You dream of a couch, but you have no idea how your vague idea of a couch actually works in your living space. Or you go to a furniture store with the measurements in hand to purchase a table, but walk away unsure whether the table will look wrong, even if it technically fits into your dining room.
But what if you could take all that stress off with one app? Ikea is trying to provide the solution with its latest addition to the range of extremely practical AR tools it calls Ikea Studio. The app was developed in collaboration with the Danish interior design laboratory Space10 and aims to use the LiDAR sensors of an iPhone to understand your living space and determine whether your favorite Ikea ottoman or oversized lamp fits into your living room.
It’s currently in beta, downloadable via TestFlight, unfortunately only available under iOS. If you can install it anyway, it will probably be worth trying out before your next trip to the big yellow and blue box. Everything to make the trip a little less an odyssey (in the classic sense).
How to use Ikea Studio
The gist is pretty simple: the app captures a floor plan of a room you want to redecorate and then allows you to read a limited catalog of Ikea offerings that match the dimensions of your space. Conveniently, your existing furniture will be replaced with white boxes that are easily overwritten by the images of the Ikea furniture you have chosen. The scanning system takes into account the presence of windows and doors and allows you to change the color of a wall. If you want to test out some of the more redundant features of augmented reality, the app also lets you turn digital lights on and off in case you have a limited imagination and want to see what your suggested quarters might look like more or less easily.
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More useful is that you can see what your walls will look like adorned with shelves, or what they might look like if painted a gorgeous shade of seaweed green:
When you’ve explored the possibilities, you can export a 3D or 2D rendering of your floor plan. Hopefully the process will make the tedious chore of outfitting your home a little less, provided you are happy with finding Ikea for all of your furnishing needs. (If not, read on.)
A precursor to Apple Glass?
There just has to be a proprietary business model, right? In an interview with Wired In the UK, Tommy Campbell, head of digital design at Space10, suggested that the introduction of Apple’s AR glasses will provide a broader framework for Ikea’s ambitions in the digital furniture space.
He told the magazine:
We therefore made a very conscious decision to paint the vision of Studio as a vision that can exist both on the smartphone and in a glasses-like environment. We also used a new renderer reality kit from Apple that allows us to achieve a level of detail for these models that has not been seen before in IKEA’s AR portfolio.
Apple Glass or not, the beta iPhone app offers an exciting new way to explore your decorating options without pulling out a tape measure.
Other apps do the same
Ikea’s app may look like the best version of its kind right now, but that doesn’t negate the previous ones. If you don’t have an iPhone or don’t want to commit to becoming an Ikea brand warrior, there are a few other apps out there that do the same (or similar).
- Magicplan Also creates a floor plan of your environment and can be integrated into Amazon, expanding the scope of your ordering and visualization options. It’s available for iOS and Android.
- Houzz is a little different in that it has photos that you can browse to find a creative spark, but you can also snap a photo of your surroundings to see what some new outfits in your digs want. It is also available on iOS and Android.
- Dulux Visualizer reminds us how important color can be. The paint company has its own app that you can use to upload a photo to see which color goes best with your walls. Available for iOS and Android.
- Oh yes, and then there is something else Wegmesse. The online furniture retailer has an app that is eerily similar to Ikea’s in that you can see how the exclusive deals fit into your home. It’s on Android and iOS.