Kate Vera is an interior designer, educator, and 3D rendering expert who runs her own business, Katevera.creative. This article is a lightly adapted version of the original from her blog. Follow her on Instagram.
In 2025, two real-time rendering tools stand out for interior designers: Enscape and D5 Render. Both are impressive, but depending on your workflow, one might suit your needs better than the other. I explore the features that actually matter when choosing between them and give you my final thoughts on the tool that gets me the fastest results without compromising quality.
How does Enscape compare with D5 Render for interior design?
Integration with your modeling tool
Enscape integrates directly into SketchUp’s interface, as well as Revit’s, Rhino’s, Archicad’s, and Vectorworks’s, allowing you to render your design live without ever leaving the modeling environment. This makes it incredibly fluid for interior designers who work fast and want to see immediate results.
D5 Render offers a plugin that syncs with SketchUp, but you still have to switch to a separate workspace to render, which can interrupt your creative flow and add extra steps during revisions.
Real-time speed and responsiveness
Enscape is built for speed and reliability. It updates lighting, materials, and layout changes instantly, which is essential during design reviews or when working on tight deadlines.
D5 delivers beautiful output, but its responsiveness depends heavily on hardware, and real-time feedback isn’t always as seamless, especially when working on detailed interiors with lots of assets.
Built-in libraries and assets
Enscape offers a curated library of interior furniture, lights, and vegetation, just enough to make a scene feel realistic without slowing you down.
D5’s library is more extensive, featuring animated assets, effects, and high-end visuals that are perfect for cinematic presentations. However, for most client-facing projects, interior designers don’t need animated characters or particles, which can become unnecessary noise in everyday workflows.
The Enscape Asset Library
Materials and realism
Both tools offer PBR materials, but Enscape keeps it simple and easy to control, with real-time previews that help you fine-tune without slowing down.
D5 takes materials a step further with advanced settings like decals, emissive bloom, and atmospheric effects. These look great in renders but require more time to set up, which is not always ideal when you’re iterating quickly with clients.
Hardware requirements
One of the reasons I stick with Enscape is because of how well it performs even on mid-range machines. It’s optimized for smooth rendering on laptops or desktops with modest GPUs, making it ideal if you’re mobile or not using a studio-grade setup.
D5, in contrast, requires a high-end RTX GPU to work properly, and that can be a barrier for many interior designers working from home or on the go.
Final output and presentation
D5 is undeniably stunning when it comes to polished marketing visuals. It can create atmospheric renders and cinematic fly-throughs that grab attention.
But Enscape is unmatched when it comes to consistency and accuracy. What you see in your SketchUp model is what the client gets in the render, and that precision is essential for trust, clarity, and approval workflows.
Enscape vs D5 Render for interior design: final thoughts
If your goal as an interior designer is to craft vivid, high-drama visuals for your portfolio or a marketing push, D5 is great (Envision is also an ideal tool for this).
But if you’re managing real clients and tight deadlines, you need something fast, reliable, and precise. With Enscape, I can make quick changes during meetings, test ideas live, and update visuals without ever breaking the flow.
I’ve tested many rendering workflows, and the one that gets me the best results fastest is still SketchUp plus Enscape. It’s the right balance of visual quality, speed, and clarity, especially when clients are waiting for a decision and your design has to hold up in real life. That’s why I still use Enscape for almost every project.
Want to learn how I use Enscape every day in my design business? Check out my Enscape training for interior designers, where you’ll learn how to create better renders in less time and present your ideas with more impact.
