The Future of Interior Design

Interior Design has always been about imagination - at least for the designers themselves. It's about taste, it's about expression; it's also about getting onto Pinterest and looking at hundreds of designs, saving them, and sharing them to the client for feedback. Eventually, almost all clients go for some impressive industry-standard-setting design that Pinterest boasts all day long (thanks a lot, Pinterest!) making the designer's job a bit easier, but unfurling into the Contractor's nightmare (good luck, Contractor!).

Once the designs are chosen, multiple times way over, multiple changes way over, multiple WhatsApp messages way over, the Interior Designer then shares a 'render'. A render is a realistic, picturesque-picture of the design, created using professional software that usually costs an arm and a leg, monthly. Computers to work upon them, sold separately. And then the Designers to work on those? Priceless. For all other things, there's MasterCard. Regardless, the renders are then either printed or shared across the digital mediums. Taking views from multiple angles of the room, such that the client can then form an opinion about the room's constituents - the bed, the cupboards, the windows, and the placements of such. The textures used for the same, the materials that come into play. The lighting, and the overall theme of the room. The imagined room now exists among us.

A render is a realistic, picturesque-picture of the design.

Such has been the case for the past few decades - at least since we've started having computers with graphic cards within our homes & offices. (Graphic cards aren't just for gaming only, Linus.) Today, some Interior Designers & Architects use expensive software & hardware to achieve higher realism within their renders. Industry best practices, peer-reviews, and of course, Pinterest. For most people, it's a great investment - talk about big corporates, hotel chains, and rich wives with rich husbands who like a luxurious feel to their new domicile. A little more detail goes a long way. Every minute piece of information that the Builder gets about the design & material choices helps the guy in searching for all the right materials.

Considerably less time, decent energy, and fewer dollar bills are spent on gathering resources - unwanted materials are skipped out, execution processes get lined up, labour costs halved, and incidental overheads can be held on a tight leash. That is, of course, once the renders are calculated and agreed-upon.

A little more detail goes a long way.

But are these 2D renders really sufficient? I mean, are they really? How much can you really know about something after only looking at a picture of it and readily consider investing your valuable time & effort on it?

Unless you’re an Indian millennial who got hitched with an arranged marriage, looking at a singular picture, albeit from different angles, you would really want to know more about the person before deciding to invest a lot of your time & energy on them - unless you place a lot of trust on that picture.

Surely there must be more ways to get more information than just pictures. It's 2023 - we've got AI, AR/VR, we've got tons of digitised tools - surely we could elevate those 2D renders?

That’s what this article is about.

Virtual Reality walkthroughs are in, baby!

Riding the ARVR wave, we've created an application where anyone can virtually 'step into' and 'walk around' any designed room - from a cosy living room in the suburbs, to a sleek office concrete jungle, to a shady parking lot with graffiti on the walls - not like anyone would voluntarily want to be there, but it goes to show that one simply can.

How great would it be to see your upcoming rooms in a more in-depth, immersive manner - what better can it be than to physically & virtually ‘walk around’ in your rooms even before it gets built? You would then also want to see different colours in your room - perhaps the walls, or even the new recliner sofas? Maybe you’d like to see how your room would look in the dark with the low-hanging strip lights on? Not sure about you, but we definitely would. We really wanted to get it done. We got it done, then made a business around it - thinking others would also want to see it - turns out, people really do want to!

Through our company, InterioXr, our main objective is to make Interior Design more accessible and immersive for everyone. Everyone should be able to ‘see’, ‘walk around’ and ‘live in’ different design ideas - even if they do not have any renovation/construction plans in the making - exploration is key to happiness. Exploration is what keeps us alive.

The industry is really shaping up towards immersive media - aiming to reach head & shoulders to Meta’s Quest platform, we’ve got big names like HTC & Microsoft that have been making the rounds - hundreds & thousands of startups, technology enablers, and ecosystem supporters - they all know information, overlaid on the peripheral, is key.

Apple recently announced their Vision Pro headset - an Extended Mixed Reality device that lets you move in & out of these environments with a dial. Surely there must be a sound reasoning behind that - that reasoning is the power of immersive media itself. InterioXr is proud to be a startup within this field, as well as being an ecosystem supporter. Interior Design is levelling up with immersive media, and so should you. Reach out to us now, we’ll show you what we have learnt; apart from really using Pinterest for our Interior Designs - that has been a complete game-changer, ARVR or not.