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Wayfair adds AR furniture and 3D visualization tools to its apps
Plan your living room layout virtually.
Designing interiors for the home has gotten a little easier recently through the use virtual design tools instead of dragging a sofa around. Now, home store Wayfair is getting in on the action, introducing a new way to pick the perfect pieces of furniture for rooms with an augmented reality (AR) function built into the latest version of its app.
The app's new features include View in Room 3D, which lets users take a photo of their room and then see various products added virtually in place. It's a little like IKEA's Place app for positioning furniture, but Wayfair's version is photo-based so it works even when users are away from home. The company says it uses breakthrough technology to analyze the 3D space of a room from a 2D image to allow the virtual placing of items.
Another updated feature is Search with Photo, which lets customers search for products from Wayfair from an image taken by their camera, similar to Google's Lens image search.
Finally, there is the Room Planner 3D design tool, where users can create an interactive 3D room to test out different layouts and configurations for their furniture and decor. The room can be viewed from almost any angle, and products are automatically added to the room at the correct scale.
The new version of the Wayfair app is available for iOS and Android now, but the some of the functions including the Room Planner are currently only available on iOS.
