AI and interiors: generic homes or a way to be more creative?

Is the way we design our homes going to change?

Something a little different this week. I’ll get back to ‘usual’ house-y stuff, with a few new additions, soon. 

It’s been quite the week here with a busy work schedule and start of autumn/winter sickness season wiping out large chunks of time. But we move. Another (more notable) thing of this week, not far from The Home I Made HQ (i.e my house), is the world’s first AI Safety Summit. You’ve probably seen or heard about it on the news. It’s sparked a few interesting conversations among friends and family and really got me thinking about AI and its impact. 

Of course, there’s already been a lot of discussion centred on Generative AI and content development, especially in light of writer strikes, and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t concern for what this technology means for an industry I am part of and love working in. I know I’m not alone. Questions of ‘will AI kill creativity?’, ‘will it take away the need for writers?’ and ‘will it cut budgets even further?’ are just some that spring to mind.  I’ve already had more than a handful of conversations in which AI has been mentioned as a more ‘cost-effective’ way to help create words and imagery, and my inbox has been on the receiving end of more than a few AI-created room sets that, in all honesty, have made me a little sad.

It’s easy to turn a blind eye, put the old blinkers on and pretend AI isn’t really something to be bothered about. But even I, a self-confessed total newcomer to this topic, know that isn’t the way. AI has been around for decades but it’s only really now that it’s getting the hype, largely thanks to the GPT models making it more mainstream. Had anyone here ever used the term ‘GPT’ a year ago? I hadn’t. I talk mainly about the use of AI in content creation, as that’s my bag. Generative AI which creates text or imagery based on a series of  prompts and existing data points, rather than the AI algorithms that tell Amazon which products to put under our nose or what recommendations we might like to see on our social feeds. 

But what about our homes? Where the likes of Instagram blew open the doors to showing off interior creativity, will AI batten down the hatches and create something altogether more generic? Or, instead of stemming creativity, could AI actually spark it?

Could AI make our homes more generic?

What I love about interiors and the homes that we each make is how different they all are. It’s the nuances of design, the application of taste and the interpretation of trends that make it all so interesting. Our homes are meant to have personality. As the saying goes, ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’ and that’s what makes each of our spaces so unique. Wouldn’t it all be a bit boring if all our homes were the same? 

When it comes to AI and home design, I wonder: is there a finite number of ways systems like ChatGPT can outline how to create a type of room style or tell you about a certain trend? Or, for visuals, surely interior design services such as the paid-for AI Interior can only offer up so many variations on a theme? Will we, as homeowners and avid decorators, turn to AI systems to get advice on home-related queries or to visualise what our perfect kitchen/bathroom/living room [insert room here] could look like? 

AI Interior as an example states that it’s ‘ideal for redecorating your home, interiors designers and real estate agents’. Upload an image of your room and choose from design styles like tropical, Scandinavian, Christmas, minimalist, vintage, Art Deco or even cottagecore and hot pink should the mood take. And there are many more too. It’ll generate your new-look room in seconds. There’s DALL·E which “is an AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language” and is currently in its third version. Created by OpenAI, it can create a picture of almost anything. So you can describe the room you want and have it displayed to you within seconds. It’s similar to Stable Diffusion and MidJourney. 

You could argue that renders or computer generated images (CGI) have been doing all of this for years. I would have to somewhat agree. The difference being that you still have a person (i.e a designer or artist) creating what you see, rather than something that’s virtually made using accessible data points to form something new or, as the case may be, reimagined. Generative AI system MidJourney has access to almost the whole internet so it can arguably be more creative while other models may only be programmed with basic ideas and offer ‘cookie cutter’ interior ideas. 

While it’s somewhat unnerving, I also find it totally intriguing. So I’ve had a go and put my ‘designer’ hat on to road test some AI-generated room schemes. And I have to admit, despite some definite cynicism, I was pleasantly surprised at the results. 

I started with the prompt: “design me a grey kitchen with dark worktops and industrial inspired finishes and exposed brick walls.”

A good starting point.

