Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a disruptive force across numerous industries, and interior design is no exception. Gone are the days when designing a space relied solely on human creativity and expertise. AI is revolutionizing the way interior designers conceptualize, visualize, and execute their ideas. For an interior designer, AI poses, powerfully, as both an asset and a threat. Key to one’s success is in knowing what the differences are.
First, to be very clear, I don’t think interior designers are going the way of the buggy whip during the rise of automobiles, but there are some things designers should seriously consider before either writing the whole subject off as hype or succumbing to a sense of doom. There is opportunity here to still do what you love—design, just somewhat differently. Let’s dig into it.
First, let’s take a look at what we’ll call ‘inspiration assistance or replacement.’
This gets to the heart of both AI’s contribution and threat to interior designers. AI-powered tools can analyze vast amounts of data, including design trends, color schemes, furniture styles, and spatial arrangements, to, on the helpful side, provide designers with valuable insights and inspiration. These tools can help designers generate mood boards, suggest complementary color palettes, and recommend furniture layouts, streamlining the initial stages of the design process and sparking creativity. It can help solve the ‘blank page’ problem any creative person sometimes faces.
On the other hand, this ability also seems like it has the potential to replace interior designers altogether. By now most of us have seen social media posts from AI companies, or firms using their tools, showing complete rooms or even whole homes designed and populated solely by AI. And they sometimes look great, as if a real person had designed them. This is frightening if you’re an established designer who has a lot to lose and even more frightening if you’re a designer just starting a career and worried about getting traction and clients—or having a career at all. Who will hire an interior designer when an algorithm from a big online marketplace can spin up options for very little charge within a few seconds, based on client-inputted preferences, and then directly sell the items in the results to that client?
We’ll take a look at how to deal with that in a minute.
AI-enabled rendering and visualization tools have taken a lot of the confusion inherent in dealing with clients who might not be able to, themselves, accurately visualize a designer’s proposals. Advanced rendering algorithms can now generate photorealistic 3D models of interior spaces, allowing clients to visualize the final design with unprecedented accuracy—no imagination of their own required because they can look directly at a realistic rendering. This not only helps clients make informed decisions but also minimizes misunderstandings and revisions, ultimately speeding up the design process and reducing costs. Anything that cuts down on client confusion is a boon for designers.
First let’s explore a more obvious and practical benefit of AI that shouldn’t keep one up at night in a clammy sweat of panic. Let’s call it ‘design assistance.’
AI has also revolutionized the way interior designers approach space planning and layout optimization. Machine learning algorithms can analyze floor plans, identify optimal furniture arrangements, and even predict how different design elements will affect the flow and functionality of a space. By leveraging these kinds of AI tools, designers can more quickly create layouts that maximize usability, comfort, and appeal while adhering to budgetary and spatial constraints specific to each project. This is the ‘frame’ a designer works their aesthetic magic within, and AI can help them more quickly create that frame.
These ‘design assistance’ tools can enable, enhance, and empower interior designers to do what they already do—come up with an original vision, present it to a client, and then implement it to completion. ‘Design assistance’ is mostly a win for interior designers, and most often will be used piecemeal as needed and not for the entirety of a project (we’ll have another post on the challenges these tools also can create and how to deal with them, it’s not all wine and roses by a long shot).
What then about the frightening reality AI poses to the viability of interior design as a career? How does a designer mitigate the risk of AI tools deployed by large industry players that seek to replace them with their own products and automated services?
By focusing on and highlighting the obvious, and key difference between AI and an interior designer—the human difference.
