Jun 14, 2024
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Onton Team
An overview of the best AI tools for interior design. In this guide, we’ll unpack what to look for in an AI interior design tool and compare a few options.
If you’ve ever watched celebrity home tours on YouTube, you’ve probably seen something like Architectural Digest Open Door. Whether the featured home seems garish or fabulous, the videos all incite a specific desire: hiring an interior designer to make your dreams a reality.
But the price of bespoke design services — and the furnishings professional interior designers curate — brings you firmly back to earth. Fortunately, there’s a far more affordable way to design the home of your dreams.
What is this magic, money-saving solution? AI interior design apps.
They can make designing your home a joy — for far less money than hiring a designer and even less effort than DIY.
AI interior design makes it easy to visualize your dream home
Imagine being in your mid-30s and purchasing your first home. You probably forked over a significant amount of cash for the down payment, so you want to furnish your home affordably — without sacrificing style. Hiring an interior designer in that situation is certainly out of reach, but finding the right furniture online is also complicated. The quantity of retailers has multiplied in recent years, forcing you to vet the reliability of companies you’ve never heard of.
It’s even more difficult to visualize the pieces in your home. Augmented reality helps a bit, but these features tend to disappoint. If you don’t place your phone’s camera in exactly the right place, the products appear distorted, and they’re difficult to move around and resize.
With AI tools, however, you can generate images of the furniture in your home (or in stunning virtual rooms) so you can see if they’re right for your space before you buy. These platforms let you experiment, compare, and remix your designs — so you can figure out which aesthetics and designs you actually like before you buy.
What to look for in an AI interior design tool
The ideal AI interior design tool should be affordable while providing intelligent search and accurate results. Look for these four attributes:
1. Trustworthiness
Ideally, your AI interior design assistant should provide search results that don’t include spam or marketing. This will streamline your furniture search and give you more options than just designer and Big Box store items. Ad-free AI helps you get genuinely relevant results rather than just seeing what the algorithm wants you to see. After all, you moved away from Google Search because it didn’t produce the results you wanted.
2. Search accuracy
The best AI easily interprets your natural language prompts or uploaded images — just like traditional search. But you also want to be able to refine your search. For example, if you search “blue couch,” you should be able to refine that search by typing in “only the L-shaped ones” or “navy blue.” That way, you get the most accurate results.
3. Realistic visualization
Don’t settle for wonky or distorted images; use a tool that produces beautiful, high-resolution AI images. Remember, this tool is replacing the luxury of an interior designer, so you want visuals that imitate the bespoke interior designer experience. And since you’re looking to design spaces in your own house, look for an app that lets you upload pics as inspiration.
4. Affordable
Interior designers are expensive, but you want to curate an original space that reflects your personality and needs. Interior design AI tools can do that for a fraction of the cost. They’re the shortcut to infusing your DIY efforts with outside inspiration and supply unlimited assistance.
7 best interior design tools
To help you understand which interior design tool may work best for your needs, we’ve compiled a list of the top AI-powered interior design tools and broken them down by their features, pricing, and ideal uses.
VisualizeeAI
Visualizee turns your sketches, images, 3D models, or text prompts into realistic renderings at a reasonable cost.
Pros:
Turns images and sketches into fleshed-out visuals
Transforms sketches or photos into customizable interiors
Upgrades images and sketches of furniture into customizable images
Makes low-res images into high-res ones
Cons:
Occasional inaccuracies — The AI is very dependent on good inputs.
Clunky UI — You may sometimes need to refresh the page to clean up images.
Purpose — It’s not made specifically for interior design.
Very limited free trial — You only get three renderings before you have to fork over your credit card.
Best for:
Turning sketches into high-resolution images
Pricing:
Basic plan: $9 for 14 days
Intermediate: $19 for 30 days
Advanced: $29 for 90 days
Homevisualizer AI
Homevisualizer AI was crafted specifically for interior designers to transform ideas into renderings to share with clients.
Pros:
Turns text into designs
Creates high-resolution images
Comes with developer API
Renders relatively quickly
Cons:
Standard AI — Sometimes, strange objects appear in images.
