Can AI Replace Interior Designers? Here’s Where It Wins (and Fails)

Short answer: They’re meant to be complementary.

“AI. AI. Generative AI.” As much as most of us are sick of the buzzword being thrown around at board meetings like it’s a magical cure for everything, the reality is that AI is already changing our everyday lives.

Home renovation is no different. Generative AI tools have the ability to come up with interior designs for us, which begs the question: Do you still need to hire an interior designer?

In this article, we explore both sides of the coin.

Where AI wins

Instant generation of design concepts

Machines work faster than humans. While an ID could take hours to come up with interior drawings, generative AI can do so in just seconds. Plus, you won’t even have to pool reference photos from multiple sources nor put together a mood board for it to do so.

Unlimited number of revisions at little to no cost

Don’t like the drawings provided? Barring the daily message limit on free accounts, you can pretty much provide as many follow-up prompts as you wish to get the AI to refine them.

On the other hand, because this takes up a significant amount of a designer’s time and expertise, most ID firms only allow a set number of revisions, beyond which you’d have to pay an additional fee.

Bird’s eye view/summary tables

Drawings aside, AI tools are able to very quickly provide ballpark cost estimates and summarised comparison tables if you’re choosing between particular features or materials. These can give you a better working understanding of the options available, and in turn help you make an informed decision.

Where AI falls short

Feasibility of concepts and on-site checks

With that, we tried getting ChatGPT to design a 4-room BTO at Bishan Ridges. While it was able to achieve the general look and feel we were after, the design generated isn’t actually implementable based on the unit’s layout.

To be fair, this might have been because we did so on a free version of ChatGPT, and/or that our prompts regarding the floor plan weren’t specific enough. But we wager that any ID worth their salt wouldn’t make such a fundamental mistake!

Needless to say, IDs are also able to physically visit your unit to assess structural issues on-site, whereas AI is not.

Understanding of human nuances

Another thing to note is that interior design involves considering how a space intersects with a homeowner’s lifestyle habits, emotional comfort and more — things that AI wouldn’t think of nor understand fully.

Interior designers, on the other hand, are able to put themselves in your shoes, ask the right questions, and anticipate changing household needs (if you plan to have kids and/or a helper in future, for example). In fact, they’ll also be able to share common renovation regrets from past clients and advise you accordingly.

Put another way, AI can design a room, but it can’t design for you like an ID can.

Project management and emotional reassurance

Lastly, unlike an ID, AI cannot manage a renovation for you. Think planning and coordinating subcontractor works like plumbing, wiring and masonry in the right order, as well as coming up with viable solutions when problems arise.

With so many things going on concurrently (read: and that could go wrong), home renovations can quickly become overwhelming. Having a trusted professional who’s on top of things offers more than coordination — it offers a peace of mind because when they tell you that everything is going to be ok, you can actually believe it.

So, how can I use AI for my home renovation?

DIY-level design

Based on the above, it’s fair to say that AI is extremely useful for homeowners who wish to work directly with contractors, are confident of the designs they generate via AI, and are prepared to take on a project management role.

Otherwise, AI is unlikely to replace interior designers.

A complementary approach

But even among homeowners who intend to engage an ID, we recommend using AI to generate visual references as a starting point. Compare options and re-prompt the AI to fine-tune these images as many times as you want.

Once these images are close to what you’re envisioning, share them with IDs on your first meeting. That way, there will be little room for IDs to misinterpret what you’re envisioning.

Instead, they’ll be able to jump straight to giving their professional input on what is feasible, and provide alternative suggestions best suited to your needs and preferences. In other words, this helps to expedite the design conceptualisation process rather significantly!

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