How to Use AI for Virtual Staging
Virtual staging is an innovative marketing approach that can help grab the attention of buyers and max out the property value.
✍️Quick Summary: AI virtual staging helps buyers visualize a property's potential without physically changing the space. With RoomSketcher, you can update furniture, colors, lighting, finishes, and layouts using AI Render. Virtual staging can modernize dated rooms, furnish empty spaces, and present different interior styles. It offers a faster, more flexible alternative to traditional staging while helping buyers imagine living there.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at virtual staging, its benefits, and what to focus on when staging a home virtually.
Originally, virtual staging used to be done with a lot of manual work, taking a lot of time to make changes to tiny details to get everything right, and it used to be a steep learning curve. However, with AI, you can save even more time, and anyone can do it.
📃Table of Contents:
How to Do Virtual Staging with AI
AI Render from Snapshot/3D Floor Plans
What to Focus on When Virtually Staging a Home
Review the furniture and layout
Refresh colors, lighting, and décor
Help buyers picture themselves in the space
What Is Virtual Staging?
Virtual staging is the process of creating a realistic visualization or simulation of a home to increase its appeal and showcase its full potential.
When using virtual staging, furniture can be added or removed, lighting and colors can be changed, décor updated, and even structural features like floors, windows, and doors can be added with just a few clicks.
With AI involved in the process, the options for redecorating become endless. It’s drastically changed how virtual staging is done, cutting down time, making it easier, allowing anyone with internet access to do it, and cutting costs. What used to cost hundreds of dollars has become significantly more affordable for both big and small businesses.
In RoomSketcher, you have the ability to use the preset styles available, or use prompts to change, for example, wallpaper, chairs, and finishes.
Does Virtual Staging Work?
Using virtual staging software for real estate is an innovative and highly effective marketing technique that evolved from traditional home staging. Home staging includes tasks like cleaning, tidying, decluttering, repainting, replacing dated furniture, adding fresh flowers, and removing personal items like family photos.
The tried-and-tested process of redecorating, decluttering, and rearranging furniture has been around for over 50 years, and for good reason; properties that are presented better sell faster and for more money.
Virtual staging is the same principle, but without all the hard work. You don’t need to move any heavy furniture or paint any walls. With RoomSketcher’s AI Render, changing interior styles to show greater opportunities is incredibly easy. It helps potential buyers see the space in their own interior preference.
Home staging can be time-consuming, expensive, limited, and physically demanding work. Virtual staging is faster, less expensive, and allows for unlimited design alternatives and furniture arrangements.
How to Do Virtual Staging with AI
Start by creating a floor plan in RoomSketcher by drawing in the app or capturing an existing space with FloorCapture. If you already have a floor plan, you can either convert it with AI Convert or trace a blueprint. After this, you can create stunning photorealistic images with AI Render.
There are two ways to create an AI Render with RoomSketcher, one from Live 3D (Pro and Team), and one from Snapshots/3D Floor Plans. Here’s how it works:
AI Render from Live 3D:
- Open your project in the RoomSketcher Web Portal
- Click Live 3D in the top right corner
- Choose the view you want - you can switch between the modes in the bottom left corner (Use Flyover Mode to create a photorealistic view from above. Use 1st Person Mode to create a photorealistic view from inside the room.)
- Move around until you find the angle you want
- Click the AI Render button in the top right
- Choose from one of four available image formats (16:9, 3:2, 4:3, 1:1)
- Click Generate
AI Render from Snapshot/3D Floor Plans:
- Open your project in the RoomSketcher Web Portal
- Click More in the top right corner
- Click Media Gallery
- Click the 3D Photo or snapshot you want to use
- Click AI Render in the top right corner
What to Focus on When Virtually Staging a Home
When virtually staging a home, focus on changes that help potential buyers understand the space and picture themselves living there. That could mean updating an outdated interior, trying a different furniture arrangement, or showing what an unfinished space could look like when complete.
Update dated features
Outdated finishes can make it harder for buyers to see a home's potential. Instead of physically replacing them before selling, use virtual staging to show alternative designs.
For example, a dated kitchen can be visualized with different colors, finishes, wallpaper, or furniture. You can even create several versions to show buyers what the space could become.
Prompt example: “Replace the white wood on the cabinets, shelves, trim, window muntins, window frame, bench legs, and mirror frames with warm walnut wood. Keep everything else unchanged.”
Review the furniture and layout
Furniture has a big impact on how a room looks and feels. With virtual staging, you can add or remove furniture and experiment with different arrangements without moving anything in the actual property.
Try different layouts to show how the available space could be used and help buyers understand the possibilities for each room.
In the RoomSketcher app, you can change layouts easily with the drag-and-drop tool. Swap furniture and layout with just a few clicks and then go into the Web Portal to create new AI Render images.
Refresh colors, lighting, and décor
Virtual staging isn't limited to furniture. You can also change lighting, colors, décor, and finishes to present a different interior style.
With AI tools, you can experiment with individual elements, such as wallpaper or chairs, or change the overall look of the room to give buyers different ideas for the space.
Prompt example: “Change the lighting to early morning light. Keep everything else the same. Make the result photorealistic.”
Help buyers picture themselves in the space
One of the main goals of staging is to make it easier for buyers to imagine the property as their future home. Traditional staging often involves decluttering, replacing dated furniture, repainting, and removing personal items like family photos.
Virtual staging follows the same principle. Use the staged images to shift attention away from the current owner's style and toward what the space could offer a future buyer.
In this case, it could be beneficial to use the preset styles in AI Render, such as Japandi, modern farmhouse, or maximalist. If any of these do not suit your style, try a different one.
Show the potential of unfinished or empty spaces
Some properties are particularly difficult to visualize in their current state. An off-plan home may still be a construction site, while an empty commercial property can feel bland and difficult to interpret.
Virtual staging can bring these spaces to life by showing how they could look when furnished, decorated, and in use.
Prompt example: “Add white linen curtains, a soft beige area rug, light green and beige pillows in the sofa, and warm brass wall lamps.”
Virtual Staging Benefits
Virtual staging is usually a no-brainer for anyone wanting to sell their property. Here are just some of the benefits:
- Staged homes sell for more: Studies have shown that staged properties sell for more than similar unstaged properties.
- Stand out from the competition: The average buyer looks at 10 properties before deciding (and browses hundreds online). Virtual staging provides a unique selling point.
- Fast turnaround: Generate AI images for the living space in minutes. This allows you to modify and evolve ideas quickly.
- Affordable: Whether you use professional or do-it-yourself software, it's extremely affordable and well worth the investment.
- Flexible: With virtual staging, the sky is the limit. You can effortlessly mix and match different layouts, furniture, and design options.
Virtually Stage with AI in RoomSketcher
Show buyers what a property could look like with RoomSketcher. Create your floor plan, furnish and decorate the space, and use AI Render to experiment with different interior styles, furniture, colors, and finishes.
Whether you want to modernize a dated room or visualize an empty property, you can create realistic visuals that make the space easier to understand and imagine.
Start virtually staging your property with RoomSketcher today.
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