AI Design Apps Made My Fresh Apartment Look Weird

When I moved into a fresh studio apartment last year, it was my chance to fulfill my DIY YouTube girl dreams and design it however I wanted. But that turned out to be harder than I thought. Since I couldn’t afford a real designer, I decided to try out some generative AI-powered design apps I saw online.

AI design tools started popping up around the same time ChatGPT hit the scene, and they come in all sorts of flavors, from platforms where you upload a photo and type a prompt for the AI ​​to overlay a fresh image on top, to ones that suggest fresh styles for you to try.

I decided to try out a few regular AI chatbots (ChatGPT and Gemini), an Ikea AI assistant based on retail, and three design apps (Spacely AI, Decoratly, and RoomGPT). I uploaded photos of my apartment to the platforms and wrote two commands for the ones that had a command field: “Give me a storage solution for this area” and “Turn this painting into a mid-century modern living room.”

Below are brief summaries of the results for each.

ChatGPT and Gemini (of course) weren’t built specifically with design in mind, so I was expecting at most a few suggestions and maybe an edited photo with some information about the selected elements.

I got a little of what I was hoping for. Both ChatGPT and Gemini gave me suggestions for storage, and ChatGPT gave me some ideas on what materials I should look for to keep my room looking mid-century newfangled. Neither chatbot was able to change my photo or generate its own living room designs in the style I wanted.

ChatGPT is free to exploit for a circumscribed number of messages; otherwise, it costs $20 per month. Gemini is free, but the advanced version with improved AI models costs $19.99 with a Google One membership.

Ikea created a custom version of ChatGPT last February so shoppers could ask questions about furnishing their living spaces and get suggestions for styles and furniture. I uploaded a photo of a corner of my living room, which was admittedly a mess of exercise equipment, vinyl records, a bookcase, and just general odds and ends, and checked out his suggestions.

To store my yoga mat (and a travel pillow it mistook for a yoga mat), the Ikea chatbot suggested I buy a storage unit and other “decorative items.” (It also suggested I add a bookshelf, even though my photo already had one.)

As expected, after suggesting storage solutions, Ikea wanted me to buy its products, so I gave it the approximate dimensions of the space and told it I wanted something with a mid-century newfangled feel, but in shadowy wood. It responded with pictures of the items and told me where to find them. Despite all that, it still felt more like a search tool than a design app.

A better option is probably Ikea’s mobile app not based on ChatGPTwhich uses augmented reality to facilitate you imagine what your space will look like by superimposing its product on your home.

Ikea’s custom GPT is free OpenGPT Store.

One of the most recommended AI design platforms on social media is Spacely AI. After uploading a photo or choosing a template, users can redesign a space, furnish an empty room, or edit a photo with written prompts.

I asked Spacely to reimagine my space in a mid-century newfangled style, with mostly wood furniture. Spacely is more customizable than other platforms, allowing me to control how closely its model follows my cues (like preferred style, color palette, etc.). However, the customization options are very circumscribed in the free version; if you want to do more than just try it out, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.

Spacely had a basic idea of ​​what I wanted, but the images it generated didn’t quite live up to my expectations. For example, I once uploaded a photo of two plastic containers and a lemon, and the AI ​​generator transformed the two objects into… decorative objects, I guess. The plastic containers became wooden cylinders, and the lemon was either a rock or a rotten fruit. (Unfortunately, it’s still normal for entertaining things to appear in AI-generated images.)

Spacely AI Pro costs $20.75 per month for an annual plan, and $39 per month for a monthly subscription. You get unlimited prompts, watermark-free photos, and the ability to download high-resolution files.

Decoratly also transforms photos into a specific style. It’s very circumscribed for free users; before I subscribed, all I could do was upload my photo and hit the quick redesign button to generate a generic design filled with white and black furniture and zero character.

After upgrading to Pro, I was able to exploit Decoratly’s “Build a Prompt” feature and its image filter, which let me give instructions on what the app should do. Unlike other AI prompt creators I’ve tried, Decoratly didn’t let me write my own prompts. Instead, I had to choose from a pre-made set of words to describe what style, color, material, and texture I wanted to see in the transformed photo.

I chose the words “midcentury modern,” “dark,” “gray,” “wooden,” “metal,” “smooth,” and “neutral” for my room. The fresh photo she created seemed closer to a real, heavily styled room than the ones I got from other apps, although some of her choices were odd—like putting something like a table on top of the cylinder she turned my electric fan into. She also put my monstera plant in a minuscule pot that would tip over in five seconds.

Decoratly costs $12 per month for unlimited designs and additional features. There are 24-hour ($3) and seven-day ($6) free trials available.

Of all the AI ​​design platforms I’ve tried, RoomGPT has been the most disappointing.

I felt the app did the bare minimum in redesigning my space. It changed a few things to fit the brief—like adding a couch to a room that didn’t have one—but it also completely removed my TV and media console and never transformed the room to match the style I wanted.

RoomGPT works on a credit system, where each render is one credit. The free version offers two free credits. Then there are three paid tiers based on the number of credits or room designs: $9 for 30 room designs; $19 for 100 designs; and $29 for 200 credits.