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The Houzz app now lets you virtually tile your floor with augmented reality

Augmented reality is starting to be a real bonus to apps like Houzz's View in My Room 3D tool, which recently added the ability to measure how a tiled floor might look in your living space.

Houzz is pretty forward-thinking in its technology so it’s not a huge surprise that the company is adding new features to its augmented reality features in its mobile app. The latest addition is available for free as part of Houzz’s View in My Room 3D tool and enables homeowners and home buyers to visualize how their domicile might look covered in tile.

To use the Houzz feature, simply tap the View in My Room 3D button on a product page for a 3D-enabled tile product, which launches the feature on iPhone, iPad, or Android. Scanning the floor and pointing to the perimeters of the room populates the floor with tile in 3D — not to mention estimating the cost for populating the place with tile from the aforementioned 3D-enabled tile project.

“There is a stark difference between trying to imagine how a tile sample will look throughout a room and being able to view the room’s entire floor covered in the new tile using AR,” Sally Huang, head of visual technologies at Houzz, said in a release. “We continue to make AR-enabled shopping even more immersive and useful on Houzz. Our View in My Room 3D tool now helps people discover, select and buy the best tile for their space, in the correct quantity, all within the Houzz app.”

The patent-pending technology detects the location and orientation of floors and enables homeowners or homebuyers to envision what their joint might look like with new flooring. But Houzz will also give you the opportunity to buy the stuff and have it delivered, too. Just add the tile that looks cool and dump it in the shopping cart for easy checkout.

If you’re not too sure about your choice, you can simply capture the scene you’ve created with your new tile on your screen and save your photo to a Houzz idea book, where you can share that stuff with your architect, your family, or whatever other collaborators are invested in your choice of tile.

If you’re into this sort of thing, the good news is that Houzz has a whole bunch of stuff for you. The Houzz 3D product catalog has more than a million décor amenities, remodeling products, and home furniture objects to browse and buy.

The company launched its View in My Room 3D application within its proprietary app in May 2017 and more than 2 million users have used its AR functions since. Houzz reports that people who have engaged with its AR tool are 11 times more likely to purchase a product and spent nearly three times more time in the app.

This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.

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