How a Room Visualizer Can Help You Plan Your New Flooring Project
Whether you’re updating one room in your house or planning the home of your dreams, new flooring has the potential to have a major impact on your interior design. While it may seem like the perfect carpet, hardwood or luxury vinyl tile can only be experienced in a showroom by stepping on it or running your fingers through it, room visualizer technology has helped eliminate much of the guesswork that comes with making big decisions for your home.
Room visualizer is the latest advance in virtual design technology that lets you see how different products will look in your space before you buy. This type of program replaces an existing image of your room with a stock or custom photo and allows you to apply different materials to the surface. This helps ensure that you’re happy with the look of your new floor before you commit to buying it.
Many manufacturers offer room visualizers to help consumers in the decision-making process. These programs can be accessed from manufacturers’ websites or on their mobile apps. Some, such as Armstrong & Mannington, allow you to upload your own photos of your rooms to use in their visualizers. Others, like Greatmats, give you the ability to select from its inventory to create a virtual design. You can even rotate the surface to find out what it will look like from a variety of angles.
The tools also provide an easy way to plan projects. For example, Lowe’s has a tool for painting walls or cabinets and a program that will help you calculate how much paint, drywall, insulation or other supplies you will need to complete a project.
Some manufacturers take it a step further and make their visualizers work for other surfaces as well, such as countertops or wallpaper. Emser Tile’s Design Made Easy, for example, offers a function that enables you to save your favorite items in My Memo for later reference, helping you keep track of your research.
Several manufacturers have partnered with Roomvo, a company that specializes in visualization software. Alexander Jones, senior partnering manager for Roomvo, tells HHIQ that their technology is fast and color accurate and that it can be connected to e-commerce, which gives retailers the opportunity to capture the sale immediately.
Other companies have their own visualization programs that they have developed in-house, such as Flooring America’s My Floor Style launched at the group’s winter convention this month. It enables you to design a room with any of its products and features filters that will assist in finding the right flooring for your project. You can filter by collection, style (ranging from minimalist to rustic), color, lifestyle and more. This makes it easy to narrow down your selections and get to the best product quickly. You can also rotate floors, which is a useful feature for determining how a tile or carpet will appear when it is installed in a specific area of the room.
