When planning to build a new house, people usually leave no stone unturned to give the best of the efforts that they can, and are likely to be least compromising with the design and decor of their home.
But for any regular person without much exposure to the design complexities, interior design can be very confusing. Fortunately, some innovative technologies like augmented reality and 3D modeling are now making things easier to choose a design, make customization and come with a well-articulated design plan that fits your choice and budget.
No wonder augmented reality, with its revolutionary potential to fuse digital reality with the real-world atmosphere, brought us a paradigm-shifting change. According to the latest reports, the augmented reality market will continue to grow at a CAGR of 31.5% and will reach $88.4 billion by 2026.
A considerable portion of this growth story of the AR market can be ascribed to the AR-based interior design, decor, and furniture apps.
When starting a dream house project, you can now get a complete 3D model of the house with a 360-degree view right on your smartphone screen. The floor map of the house and the entire layout will be shown on your handheld screen instead of on paper. You can get an immersive view of the virtual house that you intended to build.
This is all made possible thanks to the revolutionary augmented reality technology. By basically generating a digital representation of the reality or by importing the digital view on real-life planning, AR extends the interactive capabilities to customize the design project. You upload the actual images of a premise and then see the virtual changes incorporated into it right on your screen. When the design is finalized after being evaluated on the screen, the same will be recreated for your interior.
Augmented Reality in Interior Design
The core capability of AR is using the smartphone to overlay virtual elements on the physical reality. The applications of this capability are of different types. You can just see the furniture pieces and furnishings adjusted to the image of your home interior and evaluate the final look and feel right on your handheld screen.
The AR apps for decor, furniture, and interior design are getting popular as customers always consider a hands-on experience necessary for purchasing anything. As per the latest report, a whopping 71% of customers say their chances of purchasing increases as and when they can get an AR view of the products they intend to buy.
AR-based virtualization has particularly penetrated online furniture purchases. Research by IBISWorld says that 15% of the furniture market in the US already belongs to online stores. Other studies indicate that customers consider the AR experience a crucial one to take a final call on the purchase while buying online furniture.
Let’s now look at augmented reality’s key ways of revolutionizing the interior design, furniture, and decor market.
Visualizing Interior Decor and Design Projects in Real-Time
A house architecture can be presented with a 3D view, but such models lack the actual context and surrounding of the premise. That’s exactly where the capability of augmented reality proves to be vital and definitive. AR-based models on your handheld screen deliver a more meticulous and precise view of the house along with its surroundings.
After capturing images from different angles, designers can showcase the look and feel of the house along with real-life environments. The actual images are now treated with design and decor attributes and information overlay to give a more precise idea of how the entire building will look.
Having a Virtual Tour of the Property
When buying a new real estate property or evaluating a house project and its final look, feel, and usability aspects, guided virtual tours can be really helpful for the customers to assess the property or the final post-development outcome. By using viewpoint technology, now modern building architects can develop a thoroughly guided tour in which they can virtually move around and navigate.
Augmented reality-based guided tours reveal the look, feel comfort, navigation, and directions within a premise with true-to-life details. This ensures a thorough, easy, and quicker evaluation of the property and the entire interior design project.
AR-Based Floor Planning
When selling or buying a property, the most common and crucial determinant factor is the floor plan. According to experts, most buyers are very unlikely to buy a property without a floor plan.
Now, thanks to AR, adding a floor plan with every property listing becomes a lot easier. Augmented reality has completely changed the traditional way architects used to work. Thanks to AR, architects can develop and showcase the floor plans in real-time to the customers. After seeing the floor plans and models, customers can suggest changes and come with different plans to utilize the space.
AR-Based Prototypes
AR is increasingly popular among architects and designers because of its capability to shorten the lengthy design process while offering real-time access to virtual models. Thanks to AR-based virtual collaboration, testing a new idea, creating quick models, making changes and edits, and allowing iterations, become easier than ever before.
There are robust AR-based prototyping tools that can allow designers and architects to transform the CAD models into realistic AR-based 3D visuals. This can help architects to do away with the physical 3D middling of the properties. Most importantly, thanks to AR-based modeling and real-time collaboration, the entire time for architecture design and interior design process can be brought down to just a few hours.
Interactive and Iterative Presentation
Using AR’s power, it becomes easier for the designers and architects to present and showcase their ideas to the intended customers and help them stay synced with them through the whole design process.
By simply allowing the customers to stay on the same page with the designers, the sellers and designers can garner better satisfaction and ensure better project delivery. AR-based presentations also allow better iterations in an ongoing design project and ensure better outcomes by syncing expectations on both ends.
Competitive Advantages
For the architecture design farms and property developers, the use of AR-based modeling of architecture also ensures great competitive advantages. By simply offering the customers a comprehensive view of the design options with meticulous details, architects and developers can garner better customer satisfaction resulting in more chances of property booking.
The AR-powered design approach for interior and building architecture, besides convincing new customers about the value propositions of the listed properties, can also help in the retention of the existing customers who made previous purchases.
Guest Post
About the Guest Author(s)
Tuhin Bhatt
Tuhin Bhatt is one of the founders of Intelivita, one of the leading AR app development companies with offices in Canada and the USA. He helps startups and enterprises overcome their digital transformation and mobility challenges with the might of on-demand solutions powered by cutting-edge technology.
