WOULD YOU LET AI DESIGN YOUR LIVING ROOM?

When Lee Mayer launched the interior design platform Havenly in 2014, she used technology to help make design more affordable to the masses.

- RACHEL WHARTON

A design tool that incorporates AI at the Havenly offices in Denver, USA.

The site connects clients to professionals who manage most of the design process online, using Havenly's site to host video consultations and chats, exchange measurements and mood boards, or share new floor plans and links to products.

Now Mayer is hoping to ride out the industry’s next high-tech shift with Havenly AI, an app with the potential to redesign a room without any professional help at all.

Upload a few photos, answer a few queries, and your design dreams will be translated to an image of your home as you watch. (You can even click on a couch to buy it.)

The app, which is still in development, does get something wrong “one every in 20 times” Mayer said, and it is not as creative as one of Havenly’s real designers.

“But we now have 3D rendering in 30 seconds,” she said. “It’s kinda crazy.”

Havenly is one of a growing number of home renovation and interior design platforms rolling out AI-enabled imaging tools, many of which show up in Instagram and TikTok ads that promise faster and easier home refreshes.

Spoak has Viz; Hover has Instant Design; and from Block comes the new Renovation Studio. Even Lowe's, the home improvement big box store, is planning to add similar functionality to Mylow, the company’s Al-powered shopping tool.

In the design and construction industry, instant renderings derived from a blend of photos and data are known as “visualisation”, said Sumeet Howe, the head of product at Hover, a property and renovation management platform primarily used by insurance adjusters and contractors.