Every creative field is influenced by the development of technology, including interior design.

Interior designers heavily depend on their drawings. It is how they communicate their ideas, invite clients to provide feedback and advertise their work. Interior designers often have to deliver a variety of drawings, including process, construction, and presentation drawings.

It’s a lot of work at the desk!

Fortunately, new tech offers a way out for interior designers. Say hello to 3D visualization, which is just a fancy way to refer to the creation of graphical content via computer software in a 3D virtual environment.

Should you use it, though? Let see what 3D visualization has to offer to you as an aspiring interior designer so that you can decide on your own whether to use it or not.

Visualization provides realistic quality

Interior design is an art form—not only because of the artistic creativity it requires but also because designers need to know how to translate their ideas onto a piece of paper.

However, the number of things that you can do with a pen and paper is limited. Once you reach this limit, there is nothing you can do to make your drawings better.

For instance, if you want to communicate the quality of the materials used in interior design, a drawing can’t do much. Even if you are the Picasso in the world of interior design, your sketches can’t provide information as computer-generated imagery. You devote yourself to making photo-realistic drawings, it will eat up so much of your time.

3D visualization, on the other hand, enables you to provide a realistic depiction for your clients without wasting too much time. 3D rendering software is quite powerful. It ships with many features, including 3D model templates and texture libraries. All of it stands at the artist’s disposal to help him or her create designs that provide a realistic virtual representation of the project.

Your clients will be able to see exactly what they are getting. You can add realistic colors, textures, real-world materials, and even lighting. You can also provide renders from multiple angles to ensure your images communicate realistic quality to clients.

It is easier to present the atmosphere

Don’t get us wrong; interior design drawings are capable of presenting the atmosphere. Not all of them manage to do so, though. Process drawings are far from the final work. These rough images and preliminary sketches don’t pack enough elements and details to present the look and feel of the interior you’ve been working on.

Formal sketches are slightly better, but they still have a hard time captivating clients' attention and invoking targeted feelings. To do it, you need more details. We are not talking about the textures, materials, and image composition here, but lighting as well. 3D visualization is the undisputed champion when it comes to presenting the atmosphere.

You can do whatever you want with a 3D scene if you know how to use 3D software. For instance, you can experiment with the room layouts, furniture placing, colors, window positioning, artificial light sources, materials, and textures. You can also render an image, discard it, and render it from another angle. Basically, you can do it over and over again until you achieve that desired look and feel.

3D visualization is great for residential interior design projects. But it is also a perfect pick for commercial interior design projects, especially today when companies want to build brands that invoke specific emotions. With 3D visualization, you can achieve the atmosphere your clients demand and ensure repeat business.

Your clients can understand what you're doing

Communicating interior design ideas is not always easy. On some projects, you might have problems making it easy for your clients to understand what exactly you want to do and achieve. This often happens in big commercial interior design projects. These buildings often feature huge corridors, offices, and other commercial spaces for future rent and use.

Now, your argument can be, “How did they manage to do it in the past without the use of 3D visualization?”. They certainly managed to do it, but the real questions are to what extent and how much effort did they need to put in project pitching? It’s not by chance that the saying goes along the lines, “A picture is worth a thousand words”.

3D visualization can help you efficiently communicate what you’re doing. There is no need for further explanations, elaborations, and clarifications. Your clients can see photo-realistic renders and immediately see what you plan to do and achieve. Adding realistic light will breathe life into the space and help clients see the value of your designs.

You can also render bigger scenes to encompass the entire space, not only one room. This is very valuable in bigger projects so that clients can see the whole thing and understand your concept.

Changing things is easy

Yes, your clients can greenlight your project after reviewing the first drawings and sketches you present to them. But this happens only once in a blue moon. It’s more realistic to expect them to ask you to change a thing or two. If you depend on sketches and drawings, you are potentially looking at getting yourself neck deep into work.

What about all those other pending projects? What will happen if those clients also tell you they need to change a few things? We are talking about hours upon hours of work. 3D visualization can save hours, if not days-worth of work. How come? Don’t you have to change things with 3D visualization too?

Yes, you do need to put in some work even if you choose 3D visualization, but it's considerably less work. Here is how and why.

To create 3D renders, you need to use 3D software. When you create a scene in 3D software, you save it like a file. Yes, just like you save documents and images. You can open the project files anytime you want and introduce changes.

