If you’ve ever struggled to envisage a piece of furniture or home décor in your space, you’ll be happy to hear IKEA Kreativ has launched in Australia. The tool uses 3D mixed-reality tech and is available on the IKEA app or online. It was first unveiled in June 2022, but had yet to reach down under.
“This is a significant investment for IKEA in cutting-edge digital AI technology which is market-leading for a home furnishing retailer in Australia,” said Giovanni Rutigliano, IKEA Australia’s digital manager.
I had the treat of getting to demo the feature ahead of its release in Australia and found it far easier to use than I would’ve thought. I downloaded the IKEA app and created an account. Then I picked my choice of two ways to use the tool. You could either use one of 50 showrooms to play around with items in the space. Or you could scan a room right in front of you.
I chose the second option, scanning a bedroom showroom right in front of me. I followed the tool’s prompted instructions, taking pictures of the room and then moving my phone in the shape of a figure-eight so that it could fully scan the room.
A few minutes later, I got an email saying my room scan was complete and I could use the feature. I could erase whatever piece of furniture or home décor I wanted in the photo and then add in any of 5000 IKEA items, including tables, rugs and even plants, loaded into the tool.
You could rotate the items in the room, stack them and hang them on walls. The products also come at scale, with the tool’s algorithm using depth analysis, so as you place them around the room, they change depth to scale.
What that means is that when you move a piece of furniture and home décor further back in the room, it’ll get smaller. This helps you visualise the overall aesthetic of the room with all the pieces in it.
“IKEA Kreativ can really break down barriers to having new ideas, designing, decorating and shopping for home furnishings, where people can feel the magic of the IKEA physical stores, through a virtual space,” said Christine Gough, IKEA Australia interior design leader.
I’ve been wanting to get a new table and maybe new chairs, so I imagine using this tool to scan my dining room and see how the new setup looks in it would come in handy. That said, realistically, I don’t know whether I’d go through the effort of scanning my dining room and trialling furniture within it.
I think the tool would be most useful to someone designing a room from scratch or with only few items in it already. The tool can easily help you decide the best way to fill the space, so you can be confident the pieces you’re buying are working to achieve the final look you want.
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