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See your home in VR before calling in the decorators

The commitment to remodel, redecorate, or even just throw a fresh coat of paint on the wall is a big one. There’s money to spend, contractors to work with, and no going back once you’ve started. That’s why being able to see what it will look like before you start is so valuable, and now you can do it in VR, thanks to a new VR and AR (augmented reality) app from iStaging.

Some of the prettiest demos for virtual reality over the past couple of years have been architectural concepts, but they’ve never been quite as personal as this. With iStaging’s new app, you can overlay new furniture in any room in your house, in real time at actual size, giving you a real idea of what works and what doesn’t.

Better yet, you don’t even have to place a marker on the floor to make it work correctly; simply boot up the app, point, and go.

If you want the full 360-degree experience though you will need some VR goggles, or a compatible headset. There are a number of options for you at this point, but Google Cardboard is likely the cheapest.

Once you have your headset on you can not only pick and choose the furniture, but look around your room in 360 degree augmented reality. You can then jump from the real environment into a virtual one designed by professionals, which could give you inspiration for changing around your own home’s layout, color scheme, or furnishings.

This could be handy professionally too, as it will allow estate agents to layer in furniture for homes, and give clients a look at what their future home might be like when they’ve moved in completely.

Available now for iOS and Android, the iStaging app is just one of several that the developers have received awards for in recent months. Not all reviews are stellar however, with some Android users suggesting the VR function is superior to that of the AR.

How have you found the apps?

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Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale is the Evergreen Coordinator for Computing, overseeing a team of writers addressing all the latest how to…
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