Basic interface — Your prompt options are limited.
Image processing — Generating images takes longer than average.
Best for:
Designing spaces from professional sketches
Pricing:
Standard: $12 per month
Pro: $21 per month
Enterprise: Contact sales
REimagine Home
Reimagine Home enables real estate listing makeovers. With one click, you can transform rooms, clear clutter, and beautify lawns.
Pros:
Offers an easy-to-use interface
Designs and revamps swiftly
Produces realistic results with minimal distortion
Cons:
Image quality – The tool generates standard AI images (with often unrealistic results).
Accuracy – The AI sometimes misses your instructions.
Professionalism – The results can be amateurish.
Limited free trial — You get five renderings before you’ll need a paid plan.
Best for:
Trying out different colors and materials for outdoor spaces
Pricing:
Starter: $14 per month
Optimal: $29 per month
Advanced: $49 per month
Premium: $99 per month
Fotor
Fotor is the most basic app on our list. It allows you to check out popular designs or upload photos of your own rooms.
Pros:
Offers simple UI for beginners
Provides an all-in-one design tool for a set price
Uses text or images to generate results
Cons:
Plan structure — Advanced AI tools are only available with a Pro plan.
Purpose — It’s more of a general AI platform than an interior design tool.
Best for:
On-the-go planning via mobile
Pricing:
Basic editing and design is free
Pro: $3.99 per month (billed yearly)
Pro+: $7.49 per month (billed yearly)
SofaBrain
SofaBrain designs your space in three steps: upload your property images, select your ideal design style, and let the AI transformation begin.
Pros:
Offers a brush tool for specific modifications to rooms
Lets you select aesthetics that apply nicely to any image
Generates beautiful images
Cons:
Static results — You can’t modify images with natural language.
Very limited free plan — You’ll get just three free renderings.
Best for:
Beautifying real estate listings
Pricing:
Basic: $12 per month
Standard: $21 per month
Professional: $37 per month
Interior AI
Interior AI lets you redesign your rooms from your phone or laptop. Upload a photo or sketch, choose a style, and render images.
Pros:
Jogs your imagination with 50+ preset interior design styles
Offers swift renderings
Provides easy virtual staging for real estate
Cons:
Pricing — The cheapest plan is still relatively expensive.
Inputs — You can’t use natural language to create rooms.
Best for:
Creating 3D “flythroughs” for immersive, realistic video experiences
Pricing:
Pro: $39 per month
Premium: $99 per month
Business $299 per month
Onton
Onton streamlines product search and helps you visualize interior design ideas before making a purchase. With speedy, accurate responses, photorealistic AI images, and shoppable interface, it’s easily the most comprehensive interior design assistant on our list. What’s more, search results exclude unnecessary spam or advertising. Our favorite feature? You can use natural language and upload images to design your space and find exactly what you’re looking for.
Notable features:
Onton Search is the core search engine. Its reverse image search is great for dupe-hunting or shopping for specific pieces.
Onton Imagine generates photorealistic, shoppable AI rooms based on text descriptions. It includes 40+ design styles and understands negative search (i.e., excluding what you don’t want). Upload a picture of your space to imagine designs in your own home.
Onton Concierge is an AI chat that helps you find furniture or decor.
Onton Discover replaces the frustration of recreating Pinterest boards by revealing shoppable, AI-generated roomscapes to explore and get inspired.
Best for:
Bringing your dream home to life at an affordable cost
Creating shoppable, high-quality, realistic images that match your specifications
Shopping product dupes in an instant with cutting-edge object detection
Downloading professional-quality images for sharing with family, friends, or clients
Pricing:
Unlimited free search
10 free Deft Imagine renderings per week
$20 per month for personal use
$99 per month for commercial use
Save 20% with an annual subscription
Onton makes your design dreams a reality
With Onton, no concept or piece of furniture is out of reach.
Describe what you want in words or photos with Onton Search. Generate high-resolution, photorealistic renditions to your exact specifications with Onton Imagine. Either way, you can easily shop the furniture or decor directly from the generated images or search results.
It’s free to try, with no credit card required. Visit shoponton.com to start redesigning your home today!