The virtual reality market is experiencing a steep rise in popularity and global market size. According to data, the global VR market is expected to reach $31.12 billion by the end of 2023. With this steep market rise, VR is contributing to significant changes and evolutions in various industries, home design being one of them.
Architects and designers leverage virtual reality to better communicate their ideas with teams and clients, create virtual tours, virtually stage houses, and improve home design marketing.
Here’s what you need to know about VR and how it will transform home design in the future.
What is Virtual Reality?
Virtual reality is a simulated experience in a three-dimensional environment that can support life-like interactions through haptic, visual, auditory, and other stimuli. Also known as VR, virtual reality shares similarities with augmented reality, albeit the latter superimposes a virtual world in the real world.
VR experiences are fully immersive, with a computer program generating the virtual environment that the user interacts with. The user can look around the virtual environment in all directions, almost like they were standing there in real life.
The Current State of Home Design
VR adoption in home design is yet to become widespread. Despite the number of architects and designers adopting VR exponentially increasing annually, most industry professionals still use conventional means and workflows to build, market, and showcase home designs.
Typically, designers send floor plans, small renderings, and selected real-scene photos to the client for approval. Most of these assets are in 2D, albeit some professionals send 3D renderings to visualize the project better while in progress.
Despite using 3D renderings, these assets lack the perception and depth needed to give the client the complete picture of the project.
This limitation affects home design professionals even during the marketing phase for completed projects. Prospects often fail to understand the design fully until they see it physically. In most cases, designers and architects have to invest in model houses to give clients the depth and perception needed.
VR lifts these limitations by allowing designers and architects to create immersive worlds and renders of their projects that can provide an accurate picture for their clients. Using VR in home design makes showcasing project designs or final renders easier and makes selling to potential clients much smoother.
How Architects and Designers Are Using Virtual Reality
Here’s a breakdown of how architects and designers leverage VR to improve home design.
Communicating Ideas with Teams and Clients
Instead of using 2D renders to communicate home design ideas, designers and architects are using VR to create life-like renders that give accurate perception, depth, and reference points for the design. Thanks to immersion, VR communicates ideas better than even 3D drawings most designers and architects have adopted to showcase their work.
VR gives proper scale to fixtures in a home design project, making it easier for the client to visualize the size of the space, the texture of the furnishings, and the floor plan. According to industry professionals, since clients get a better view of their future space using VR, they are more confident to purchase or sign off on the project, reducing back-and-forth interactions.
Creating Immersive Virtual Environments
With rising ecological conscience, designers and architects must consider how the environment and atmospheric influences affect a home design.
VR allows you to create an immersive virtual environment where you can include several environmental factors and create a compelling space that fits the client’s ecological demands. You can put factors such as sunlight, heat, and rainfall into the virtual world and use them to influence your design in environmentally efficient ways.
Creating Virtual Tours
Instead of clients having to visit your office or project site for a tour, designers and architects can use VR to create virtual tours. Virtual tours give an immersive 3D walkthrough of your project without the client ever having to visit the site.
Clients can see updates to the project in real time and decide on changes. Consequently, they can make more informed purchasing decisions, improving the likelihood of selling your home design project and making the customer happy.
Learning and Exploration
Learning architectural and design history is crucial to developing a new home design idea. VR provides an excellent source of inspiration, allowing designers and architects to learn and explore previous, fresh, and emerging design trends for their next project.
Since VR environments are interactive, you can start building your ideas from the learning session by changing the inspirational designs and building something exciting for you and your client.
Virtual Staging
Staging is often one of the most challenging and resource-intensive activities for designers and architects. Using VR, you can set up virtual staging to showcase your design without setting up physical furniture or any other item on site.
Virtual staging saves time and costs less resources while helping potential buyers get the complete picture of your design.
We’ve helped Caesarstone and other brands virtually stage their home-décor designs, saving them time and money and offering their customers an unparalleled shopping experience for home décor and designs.
The Benefits of VR in Home Design
VR packs a ton of benefits for home design professionals and brands. Here’re the most compelling ones:
Improved Sales
Many customers are accustomed to buying home design and decor products from brick-and-mortar stores since they can see and interact with the product in real life. VR provides a similar experience, albeit with the flexibility and convenience of touring the store at home, improving sales for brands using it to support e-commerce.
Better Customer Loyalty
Customers gain more confidence in a home design business using VR since they are assured what they see is what they get. They can check and interact with the design virtually and make more conscious purchase decisions faster.
Accelerated Project Delivery
Since customers can view their home designs interactively and in an immersive virtual world, they get a better view of the results they’ll get. Therefore, your design workflow improves significantly with fewer corrections and redesigns once the project gets implemented.
Introduce VR in Your Home Design Business
Designers and architects have a lot to benefit from using VR in their design workflow. Brands selling home design and improvement products can also leverage VR to give customers a new shopping experience and convince them of the use of certain products within their space.
Contact an immersive experience professional and learn what VR can do for your home design business.
