Best Design Apps for Kids Who Like Making Things

TL;DR

The best design apps for kids do more than give them a blank canvas. They help children turn an idea into something they can see, play with, improve, and explain.

This list includes apps for different kinds of young makers: Taroo for guided creative projects, Tinkercad for 3D inventions, Canva Education for visual design, Bloxels and Scratch for games, Planner 5D for spaces, Minecraft Creative for worlds, and SketchUp for more advanced 3D design.

If your child is always inventing characters, rearranging rooms, building worlds, drawing objects, or asking “what if I made…?”, these are good places to start.

Short answer: what are the best design apps for kids?

Some of the best design apps for kids include Taroo, Tinkercad, Canva Education, Bloxels, Scratch, Planner 5D, Minecraft Creative, and SketchUp for Schools.

Each supports a different kind of design. Taroo is strongest for kids who need creative starting points and want to make across several mediums. Tinkercad and SketchUp focus on 3D design. Canva focuses on visual communication. Bloxels and Scratch help kids design games and interactive experiences. Planner 5D is useful for rooms and interiors, while Minecraft lets children design entire worlds.

Kids design things all the time.

A cardboard box becomes a spaceship. A bedroom gets rearranged five times. A doodle gets a name, a personality, and suddenly an entire story. A Minecraft house turns into a village.

They may not call any of this “design.”

But the process is already there: imagine something, make choices, see what happens, and change it until it feels right.

A good design app gives kids more ways to practice that process.

Not just prettier output.

More decisions.

What makes a good design app for kids?

The best design apps give children enough structure to start, but enough freedom to make the result their own.

The key test is simple:

Did the child make meaningful decisions?

A polished result made mostly by a template is less interesting than a rough result the child genuinely designed.

1. Taroo

Best for: Kids who want creative direction without being told exactly what to make
Creative focus: Drawing, stories, characters, music, speaking, observation, AI co-creation
Good fit for: Kids ages 6–10 who have lots of ideas but benefit from a starting point

Taroo approaches design differently from most tools on this list.

Instead of opening with an empty canvas, kids choose from creative quests. They might invent a character, respond to an unusual image, continue a story, create a rhythm, draw something from a prompt, or explore something around them.

The quest gives them somewhere to begin. The child decides where it goes.

AI can respond to their creation, suggest another direction, or help them develop an idea without simply making the finished project for them.

That makes Taroo useful for practicing the part of design that comes before mastering professional tools: deciding what should exist, what makes it interesting, and what should change next.

Why it stands out: It treats design as creative decision-making across many mediums, not just manipulating shapes on a screen.

2. Tinkercad

Best for: Kids who want to invent and design 3D objects
Creative focus: 3D modeling, spatial design, circuits, simple coding
Good fit for: Kids interested in inventions, products, buildings, or 3D printing

Tinkercad makes 3D design approachable by reducing objects to simple shapes.

Kids can combine cubes, cylinders, letters, holes, and other forms to build rockets, houses, creatures, furniture, vehicles, keychains, and inventions.

The interesting part is the constraint. An idea has to become dimensions, proportions, and pieces that actually fit together.

For kids who love building things physically, it can be a good first step into digital product design.

Why it stands out: It introduces real 3D-design thinking without starting with professional CAD complexity.

3. Canva Education

Best for: Kids who want to design something other people will see
Creative focus: Posters, presentations, videos, infographics, layouts
Good fit for: Kids interested in visual communication and school projects

Canva teaches a form of design children encounter everywhere: arranging words and images so an idea is clear.

Kids can make posters, presentations, invitations, simple videos, infographics, and other visual projects.

Templates make starting easy, but the most useful experience comes when kids begin changing them: deciding what deserves attention, what should be removed, where something belongs, and how the whole page should feel.

Why it stands out: It helps kids understand that design is not only decoration. It is communication.

4. Bloxels

Best for: Kids who want to design a video game without learning code first
Creative focus: Games, pixel art, characters, levels, storytelling
Good fit for: Kids who spend a lot of time playing games and want to make one

Bloxels lets children design characters, backgrounds, levels, obstacles, and stories and turn them into playable games.

That introduces a useful new design question:

What will someone else experience?

A level can look beautiful but still be boring. A jump can be too easy. An obstacle can be frustrating. Kids begin thinking about difficulty, pacing, rewards, and player behavior.

Why it stands out: It turns game-playing instincts into game-design decisions.

5. Scratch

Best for: Kids who want more control over games and interactive creations
Creative focus: Coding, games, animations, interactive stories
Good fit for: Kids ready to think about logic and behavior

Scratch uses visual code blocks to let kids decide how characters and objects behave.

A child can make something move when clicked, trigger a sound, change scenes, keep score, react to another character, or create rules for an entire game.

