These are wild days and I’m loving them. As an owner of an interior design firm, I can’t get enough of trying all the new AI design software platforms hitting the scene. While we don’t rely on them 100%, many serve as good tools to help. Let’s face it, the norm these days is for designers to provide quality 3D renderings of designs to clients. This is embracing technology which, IMO, serves clients and makes designers’ jobs easier.
As software and AI advances, these tools offer more uses and get better seemingly weekly.
This article goes into a new AI software geared toward real estate agents by almost instantly virtually staging empty room photos. It’s a good idea; a much-needed idea just because it’s costly to actually stage an entire house.
Introducing Virtual Staging AI.
What does Virtual Staging AI software do?
In a nutshell, Virtual Staging AI automatically inserts furniture, furnishings and accessories in empty rooms.
How?
Upload a photo or photos of an empty room.
Choose Room type and upload logo (logo optional).
Click “Add furniture”.
Wait a minute or so then look at the automatically generated room image with furnishings added.
Does it work?
Kinda. Below are some examples I ran through. I fear this software needs some work before it can be used widespread. You be the judge.
Examples
Here are a few examples I ran through. As you can see this software needs a bit of fine-tuning before it’s usable commercially.
Who is this software for?
I asked the developer of this software, Michael Bonacina, and he told me it’s primarily for real estate agents to help them virtually stage empty homes they are listing for sale. Makes sense to me.
However, after using it for a while, I realized this could be helpful for other folks. For example, it could help homeowners come up with furnishing ideas for their homes with the operative word being “ideas”, as in a starting point. I suspect interior designers and decorators might also find it useful for generating ideas.
At the end of the day, software that spits out designs of spaces, if it does a decent job, can be useful as a starting point for any room.
Does it do a good job virtually staging empty room photos?
Yeah, on the balance it’s quite good. Definitely worth trying.
Can you prompt it with specific design styles or furniture styles or layouts?
No, there are no prompt options. The software will unilaterally generate a design. You either use or don’t.
Is it free? How much?
Not really. You can open an account for free and try the software. The resulting images will have a watermark on them so the free account will not work for realtors to actually put the resulting images in the listing. The free version limits you to just bedrooms. Free is really designed to give you a chance to try it; it’s not commercially viable.
If you want to use the resulting virtual staging images, you must pay. Fortunately, it’s not outrageously expensive, especially given it’s geared toward real estate agents.
Does it source the furniture and accessories it puts into the empty room designs?
No, it doesn’t.
First of all, realtors don’t need this feature and based on my emails with the owner of the software, real estate agents are their primary users. For this reason, it doesn’t matter that the software doesn’t go the extra step in suggesting specific furnishing models with links to merchants.
Not all is lost for homeowners though. There are still ways to find furniture from images. Here are two options.
Option 1: Crop out specific furniture pieces in the resulting room design and do a reverse Google search. I do this regularly. Google reverse search is very good at finding similar-looking furniture. Not perfect, but quite good.
Option 2: Try the Fulhaus app. Again, not perfect but potentially helpful. You upload an image of a room with furnishings and it spits out a mood board with suggested options.
Does it generate a 2D layout of the room?
No it doesn’t and that’s because real estate agents don’t need this function.
The primary aim of the software is to improve a house’s images to make the listings look more attractive to prospective buyers.
However, if you wanted to create a 2D layout (which can then convert to 3D rendering), there’s no shortage of floor plan creator software that can do that quickly and inexpensively. Try our 2D and 3D design software here.
Try Virtual Staging AI software for yourself.
