When Lee Mayer launched the interior design platform Havenly in 2014, she used technology to make design more affordable to the masses.
The site connects customers with professionals who manage the majority of the design process online. You use Havenly's website to conduct video consultations and chats, share measurements and mood boards, or share new floor plans and links to products.
Now Ms. Mayer hopes to master the industry's next high-tech disruption with Havenly AI, an app with the potential to redesign a space without professional help.
Upload a few photos, answer a few questions, and your design dreams will be transformed into an image of your home as you watch. (You can even click on a couch to purchase it.)
The app, still in development, gets something wrong “every 20 times,” Ms. Mayer said, and it isn’t as creative as one of Havenly’s real designers. “But we now have a 3D rendering in 30 seconds,” Ms. Mayer said. “It’s kind of crazy.”
Havenly is among a growing number of home renovation and interior design platforms that are adopting AI-powered imaging tools, many of which appear in Instagram and TikTok ads that promise faster and easier home updates. Speak has “Viz;” Hover features “Instant Design”; and the new “Renovation Studio” comes from Block. Even Lowe's, the home improvement major, plans to add similar functionality to Mylow, the company's AI-powered shopping tool.
In the design and construction industry, instant renderings derived from a mix of photos and data are called “visualization,” said Sumeet Howe, product lead at Hover, a real estate and renovation management platform used primarily by insurance adjusters and contractors.
In the past, Ms. Howe said, interior designers would come to your home with samples and samples, get exact measurements, and then spend several days or even weeks working on product research and floor plans. Until artificial intelligence arrived, these were typically created as models rather than realistic images that showed your home as it actually existed.
Nor could you change them on the fly, Ms. Howe said. “Now I can just change the trim to 'Countrylane Red,'” she said, referring to a popular exterior color.
Hover's 2025 study of homeowners and construction professionals found that 74 percent of homeowners now expect exactly these types of images before embarking on a project, Ms. Howe said.
The company was already using aspects of this technology to help builders, contractors and insurance adjusters create accurate measurements, budgets and schedules, as well as select and order construction materials. Now they plan to bring these tools directly to homeowners.
The trend is also being driven by advances in AI technology itself, said Hilah Stahl, the founder of Spoak, which offers a range of interior design tools for everything from creating precise floor plans to budget-based mood boards aimed at design professionals and do-it-yourselfers. (The suite is similar to the low-cost graphic design tools from Canva, a company whose success Ms. Stahl hopes to mirror.)
Ms. Stahl took a few weeks of maternity leave in August, and when she returned, her lead engineer told her that the AI's capabilities had changed so much that “it went from 'I don't know how we do this' to 'There are seven different ways to do this'.”
Their Viz tool now allows users of all skill levels to apply their designs to real images of their rooms or modify them on the fly.
Julie Kheyfets, managing director of renovation platform Block, said visualizations are also crucial for contractors as they help build consensus with clients.
Most people don't know the language of design—for example, whether something is midcentury modern or coastal—and don't know what's possible in their space. By implementing a designer's vision almost immediately, visualizations can reduce time, cost and stress to ensure a designer or contractor is on the same page with the client.
Block's platform also uses algorithms to refine contractor bids and proposals, create timelines for projects, and display the costs of comparable renovations by neighborhood, similar to how you would display prices for hotels.
Like most professionals in the industry, Eppie Vojt said the real hurdle is ensuring that an AI-designed project is “actually buildable” – that the measurements are correct, that the materials shown are there, that building codes are met. Mr. Vojt is the lead data and AI officer for West Shore Home, a contracting company that primarily performs bathroom and exterior remodels.
“AI is ‘she looks pretty’ – that’s her brain,” Mr. Vojt said. However, there are many “invisible barriers” to construction, such as HVAC systems or plumbing, that need to be considered, he said.
Mistakes Mr. Vojt has seen include shower heads mounted on exterior walls or shower doors that don't have enough clearance to open.
“Step one will probably never happen, someone shows up and starts tearing things up,” he added. “Step one is we send someone out.”
Michelle George, an architect and national director of innovation at the firm BSB Design, is less worried about companies like Hover and Block targeting a client who probably can't afford to hire them, and more concerned about how she can incorporate the technology itself into her practice.
“We use it as an ideation tool,” Ms. George said.
If you don't meet expectations of what's possible, “you're almost selling yourself like a false dream,” Ms. George said.
Gregory Melitonov, assistant professor of interior design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, said that from his perspective, AI tools are the latest in a series of things that allow the homeowner to take a more active role in discussing what they like.
“Pinterest was the first wave of 'I like this, can you do this for me,'” he said.
He is worried about the future of his students, who fear that AI could take away many of their jobs or even their ideas as models fake images of their work on the Internet. But he also hopes that AI tools could lead to more artistry and creativity among people in this field.
“I’m already seeing something of a return to craftsmanship,” he said, citing increasing interest in the old-fashioned practice of drawing design plans by hand.
Ellen Fisher, dean of the New York School of Interior Design, is similarly optimistic. If AI can take away the tedious work of learning software programs and planning or writing meeting notes, “who wouldn’t want that?” she said.
Like Mr. Melitonov (and Ms. Mayer of Havenly), Ms. Fisher still believes that people bring a deeper level to design. She recently used an AI-powered tool to view sample interiors at a major furniture retailer. It was competent, she said, but lacked soul and surprise.
“There is a difference,” Ms. Fisher said. “You can feel it.”