Compared with Bloxels, the learning curve is higher. But the creative ceiling is also much higher.

Kids are not only designing what something looks like. They are designing what happens.

Why it stands out: It connects creative expression with logic, systems, and cause and effect.

6. Planner 5D

Best for: Kids who constantly imagine rooms and houses
Creative focus: Interior design, floor plans, furniture, spatial planning
Good fit for: Kids interested in architecture, interiors, or rearranging spaces

Planner 5D lets kids lay out rooms, place furniture, experiment with materials, and move between 2D plans and 3D views.

Unlike an unrestricted drawing, space creates real constraints.

Does the couch fit? Where does the door open? Is there enough room to walk through? What happens when the bed moves to the other wall?

Those limitations are part of what makes design interesting.

Why it stands out: It makes kids balance imagination with real spatial constraints.

7. Minecraft Creative

Best for: Kids who want to design entire worlds
Creative focus: Architecture, landscapes, environments, systems, world-building
Good fit for: Kids who naturally think bigger than one object

Minecraft Creative removes most resource constraints and lets children focus on building.

A house can become a street. A street can become a town. The town can get roads, farms, parks, underground tunnels, landmarks, and its own visual rules.

That scale makes Minecraft surprisingly rich as a design environment.

The challenge is that complete freedom can also become aimless wandering. Giving kids a project — design a floating village, an animal sanctuary, or a city without cars — can make the experience much stronger.

Why it stands out: Few kid-friendly tools give children this much space to design environments and worlds.

8. SketchUp for Schools

Best for: Older kids ready for more serious architecture and 3D modeling
Creative focus: Buildings, structures, spatial design, precise 3D models
Good fit for: Kids whose interest in architecture or design is becoming more serious

SketchUp for Schools is closer to the kind of tool an actual designer might use.

Children can create more precise 3D structures, think about scale and geometry, and gradually move from playful building toward architectural modeling.

It is probably too much tool for many younger children. But for an older kid who has already spent years building in Minecraft or experimenting with Tinkercad, that complexity can be exactly the point.

Why it stands out: It gives serious young builders somewhere to grow.

How to choose the right design app

The best app is not necessarily the most powerful one.

It is the one that matches what your child naturally tries to make.

If your child has lots of ideas but struggles to start, try Taroo.

If they constantly invent objects and gadgets, try Tinkercad.

If they love posters, typography, and visual layouts, try Canva Education.

If they love playing games, try Bloxels first and Scratch when they want more control.

If they constantly redesign bedrooms and houses, try Planner 5D.

If they build cities and worlds, Minecraft Creative is difficult to beat.

If an older child is becoming genuinely interested in architecture or 3D design, try SketchUp.

Before choosing, ask:

• What does my child already make when nobody tells them what to do?

• Does this app give them choices or mostly templates?

• Can they change and improve what they make?

• Will they finish with something they can explain?

• Is the difficulty appropriate enough that the tool does not become the whole challenge?

Where Taroo fits

Professional design tools become powerful once a child already has an idea.

Taroo focuses more on helping that idea emerge and develop.

Kids get creative quests across several mediums, make their own choices, and can co-create with AI when they need another possibility or feedback on where to go next.

It is not a replacement for Tinkercad, Scratch, Minecraft, or Canva.

A child might invent a character in Taroo, build its world in Minecraft, make its game in Scratch, or design an object from that world in Tinkercad.

The tools can build on one another.

The takeaway

Good design apps do not just help kids make polished things.

They give children practice deciding what should exist.

A room needs a layout. A game needs rules. A poster needs hierarchy. A character needs choices. A world needs structure. An invention needs to work.

Then something inevitably does not feel right.

So the child changes it.

That loop — imagine, make, look, change — is the part worth practicing.

Not because every child needs to become a designer.

Because learning to turn an idea into something real is useful almost everywhere.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best design app for kids?

Taroo is a strong choice for broad guided creativity. Tinkercad is excellent for 3D objects, Scratch for interactive projects, Canva for visual design, and Minecraft Creative for world-building.

What is the best free design app for kids?

Scratch and Tinkercad are two strong free options. Scratch focuses on games and interactive experiences, while Tinkercad focuses on 3D objects and inventions.

What is the best design app for a 7-year-old?

Taroo is a good starting point for broad creativity. Depending on the child's interests, Minecraft Creative, Bloxels, or Tinkercad with some adult help can also work well.

What is the best app for kids interested in architecture?

Planner 5D is an approachable starting point for rooms and layouts. Tinkercad works well for simple structures. Older children ready for more precision can move toward SketchUp for Schools.

Do kids need to learn professional design software?

No. Younger children benefit more from making lots of things than mastering complicated software early. As their interests become clearer, more specialized tools can give them greater control.