Home design has undergone quite a bit of change in the last few years — even though Home Building and real estate, in general, have been slow to adopt digital transformation.
Advances in design software and technology have transformed home planning into a collaborative process involving Builders, designers and prospective homeowners. Besides CAD drawings, buyers can now visualize their future homes in 3D and leverage interactive virtual tours.
The 3D rendering market size is expected to reach more than $9 billion by 2026, and one of its major growth drivers is the increasing adoption of 3D rendering in real estate and residential construction.
With technology becoming more accessible, buyers now expect to take on a more active role in house design and Builders must adopt tools that help them accomplish this. Here’s a look at how you can create virtual house plans that dazzle your clients.
Steps to Create A Virtual House Plan
While the exact steps may vary depending on the specific tools you use, below are the general procedures involved in creating virtual home plans.
1. Understand Your Audience
Often overlooked, this may well be the most important step in Home Building. Understanding your customers and their needs will help you better sell your designs.
Prospective homeowners are usually brimming with ideas about their future homes. Some may want a carport instead of a garage. Others may want a porte-cochere in place of their porch. Some may want their dream homes to be designed in a french country style while others might prefer a modern farmhouse style.
So ask the right questions to understand how your customers picture their new home and present them properly in your custom home plan.
2. Get the Basics Right
Even before you start creating an outline of your floor plan, make sure you have the right measurements. It’s important to get accurate measurements to get clear renders that reflect the actual building drawn to scale. Most design apps accept measurements in sq ft or meter square.
As any architect worth their salt knows, it’s important to see the actual site before you start designing. Understand the ambient climate, lighting, wind direction, land inclination, etc., and make provisions for incorporating these elements into the design.
3. Draw Your 2D Plan
Next, use these measurements to draw a 2D floor plan. Once you have drawn the walls, add components like doors, windows, and major appliances to the plan.
Besides the basic components, you can add more specific ones in individual rooms to give them more character and make them feel more livable. For example, you could add a closet in the master suite, a shoe storage area in the mudroom or shelves in the kitchen.
Make sure that the components in a room complement each other and follow a consistent theme. If you’re relatively new to using a design tool, it may be tempting to mix and match, but know that consistency is key.
4. Furnish the Home Model
Once you have the basic outline of your house plan, start adding in elements like flooring, wall coverings, etc. Visualizations of the exteriors and interiors will help prospective buyers get a feel of the personality of their future homes.
Here’s where your previous conversations with them will come into play. Keep customer preferences in mind and start selecting your paint colors, tiles and wallpapers.
As with your components, it’s best to use a consistent theme. However, it may be worthwhile to experiment with different themes for different floors. Perhaps lower levels can have a more formal ambiance while main floors can have more casual vibes. Once again, tailor your designs to the needs of your audience.
5. Add Finishing Touches
It’s now time to add the finishing touches that will transform your design into a place people would want to call home. Feel free to get creative and add decorative pieces like mirrors, rugs, curtains, etc. by dragging and dropping items onto your design.
Small touches like towels in bathrooms, utensils in the kitchen, or a bonsai plant on the front porch can make your model appear more natural and realistic. Once again, consider customer preferences when you decorate and add your interior design elements.
6. Generate and Share Images
Once you have finalized the design, use your app or software to create high-quality 2D or 3D images of your project. Share them with your customers and ask for their feedback.
The right home design tool should also allow you to create 3D virtual tours, walkthroughs and video tours of your project that you can share with others. Based on the feedback you receive from your customers, make changes to your design as needed, and iterate the process accordingly.
Choosing the Right Virtual Home Design Solution
A robust virtual home design solution can help you create exceptional customer experiences. It can help you engage buyers more effectively in the Home Building process and enable them to visualize their dream homes anytime and anywhere. This boosts their trust and confidence in the purchase.
Besides enriching the buyer’s experience, a robust design solution will also make things simpler for the designer. A clear, intuitive interface with pre-built design elements and drag-and-drop features can reduce the design time significantly.
Hyphen HomeSight allows you to share floorplans and interactive virtual walkthroughs with your customers, so they can visualize their future home and personalize the design as per their wants and needs. Our solution allows Builders to load structural elements, exterior colors, elevation, etc. directly onto the design while comparing options which speeds up the sales process.
What more? Customers can even create their design wishlist virtually so your teams can familiarize themselves with their tastes and preferences even before meeting them.
Final Words
A robust virtual home design solution can drive significant ROI for Home Builders and developers. It takes out all the guesswork and eliminates any doubt in the minds of buyers about how their future home may look like. Contact us today to learn how you can use Hyphen HomeSight to showcase the livability of your designs to prospective customers and streamline sales.
