Augmented Reality For Home Design (A Trend Or Here To Stay?)
Ever find yourself standing in the furniture store trying to picture how that couch will look in your living room? Find yourself spending hours looking for the perfect table only to shy away from not wanting to go through the effort of buying it, having it delivered, and then only to realize it clashes with your flooring.
Technological advancements allow us to incorporate new purchases into your home without the heavy leg work. Augmented reality is gaining popularity in the interior design space.
In this article, we will cover why Augmented Reality Is A Great Tool To Use For Home Design.
But first, before we talk about the benefits of augmented reality, here are a few awesome apps and software you can use for your augmented reality goals.
Best Augmented Reality Home Design Tools
Houzz – easily create and build 2d floor plans with this floor planner tool. Incorporate your favorite furniture, windows, and doors into your design. You can view your designs in a 2D floor plan view, a walk-through view, and a dollhouse view as pictured below.
The Houzz Pro app can scan any room and automatically generate floor plans allowing you to expedite the initial drawings process.
IKEA Place – seamlessly incorporate your next IKEA purchase into your existing space. With the IKEA Place app, place the desired product into your space at scale to see how something will fit before you bring it home.
Simply use your smartphone camera to locate where you want the product to be and select from their large catalog to test out your space. Ikea Place is available on both android and apple.
Wayfair App – Easily incorporate products from Wayfair in your space before you order. Visualize the product in 3D as you walk around and zoom in and out of your space.
This app is also a great way to track your activities on Wayfair. Track your packages and orders as well as get updates on your phone on new products or sales.
iScape – A landscape design app that can save you a lot of time and money before your next landscaping project gets started. Iscape incorporates augmented reality into your landscape design project.
Easily envision and plan your landscaping project with an easy to use design tool. Using only your phone, you can create your landscape project, create an inventory of the products you are going to purchase, and shift easily into a smooth ordering process.
What Is Augmented Reality And How Is It Used In Home Design?
Augmented reality is a powerful tool that can tie the real world with computer-generated models and other forms of content. In the home design sense, augmented reality takes design ideas and computer-generated models and incorporates them into existing spaces.
This can be done across a variety of platforms including phones, tablets, computers, and even whiteboards. Incorporating computer models or images into an existing space gives us the opportunity to visualize and learn how the space can be transformed or how it will look with a new piece of furniture or a different decorative style applied.
Augmented Reality can also be used to place larger structures like buildings or landscaping on a site or property. This can be a helpful way to get your next project off the ground as you look for buy-in from the major stakeholders.
What Are The Benefits Of Augmented Reality In Home Design?
As the AR platform continues to evolve, workflows will be improved and modified and new processes will be created. Already the design industry is seeing a wide array of uses for augmented reality and a variety of benefits and applications.
Augmented Reality = Interactive Design
The design process is changing whether you like it or not. It’s time to admit it. People want a design process that is not only efficient but also enjoyable and collaborative. Augmented reality lends itself to providing an interactive experience.
Similar to the virtual reality space, augmented reality design allows users to make changes in real-time and become more involved in the design process than ever before. Being able to promote interactive design can be a great attraction to potential clients and also the DIY home renovator.
Design projects are often high-priced endeavors and people spending the money want to be involved in the process.
Augmented Reality = Iterative Design
Along with being interactive, the design process should also be an iterative process. With all the technology and 3D rendering software available today, most, if not all of the design process can take place inside a computer-generated model. This affords designers and users the opportunity to test and tweak the designs multiple times well before construction begins.
Clients and homeowners can test out various types of flooring, sample a variety of furniture, and even play around with room shapes and lighting by using augmented reality and virtual reality.
The great benefit here is that this can all be done from a stationary work platform, or across portable devices like laptops, smartphones, and tablets.
Augmented Reality = Powerful Visualization
Remote teams are becoming more and more popular. With that, the need to share and relay information is also becoming more important. It’s not possible or cost-efficient to have the entire team go on a site visit or be on-site to review the new design concepts.
Incorporating augmented reality is also a great tool for internal collaboration between team members. This opportunity to quickly share ideas and convey design concepts can help keep your design process moving.
Augmented Reality = Efficient
We all want to be efficient without time. For most, this means reducing the number of emails we are sending, the amount of rework we need to do, and reducing the amount of time we spend tweaking and changing small aspects of projects.
Augmented reality benefits home design in this way. Incorporating new computer-modeled designs into the existing conditions helps reduce the back and forth as we try to visualize designs. Take the guesswork out of how something will look and see in real-time how features and things function in a space.
Where Can Augmented Reality Benefit Home Design?
The home design world has many sub-areas that can benefit from incorporating augmented reality into the day-to-day. AR can be used to improve client acquisition, is a great marketing tool, and above all help, people make decisions that ultimately cost a lot of money.
Real Estate
Home purchases are often the biggest investment of our lives. Whether it is someone’s first house, or they are moving into a new home, it’s important for a buyer to feel secure in their decision. Augmented reality can help give comfort to a buyer in a variety of ways.
- Agents can provide virtual floor plans
- Buyers can see how their furniture interacts with a space
- Help buyers see the final look of a new construction
- Visualize the outside of the home on the lot they are looking to buy
Whether you are a homeowner or an agent, incorporating augmented reality into your real estate ventures can be a way to save time and take the worry out of a big purchase.
Interior Design
Interior designers and homeowners alike can benefit greatly from augmented reality. With just a photo of an existing room, you can incorporate your favorite new design trends, your favorite new furniture, and many other things into the existing space in real-time.
As explained earlier in the article, expect to save time on the number of iterations your need to reach the perfect design. Also, use Augmented reality to provide photo-realistic visualizations or the space to keep you engaged and the creative juices flowing.
Above all feel confident when you start the construction process. Know what you are getting and that you have had the opportunity to think and test out everything you could think of.
Exterior Design
For some the exterior of the home or building is a main focal point and crucial consideration in the design process. Augmented reality can be a powerful tool to help visualize how a building will sit on a site.
How will the elevation and profile of the structure sit on the property? How will it interface with the grade and also consider how the building orientation will look as a whole.
These aspects of the building’s exterior design, one can make an informed decision on the final look and feel of the structure. This design step can give a home builder and designer a solid foundation to generate the perfect design.
This is also a helpful tool to estimate foundation and earthwork around the home. Augmented reality of the exterior of a project can help estimate what amount of cut or fill might be needed to achieve the desired grade.
Home Renovation
If you are a weekend worrier and DIY extraordinaire, augmented reality might be a crucial tool to consider. Save yourself the all-important time and money by knowing how your next project will look before your first demo day begins.
Use this tool as a way to know what you are getting into. Estimate the impact your project might have on the rest of your life during your project.
Maybe you aren’t planning a full-scale remodel of your home, but just want to see how some new furniture will look. The apps and software mentioned above can save you lots of time and energy. Maybe it will help you determine if that coffee table will be the right fit for your space.
The Wrap-Up
Next time you are starting a home project, whether you are starting a new build, renovating your current home, or looking to purchase a new home, consider incorporating augmented reality tools into your process.
As you can see, visualizing your home in a hybrid digital and physical landscape is a powerful tool that should not be ignored. Make the design process enjoyable with augmented reality. If you are using an architect or interior designer, ask if they have any augmented reality features you can try out with them.
