Do any of these free interior design courses give a certificate
None of the 6 courses in the table comes with a free certificate. Every course is free to study from start to finish, but the credential is either a paid extra or not offered at all, so read the certificate column before you plan to put one on a CV.
Alison: free to study, certificate sold separately
The Alison courses, Diploma in Interior Design, Practical Guide to Interior Design, Diploma in Interior Design and 3D Visualisation, Designing Children's Rooms and Transform Your Home: Learn to Decorate and Refurbish with Style, all cost nothing to study: the modules and assessments are free, there is no time limit and no card is needed. After you pass, Alison offers a CPD-accredited Certificate or Diploma as a paid digital or printed product, priced inside your account rather than on the public page, which is why no price is shown here. If you do not buy it, a free Learner Record confirms the courses you completed and your results. Expect advertisements while you study unless you pay for Alison Premium.
Udemy: no certificate on free courses
Interior Design Styles, Colors and Materials by Planner 5D is a free Udemy course, and Udemy's support pages state that free courses do not offer a certificate of completion. You get every lecture at no cost, but no credential, no instructor Q&A, and possibly ads. If a free certificate is the goal, there is none in interior design yet; the free credentials in other subjects are collected at free certifications.
Which free interior design course a beginner should open first
The listed courses split by what they teach rather than by difficulty.
The whole discipline in order
Diploma in Interior Design is a text-based survey rated beginner level that follows the order of a real project: what designers do and the routes into the profession, client briefs and preliminary diagrams, floor plans, planning rooms and commercial spaces with accessibility in mind, colour psychology and neutral schemes, surface materials, the three main types of lighting, furniture history and selection, textiles and accessories, sustainability and ethics, and setting up a small design business. Eleven content modules, with assessments after modules five and eleven and a final assessment.
Practical Guide to Interior Design is the compact alternative, also beginner level, about working method rather than styles: lines, forms, colour, texture and space; taking a concept to a buildable design; technical and freehand drawing for client presentations; surveying a space; writing a brief and a proposal; and a short unit on where Google SketchUp fits. It is too brief to teach SketchUp or drawing in depth.
Styles, colour and materials
Interior Design Styles, Colors and Materials by Planner 5D takes 2 hours of short videos, taught by a residential designer who works at Planner 5D, the maker of a 2D/3D home design tool. It walks through modern, minimalist, Scandinavian, classical and neoclassical, country, industrial and loft, nautical and eclectic interiors with the common mistakes people make in each, then how to combine styles, how colour affects mood, and how to judge finish materials. No experience or equipment is needed; it does not cover space planning, drawing or business practice.
Diploma in Interior Design and 3D Visualisation is Alison's video-based diploma, rated advanced level, for people who already know the basics: foundations and elements, interior styles and their historical influences, colour theory and space planning, materials and finishes, decorative elements and lighting, furniture and project workflow, design presentation to clients, and the business of design. Alison discloses that its text was drafted in part with GPT-4o and then reviewed by the authors.
Free interior decorating courses for a single project
Transform Your Home treats decoration and refurbishment as a single project: reasons to renovate and how to budget, the main home decor styles and design themes from different countries, decoration plans for rooms, ceilings and walls, then judging and hiring a contractor, scheduling and payment, the paperwork and health and safety rules of home improvement work, and starting a refurbishing business. Alison labels it advanced; the regulatory material is general, so check local rules. Designing Children's Rooms is a single-module course on warm and cold colours for different ages, age-appropriate furniture, floors and ceilings, safe storage and themes, with a second half on writing a business plan and marketing a small design service.
Do you need software or drawing skills to learn interior design free
Not for these courses. The Alison diploma and Practical Guide are text-based and require no software; SketchUp appears only as an introductory unit of the latter. The Planner 5D course states that no equipment is needed and suggests practising in Planner 5D afterwards, the tool the instructor's employer makes, not a requirement. The 3D Visualisation diploma names SketchUp and AutoCAD on its page but is a theory and presentation course rather than a software tutorial. Nothing here is accredited education for professional practice.
What to study alongside interior design
Colour theory, composition and drawing are covered on the free art courses hub, and mood boards and client presentations borrow from free graphic design courses. The business modules that end several of these courses have fuller counterparts under free business courses.