Whether you need to remove, move, add objects, or change textures and materials, you will be able to do it in a matter of minutes. You can also make changes to the lighting and even change the camera position to create a render from a new point of view. This perk alone makes 3D visualization a perfect pick for interior designers.

Clients can give you valuable feedback

There is nothing more frustrating than receiving one negative feedback after another when working on an interior design project. The negative emotions go both ways, frustrating you and your client. Why does this happen? Clients are not proficient in interior design ins and outs or terminology. They will often use plain terms to explain what they want to change.

You should keep in mind that they base their decisions on what you present to them. For instance, if you give them a drawing of your interior design, they will use the elements available to them to form an opinion and present their feedback. There could be mistakes and going back and forth here because the value of the feedback is not on a high enough level. 3D visualization can help you change this forever.

3D renders provide way more information than any sketch or drawing, no matter how detailed it is. With more information, clients will be able to make informed decisions and deliver valuable feedback. They will tell you exactly what they want instead of giving you suggestions based on the limited impression they got from your sketch.

You can increase the value of feedback even more with 3D visualization. If you render your sets from different viewpoints and with different lighting, your clients will have more information. The more viewpoints you deliver, the better their insights will be as they will see exactly what the design lacks to be just as they’ve imagined it in their heads.

It will save you time

Making a living as an interior designer is not as easy as some people imagine it. Interior designers often struggle with time, especially when starting out their careers. They need to take care of business, marketing, clients, pitch design ideas, manage changes, and do project management on the go. The competition is harsh and delivering projects before deadlines is essential for building a good rep.

Working with legacy tools and methods is not efficient time-wise. It simply eats up too much time. Every time you need to get back to the drawing board, you must postpone other tasks and keep some other clients waiting. As your business grows, you will find managing it borderline impossible if you solely rely on proven legacy methods. It’s time for innovation.

3D visualization is bound to save you a ton of time. It will touch the most time-sensitive phases in your workflow. For instance, thanks to 3D renders, you won’t have to waste extra time to pitch your ideas. The clients will be able to see exactly what you intend to do.

3D visualization capability to save time is perhaps most noticeable when you need to receive feedback and make changes. As we previously stated, your clients will be able to provide valuable changes, and you will be able to incorporate them into your design so much faster than with pen and paper.

Clients will love it

Interior designers are no longer catering to the needs and wants of clients from the “Baby Boomer” generation. You will be more likely to encounter clients from Millenials and Gen Z generations in today’s market. These are tech-savvy people. Some would argue that Gen Z is not tech-savvy but tech-native.

What does it imply? These people know their way around technology, and they don’t want to waste their time sitting in some conference room listening to you elaborating your design plans. They want to see it and experience it first-hand.

Your clients will love you for your 3D renders. They know about 3D technology. You’ll be basically presenting your designs through a medium they are familiar with and have come to expect. You can also save them a ton of time. Instead of commuting to your offices, you can hold an online meeting and share your designs via email or some other channel.

Finally, your clients will love how fast you’ll be able to follow up on the changes they want. You can immediately send the new renders to ensure that’s what they wanted. It will help you build better relationships with your clients and ensure repeat business.

It is easier to market yourself

Most of the modern marketing efforts go through digital channels. Whether you want to launch a website, create a social media page, or register at one of the platforms for interior designers, you’ll need to upload some of your work. Yes, you can scan your drawings and sketches, but if you truly want to be competitive, you need 3D renders.

Your competition is already leveraging the power of 3D visualization. Do you want to know why? Because it makes marketing so easy. Start with your portfolio, for instance. All you have to do is add new renders to it to keep it updated. You can keep it online so that your potential clients can always stop by to see your work.

You can also have your designs rendered in any desired size and format. You can add them to your promotional emails or have them printed for outdoor hoarding. 3D visualization leaves you with more than enough room to be creative.

For instance, you can write a blog post about your process and add 3D renders of your project as you progress through it. With a little bit of effort, you can also create 3D walkthroughs to attract more clients.

Conclusion

3D rendering software and computer hardware are advancing as you read this. It’s all good news for you because it will make the adoption of 3D visualization even more affordable and convenient. As you can see, 3D visualization is a powerful tool in the hands of interior designers.

It can help you achieve a variety of things ranging from impressing your clients to streamlined marketing. After discovering what it can do for interior designers, it becomes clear why so many of them use 3D visualization today.

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