Nice enough. But let’s take it further: “design me a modern grey kitchen with dark worktops and industrial inspired finishes and exposed brick walls. Include floor to ceiling windows and parquet flooring.” Here’s how it evolved.

Would love to know who has hedges like that.

Now I didn’t ask for an island so it’s interesting that AI includes one. And there’s no mention of room dimensions so this is purely a search for ideas. Sadly my house is not afforded such lovely high ceilings. You have to admit, that’s a nice kitchen to look at. Not sure about the extremely well-pruned hedges in the garden though. And I reckon you’d probably want the sink on the other side of the island, too.

For the sake of testing, I added room dimensions: “design me a grey kitchen with dark worktops and industrial inspired finishes and exposed brick walls. Include floor to ceiling windows and parquet flooring. The room is five metres long and three metres wide.”

Not so practical.

Can you see that despite the same wording for the most part, the style and design of the space changes, so I wasn’t able to tweak the delivered image with different details, but rather a new interpretation was formed? Aside from that, the island here simply does not work, there are three taps and there’s an extractor above one!

What I learned from using AI - in this case Stable Diffusion, which is free - to create these roomsets is that you have to be very, very, VERY specific about what you want to see (prompt writing is absolutely a skill in itself), and even then it might not get it quite right. You could end up with a dodgy narrow kitchen walkway that’s far from practical or a random placement of an object that no one would ever really put there. It might multiply features because it doesn’t quite understand your prompt and aim to come up with the best solution, or it might not understand the terminology used.

For example, I asked for a galley kitchen by which I meant two parallel runs of units, but it gave me only one (which arguably can be called a galley too – confusing). I also found that, once I was more specific, the images generated often had a major flaw. For example, when I input some dimensions and asked for an island, the island was shoehorned in and blocked off access to the oven. I do realise that in this case, there shouldn’t really have been an island present at all as space didn’t allow, but AI did its thing and listened to what I asked for, delivering it regardless of whether it worked or not design wise.

The galley kitchen example I talk of. Note the location of the sink. Practical? I think not. Nice units though.

Positives though: the quality of the imagery is largely good enough. You could imagine seeing similar imagery in brochures or on online quests to find kitchen inspo. What is presented is tangible and does offer up ideas and a semi-realistic visualisation of what a particular scheme might look like. I also think it’s probably quicker to ask AI to generate an image based on what you have in your mind than to spend possibly hours scrolling Instagram or Pinterest to find something to resemble it. It’s a lot of food for thought.

Given my background, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that there’s a huge skill involved in being a designer – whether that’s for the kitchen, bathroom or an interior designer or architect. While AI can create images based on what you tell it, it cannot offer any real guidance on whether it would actually work in a home. There are far too many variables to consider, not least the dimensions, architectural quirks and exact makeup of the space. This is where a person with real-world skill and expert knowledge simply has to come in.  

If we all started using AI as a means to home design, would the looks generated become much of the same? I ask a lot of questions and the beauty of this very topic is that I - nor we - really know the answer…or at least not yet.

Generative AI is so new in terms of its mainstream presence that only time will tell of its impact on how we design our homes. But if we’re open to it, AI could become a tool to begin a design process, to get ideas out of your head and into a visual asset and to simply play around with different concepts for what a room could look like (even for fun: inputting budget-blowing features or whacky designs, for example). Even when creating my ‘grey industrial kitchen’ as shown above, I was tempted to push the boundaries just to see what would be thrown up. This could even persuade you to go in another direction for your interiors entirely, right?

I actually asked it to style up one of the rooms for Christmas. While it did add some tasteful pine sprigs, I’d probably go a bit more OTT. 

For me, the key is to see AI as a possible (probably likely) addition to the home design process - both from a homeowner point of view, and a designer’s. But I don’t think it can create the homes we love in their entirety. There will always be a need for extra flourishes, expert guidance and additions of items that add much-needed personality. When all is said and done, AI can create rooms, or even a house, yes, but I don’t think it can create a home. Not really.

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