GAMIFIED INTERIOR DESIGN
The companies reimagining how we decorate our homes
Online shopping obviously provides a much more convenient and stress-free alternative to shopping in person — but when you’re shopping for your home, it’s often difficult to purchase furniture without being able to first see how it will fit into the room. This problem is remedied by the creation of gamified interior design experiences, which allow consumers to plot their purchases within a virtual rendition of their room. Here are three apps that allow for interior design planning on a digital scale.

PLAYHOUSE
Developed by women-led startup Robin Games, PLAYHOUSE is a new application launched in August that enables players to design their dream rooms by selecting and placing virtual furniture and decor. While PLAYHOUSE is far from the only interior design simulator out there, it has two distinguishing features. Firstly, it allows you to move, rotate, resize, and even layer furniture, giving consumers much more creative freedom in the process than other games within the genre. Secondly, PLAYHOUSE has partnered with real-life furniture brands to design their digital items, meaning that players can purchase real-life versions of their favored digital furnishings.

THE LANDING
Another women-led startup, The Landing seeks to be a virtual one-stop-shop for interior design. The concept, according to its co-founder, is to serve as a “contextually rich, visual shopping destination, where you could curate and discover and share and shop all in one place.” The startup gives design lovers the tech tools they need to create monetizable mood boards, as well as buy pieces from already-created curations. Since launching, The Landing has expanded its scope beyond interior design to be focused on general aesthetics, but its intention remains the same: A form of e-commerce and entertainment, the moodboards can be of use to people who simply want to dream about their spaces and styles as well as serious shoppers.

IKEA KREATIV
IKEA Kreativ, an application launched by the Swedish retailer this summer, allows consumers to scan pictures of their rooms and then place digital representations of IKEA products within that room. For customers who don’t want to go through the trouble of photographing and uploading images of their own spaces, Kreativ also offers over 50 3D showrooms for users to peruse. While the application is still in beta, it offers a much more realistic designing experience than IKEA’s previous app, IKEA Place, and is a viable virtual alternative to in-person visits to the store.