Neural networks and interior design: what AI already does and what it can't replace

Can an AI model replace a design project?

An AI model produces an image: a mood, a palette, a shot's composition. Quickly, and often convincingly.

A design project is a set of commitments with dimensions: plans, setting-out references, junction details and specifications, used to order materials and carry out the work. Everything of substance in a studio's work lies between the image and the project: the measured survey, the engineering, the layout, the technical documentation.

So the “will it replace it or not” debate is not quite the right question. AI has already made the search for an image much faster and is gradually moving into the next stages: reading drawings, selecting materials, the routine side of documentation. For now, though, it does not replace a project as a system of decisions, documentation and responsibility for the result.

Where an AI model genuinely helps

At the start, before meeting a designer. Trying out ten different moods in an evening and working out what resonates is a genuine time-saver. After this kind of preparation, the technical brief comes out more precise, and the conversation more concrete.

When a feeling can't be put into words. “I want it calm, but not boring” is a phrase everyone understands differently. A picture removes that ambiguity in a second.

For trying out a colour idea quickly. Seeing how a dark living room or a green kitchen would feel is useful before the idea gets discussed seriously.

In all three cases, the AI's output is an entry point into the conversation, not its conclusion.

More and more people bring collections like these to a first meeting, and on the whole that's a good thing: instead of a vague “I want it to look nice”, they arrive with material we can discuss in concrete terms. Then comes the most useful part. We work out which of these images can actually carry over to a specific room and which exist only as a beautiful picture.

What an AI model doesn't do

It doesn't know your room. It has no measurements, no ceiling height, no window positions, no opening widths. A generated view can look convincing and still be physically impossible in a specific room.

It doesn't see the engineering. Where the stack is, where ventilation can be routed, what the allocated power capacity is, where a load-bearing wall runs: none of this is in the picture. Yet this is what shapes the layout, before aesthetics come into it. How much it matters is shown in the article “Ventilation in a designer renovation”.

It doesn't give you dimensions. You can't order furniture, calculate tile quantities or place a socket from an image. All of that lives in the technical documentation, the most extensive section of the project.

It doesn't answer for the result. If a solution doesn't come together on site, the picture has no author to discuss it with.

How to check there is a real project behind an image

A single image is no longer always enough to tell a generated picture from a photograph with confidence: generators have become noticeably cleaner, and interior photography is almost always retouched. Indirect signs still work and can save time:

• Joins. Generated images often have tile and parquet junctions that drift, corners that don't meet and a pattern that doesn't continue across a seam.
• Sockets and switches. Either they are missing altogether, or they are placed with no logic to how they'd be used.
• Light. Lit surfaces with no visible source, shadows falling in different directions.
• Furniture proportions. A two-seat sofa that's four metres long, a chair taller than the table.

But these are hints, not a diagnostic test. It's more reliable to check the trail a project leaves than the picture itself: the floor plan, other views of the same room, technical drawings, photographs taken during construction and of the finished interior.

What this means for a design project

The conclusion is simple: an image can start the conversation, but design decisions are made on drawings, dimensions and specifications. In an interior design project the visualisation is built on the real geometry of your room, with real dimensions and the real materials from the specification, so a revision to it means a revision to the project, not to a picture.

What exactly is included in the set, and why the technical documentation is its most extensive part, is covered in the articles “What's included in an interior design project” and “What makes up the price of a design project”. The documentation itself can also be commissioned separately: technical documentation.

If you've already put together an image using an AI model

That's a good starting point, so bring it to a consultation. Within an hour it becomes clear what from your collection can carry over into your room's geometry, what will need a reconfiguration and what the engineering rules out. Generation gives you an image. A consultation turns it into a technical brief.