production, and construction, helping to streamline their workflows and achieve success.
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    Starting Price: $0 per month
  • 2
    ReluxDesktop

    ReluxDesktop

    RELUX Informatik AG

    ReluxDesktop is a high-performance, intuitively-operated application for simulating artificial light and daylight. It provides you with rapid and efficient support on all the different aspects of big and small projects, without taking any unnecessary roundabout routes. Simulation of lighting and sensors in real-time! Calculation of absolute values, national and international standards, compatible with CAD and BIM systems, plus a great deal more. The application is available to you free of charge thanks to the support of our partners in the industry. Make ReluxDesktop your day-to-day tool, you'll be surprised how much time you save with it! Add-on for other programs. Useful functions for Autodesk Revit. Add-on for ReluxDesktop. Real tunnel calculation based on the current standards.
    Starting Price: free of charge
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    GreenScapes

    GreenScapes

    Landscape Design Imaging Software

    GreenScapes is a fast and easy landscape, hardscape, and lighting design program. It is our most extensive program. Create landscape designs in a matter of minutes. Designs are photo-realistic renderings with the landscape, hardscape, and lighting installed. Greenscapes comes with built-in training videos for every command in the program and a tutorial sequence that takes you through a complete design step by step. There are no boring manuals to read. We also have advanced techniques you might want to see. GreenScapes will help you close the deal quickly. Potential clients fall madly in love with being able to see their home as if you completed the project. Let us show you. Our programs are Windows-based but work on a Mac with virtual environments like Parallels/Windows making it easy to switch between macOS and Windows in a single click, giving Mac users the best of both worlds. Create beautiful photo-realistic designs using GreenScapes landscape content.
    Starting Price: $500 one-time payment
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    SweetLight

    SweetLight

    SweetLight

    The SweetLight DMX controller system includes powerful lighting control software and a set of DMX interfaces to suit your requirements. Fully take advantage of your lights with an easy DMX control system, and let the software play alone a varied show for hours. Select a group of par cans and adjust channel levels & fade mode and duration for each step. Select a group of moving lights, and for the chosen channels, load/draw a curve and adjust the delay between all fixtures. Select the fixtures and apply them rainbow/text scrolling / animated pictures effects. Customize your screen with pages, buttons and sliders of your choice. Connect a midi control surface to drive all with color control of the midi buttons. Drag and drop the light & audio & video files at a specific time to build the show. Build your stage with our bank of 3D objects, position your fixtures, and watch the lightshow in our 3D rendering.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 5
    ChalmLite

    ChalmLite

    Chalmit

    3D realistic renders, multi-language support, improved CAD layer management and so much more, discover ChalmLite 6.0 today. With simple, user-friendly windows based interfaced packed with new features, ChalmLite 6.0 allows users to create simple or complex lighting designs. Visualize lighting designs in realistically rendered 3D environments. Utilize a comprehensive set of quick estimators for your project and download the results in single-page reports. Enhanced luminaire selection tools for hazardous environments. Reports with links directly to online product resources.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 6
    OptiWin 3D Pro
    OptiWin 3D Pro is our own lighting calculation program, which we offer free of charge to our customers and partners. The program makes it possible to carry out lighting calculations for comprehensive and complex projects. Correct lighting calculations are important for maritime and oil and gas projects to satisfy norms and requirements and lux levels. Such calculations also make it possible to implement corrective measures at an early stage of a project. OptiWin 3D Pro calculations are provided in the form of well-documented reports. Provides easy and fast lighting calculations using CAD drawings.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 7
    Light ARchitect

    Light ARchitect

    Cooper Lighting Solutions

    Make lighting design as mobile as you are with Cooper Lighting Solutions augmented reality app. AR opens the door to design by enabling you to visualize lighting fixtures in any space or environment or setting. Select one or more of our most popular products to help you decide which luminaires are the perfect choice for your project. Customize your experience by adjusting orientations, colors, and shapes. Visualize real-time with a 360-degree view of the fixture from any angle or position. Receive an instant screenshot along with product information. Today’s education campuses require healthy spaces that promote learning, improve student productivity, and enhance the student experience. Lighting and controls solve those needs while also providing significant energy and cost savings.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 8
    Radiance

    Radiance

    Radiance

    Radiance is intended to aid lighting designers and architects by predicting the light levels and appearance of a space prior to construction. The package includes programs for modeling and translating scene geometry, luminaire data and material properties, all of which are needed as input to the simulation. The lighting simulation itself uses ray tracing techniques to compute radiance values (ie. the quantity of light passing through a specific point in a specific direction), which are typically arranged to form a photographic quality image. The resulting image may be analyzed, displayed and manipulated within the package, and converted to other popular image file formats for export to other packages, facilitating the production of hard copy output. The major portion of the Radiance package, and the part that is of chief interest to users, is the lighting simulation engine that calculates light levels and renders images.
  • 9
    DIALux
    DIALux is the world's leading software for lighting design and marketing tool for luminaire manufacturers. DIALux is free of charge and available in 25 languages. More than 750,000 professional users worldwide, including engineers, electricians and lighting designers, plan, calculate and visualize light for indoor and outdoor areas with DIALux, using real products from more than 190 renowned luminaire manufacturers. From entire buildings and individual rooms to car parks or street and emergency lighting. Create a unique atmosphere with genuine products from our DIALux members and convince with an individual lighting project. Become a DIALux member now. Increase your brand awareness, expand your reach and generate quality leads by connecting with potential customers during the digital planning process. Benefit from the special advantages of DIALux membership. Plan, calculate and visualize light for indoor and outdoor areas.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 10
    Capture

    Capture

    Capture

    Bring lighting, media and motion into your visualisation. Our rendering engine's outstanding colour accuracy and amazing performance will impress you right away! With a complete library of lighting fixtures, trusses, LED panels and video projectors you have everything you need to make your ideas come to life. When your design is complete you can render it to high quality image and video files. You can also export Capture's unique, stand-alone, presentations which deliver full interactivity with your design. Our DirectX and Metalnative rendering engine uses a wide colour ACEScg pipeline to ensure that the rendering and all colours are as reliable as technically possible. Get more out of the communication with your lighting console such as DMX talkback for fixture focusing, fixture selection for programming and patch exchange for setup.
    Starting Price: Free
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    Light-in-Night

    Light-in-Night

    Light-in-Night

    Application for the design of street lighting and open areas. A mobile tool for designers and lighting specialists. Helps buyers of lighting equipment with the choice of fixtures. Set the parameters of the illuminated site or road. Choose fixtures and how to install them. After the calculation, you will receive a visual 3D model of the scene with a display of the illumination distribution. You can save the results of the lighting calculation and the parameters of the scene objects in the report. Sample projects made by professional lighting technicians will allow you not only to evaluate the possibilities of the program, but also to design your own lighting objects based on them.
    Starting Price: Free
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