AR apps for interior designers: do you need one?
Search for AR tools for interior design and you will mostly find apps: room planners, furniture catalogues, scanners. They are useful for your own planning. They are a harder sell when the person you need to convince is a client who has never heard of them.
Two different jobs
An AR app that helps you plan a room is a design tool. An AR experience that helps a client approve a design is a communication tool. The first is judged by how fast you can work. The second is judged by how many clients actually open it.
The friction problem
Every extra step costs you viewers: find the app, download it, create an account, allow the camera, find your project. A busy client will often skip all that and ask you to explain it on a call instead. A link that opens straight into AR removes those steps.
How link-based AR works
Modern phones already include an AR viewer: Apple’s on iPhone and Google’s on Android phones that support it. When a client opens a link to a 3D model, the phone offers to place it in the room. Nothing is installed.
When an app is still the right choice
- You want to design inside AR yourself, placing and rearranging many items live.
- You need to scan an existing room into measured plans.
- The client already uses the same app, for example on a long project with one firm.
Many designers use both: an app for their own planning and a link for client sign-off.
What to ask before you choose a tool
- Does the client need an app or an account?
- Which phones does it work on?
- Can you reuse the 3D models you already have?
- Can you attach the presentation you already use?
- Can you see whether the client opened it?
- What does it cost per project, not just per month?