For many of us, our home is far and away the largest purchase we will ever make and will be the most valuable asset many of us may ever own.
But buying a home is much more than just a massive financial commitment. It’s also about making a decision that will shape your future and that of your family. It’s about choosing where you will make a life with the people you love most. It’s about determining the kind of life you want with your dearest ones.
And that’s by no means an easy process. It takes both courage and creativity because when you are searching for your perfect home, you have to be able to see beyond what is to what may be. You have to have the imagination to envision the life your family could lead between those four walls.
But the good news is that you don’t have to go it alone when you’re making one of the most important decisions of your life. Thanks to today’s augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies, you don’t have to rely on your mind’s eye alone to picture your prospective home as it might be with you and your loved ones in it.
Enhancing Architecture and Design
A particularly exciting aspect of the use of AR/VR in home construction, remodeling, and marketing is that it equips engineers, architects, contractors, and realtors with powerful new tools to bring their work to the next level.
For example, for architects and contractors, AR/VR technologies are increasingly being used to aid in design and visualization, making the construction process more efficient and the finished constructions of an even higher quality than many homes and buildings developed through traditional means. Similarly, AR/VR technologies provide realtors with the tools they need to present a full inventory of prospective homes to their clients without the time and expense required to travel to each physical location.
A Glimpse of Things to Come
In addition to the remarkable opportunities that these technologies offer to professionals in home architecture, construction, and marketing, there are also enormous perks for home buyers. Among the greatest benefits of AR/VR technologies is their remarkable capacity to present a highly realistic and deeply immersive experience of a construction project that isn’t even completed yet. With virtual reality tools, such as VR goggles, you can conjure a 3D-scaled image of the home as it will be once constructed is completed.
Best of all, you can virtually “place” yourself right there, in the middle of the future house. You can “walk through” the rooms and, in essence, experience what it would be like to live there someday.
But the possibilities don’t end there. With augmented reality, you can add virtual landscaping to transform a barren construction site into a lush outdoor oasis, allowing you to envision what your prospective home might look like in this neighborhood, on this street, greeting you as you pull into the driveway at the end of a long day.
Feathering the Nest
AR and VR aren’t just great for homes under construction, though. You can also use these tools to imagine how you might customize your future home to your family’s particular needs, taste, and style.
This is especially important if you find yourself getting cold feet when you think about making a final decision on a home. The simple truth is that the perfect home just doesn’t exist, and if you find yourself endlessly nitpicking prospective houses or turning time and again to new listings, then it’s a good idea to make the conscious decision to stop fretting over what’s wrong or deficient with your potential home and start thinking about opportunities for making it right.
AR and VR can be your very best friends in this challenging process! For example, you can use AR to play with easier, more cosmetic modifications to the house, from changing paint colors to experimenting with furnishings and decor.
And if you’re still not feeling quite satisfied with the prospects, use these technologies to take your home customization strategies to the next level. With AR/VR, you don’t have to settle just for envisioning what a completed construction will look like or what effect a change of pain and decor might have.
You can even play with more ambitious renovation strategies, such as tearing down a wall, opening up the floorplan, or even building a new addition. These are construction projects you will almost assuredly want to hire a licensed and bonded professional for, of course. But before you go searching for contractors and committing to the time and costs of such a project, you will be able to use AR/VR to ensure that, when the project is finished, you will truly have at last the home of your dreams!
The Takeaway
Virtual and augmented reality technologies are increasingly transforming the ways that people both work and play. One of the more surprising industries to be impacted by the advent of these technologies, however, is the real estate industry. From home design and construction to marketing, virtual and augmented reality can help builders and buyers alike envision not only what is but what may be. Prospective homeowners, in particular, can use these powerful tools to imagine how a house might be tailormade to make the perfect home for themselves and the ones they love most.
Luke Smith is a writer and researcher turned blogger. Since finishing college he is trying his hand at being a freelance writer. He enjoys writing on a variety of topics but technology and entertainment topics are his favorite. When he isn’t writing you can find him traveling, hiking, or gaming. You can find Luke on Twitter @lukesmithwrites