Earlier this week I shared a blog post letting you all know that I would be participating in the Spring 2020 One Room Challenge by making over my own boring and neglected dining room. If you missed it, click here to give it a read!
In that post I shared a mood board that put a visual to the vision and even gave a brief description on how I use mood boards in projects. Well, this blog post is going to showcase the renders I developed to really finalize the concept, space planning and type of items I’ll be including in the final look.
But what is a render you ask?
A render is a deliverable that designers use to show clients what the room will look like with all the proposed changes. It’s basically a digital photograph of your future space.
Renders take a long time to develop because every single aspect of a physical space has to be built into it... yup, even the baseboards. Packages that include renders tend to be the top tier option for eDesign packages because of the amount of hours that go into making them realistic.
There are many different ways that designers use renders and also different points in a project that they might be delivered to the client.
In Virtual projects, we use them after the mood board, before specific shoppable items are selected. Because we never actually meet our virtual clients, this helps us ensure we are totally aligned with their vision. In this instance, the items in the render are not necessarily shoppable. They are more of a representation of what the designer will look for once you approve the look.
But in In-Person projects, we source all the items that will go in a room, then when building the renders. We're able to do it this way because we have gotten to personally know our clients - we have spent a lot of time discovering their style during a meeting after the paperwork is signed and we get started working with them.
Every project is different and often dictates changes to my standard process, but mostly commonly, I use a mix of both methods.
First, the floor plan is built. Using this, I then plan the space to match how the clients will use it, see what items will fit in the room and the best size of each in conjunction to each other. This is a more technical part of the design process, where the little things that we don’t necessarily consider in our day-to-day lives are planned. Like, how you walk through a space to get to different rooms or areas, the scale and balance between different items in the room, lighting and so on. When something is off about these things, you will definitely notice while you are using the space, so it's a super important step.
Next, I move on to sourcing some of the big pieces that will be in the room. Sectionals, tables, chairs, beds, dressers, desks and so on. Once I have options in place for those pieces I start building the renders and putting an actual look together in both the renders and a concept board. (We'll go over what concept boards are in an upcoming post so don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already!)
Then it's time to submit for approval. When I present the renders to a client, if they are not totally in love and muttering wow under their breath, it's time to figure out why? Is there something missing they might like to see but perhaps we never discussed? Is there something they want to change now that they can actually see the look in a tangible form? Maybe they have changed their mind about something we did discuss.
Now that you’ve had a brief intro to renders, let’s take a look at the conceptual ones I put together for my dining room:
Tell me the truth, would you have thought those were photographs if I hadn't told you it wasn't?
That's because the program that I use renders in 4K, it also offers panoramic walk-through's of a space like below:
(I only just built this floor plan so only the dining room is complete!)
Cool Right?!?!
AND, here's a (VR) 720 walk-throughs of the space!!!
Click the hotspots to move through the space!
(If you are using a mobile device, use the link above!)
These Panoramic views and walk-throughs are going to be a standard deliverable for clients who hire us for a project!
Book a FREE call to discuss which type of design will fit your project best
Remember, the items are conceptual, this means that the exact items you are seeing are not always shoppable, but it’s almost always possible to find the exact or a very similar item. If the item can’t be found or when it is, it doesn’t fit the project specifics (budget, size, colour, etc.) the search can be expanded for an item that does the same thing. (ie. a chair for a chair, a vase for a sculpture, a painting for a mirror, and so on.)
For my dining room, I'm still deciding on what colour to paint my buffet and a couple other details but this gives you a good idea of what I'll be doing to the space!
That's all for now!
Subscribe to get updates as we progress through the project and if you would like to see what the other fab designers are doing, click the link below!
