See what an interior would look like with Ikea furniture: this is what the Scandinavian brand offers with an augmented reality tool allowing you to project yourself into a future decoration before deciding.
Changing the decoration of a room can be as much a pleasure as an ordeal, especially when you can’t project yourself. To help its customers visualize their future interior, Ikea has developed an original augmented reality tool. Called Ikea Kreativ, it uses artificial intelligence to analyze photos of rooms in a home and then erase which furniture is there by replacing them with models from the Scandinavian specialist – and only those, of course! An original and clever method to imagine layouts and test furniture without moving, which corresponds to a real need and new consumer habits. In a published post on his blog, Ikea explains that 60% of its customers have changed the layout of their homes since the pandemic and that more and more consumers now prefer to buy remotely, via the Internet, without having to travel. Hence the idea of offering an innovative and practical solution, bringing in some of what makes the charm of the Swedish brand.
Ikea Kreativ: visualize the furniture directly at home
The operation of Ikea Kreativ is relatively simple and fun, as can be seen in the video made by Ikea. First you have to use a smartphone to take a series of photos of a room with the Scene Scanner function. Once the panoramic shot has been taken – by shaking the phone in a figure-eight motion to capture more visual data – the artificial intelligence analyzes the scanned scene, the image must be modified directly in the application or on the site Ikea’s web on a computer to erase the furniture you want to remove and replace it with virtual Ikea furniture. For those who don’t want to scan their home, there are also over fifty virtual showrooms to place furniture in. This function currently offers thousands of furniture, rugs, accessories and wall decorations from the Ikea catalog. There are plans to add support for additional product categories such as furniture and ceiling-mounted textiles in the coming year.
Ikea Kreativ’s rendering is realistic and respectful of proportions. But it is not absolutely precise, and it is absolutely necessary to check the dimensions of the furniture and the parts analyzed before placing an order, to be sure that everything fits… Moreover, the tool only offers a view in 2D, and you can’t see the virtual furniture from all angles, which is quite frustrating.
Ikea Kreativ is already available in the United States. But, for the moment, only through the Ikea application for iOS, which requires using an iPhone or iPad for the analysis. But an Android version is planned for this summer. Similarly, a launch of the tool in other countries is planned for next year.