Six Ways to See a Renovation Before You Commit
Everyone in this category shows you a room that doesn't exist yet. The difference is what you're left holding afterward — an image, a floor plan, a shopping cart, or a number you can hand to a contractor.
We've mapped the broader categories elsewhere (inspiration vs. planning vs. analysis). This piece goes one level deeper on the layer that decides a budget: materials, and what they cost.
By the Formaus design team — 15+ years of architectural design experience. Features and pricing as of August 2026.
What Are the Different Types of AI Renovation Tools?
They sort cleanly by the question each one answers:
| Layer | Tools | The question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| AI image generation | ChatGPT Images, Midjourney | Can I picture it? |
| Spatial design | Planner 5D | Can I lay it out? |
| Product visualization | Roomvo, Redfin Redesign | Can I see this product in my room? |
| Shoppable staging | REimagineHome | Can I buy the furniture in it? |
| Manufacturer catalogs | Renoworks | Is this the actual siding I'd install? |
| Material cost boards | Formaus | What would this cost to build? |
Nothing here is a ranking. They're different jobs, and most people use two or three.
Can ChatGPT or Midjourney Design My Renovation?
They can show you a direction, fast, with almost no friction. Upload a photo of your kitchen, ask for walnut cabinets and warm white walls, and you'll have five variations in a minute. Midjourney in particular produces the most beautiful images in this list — style references, mood, atmosphere.
What you're left with is an image. The marble in that render isn't a product. The tile has no price. The faucet doesn't exist in a catalog. If you take the picture to a contractor, the first question is "what is this, exactly?" — and that's where the conversation stalls.
Great for: what could this look like? Not built for: what would it take to build this?
What Does Planner 5D Do?
Planner 5D is a genuine design tool rather than a restyler — 2D floor plans, 3D modeling, a large furniture and materials library, and renders, used by a very large consumer base. If you want to move a wall, plan a layout, or lay out a room from scratch, it does things nothing else on this list does.
The trade-off is effort and intent. You're building the space yourself, object by object. It's for people who want to design a space — not for someone standing in a house deciding whether to renovate it at all.
What Is Roomvo, and How Does Redfin Redesign Work?
Roomvo is visual commerce: retailers and manufacturers embed it so you can see a specific flooring, tile, paint, or countertop product in your own room before buying. Redfin Redesign puts that engine inside a listing — you're browsing a house, you open Redesign, and you can try styles and swap flooring or countertops on the spot.
The Redfin version has an advantage nobody else has: it's free and it's already where you are. You're looking at a listing, you wonder about the kitchen, and you don't have to leave.
What it's optimized for is purchase confidence — the retailer's, ultimately. It answers would this product look right here?, not what would this room cost to redo?
Does REimagineHome Show Real Products and Prices?
Yes — and this is where the category got more serious. REimagineHome generates photorealistic redesigns from a room photo with structural lock (walls, windows, ceilings stay put), and its shoppable mode populates the room with real purchasable products from retailers like IKEA, West Elm, Target, and Wayfair, with budget filtering, so the render doubles as a buy list. Plans run $19 to $119 per month on a credit system, with shoppable renders costing more credits than plain ones.
The distinction that matters: those are furnishings. Sofas, rugs, lighting, decor — things you buy and carry in. That's a real budget, and a useful one.
It is not the renovation budget. Nobody quotes a contractor for a West Elm sofa.
Which Tool Shows Real Building Materials?
Renoworks, and it's not close. Its visualizers are pre-loaded with digital product libraries from 300+ real manufacturers — James Hardie fiber cement, CertainTeed, GAF roofing, Owens Corning, Marvin windows — so when you preview a specific color, you're seeing that manufacturer's actual product and texture rather than an approximation.
That accuracy comes with deliberate trade-offs:
- Exteriors only. Siding, roofing, windows, doors, masonry, paint. No kitchens or bathrooms.
- Distributed through the industry. Manufacturers and contractors embed it on their own sites; homeowners typically reach it through a contractor.
- The tool doesn't price the job. It shows you the product; the contractor writes the number.
There's a pattern worth naming here. Renoworks holds the product exactly and renders it plainly — because making the image prettier would distort the color you're there to judge. The AI tools render beautifully and hold no product at all. Almost nobody sits in the middle.
What Does Formaus Do Differently?
We sit in that middle, for interiors.
Home Renovation is a one-time $69 plan: renderings across six spaces in three directions (Warm, Organic, Moody), and behind each one a Style Board that specifies what's actually in the picture — category, product, brand and finish, and a unit cost range. Terracotta subway tile at $28–52/sf. Cream-vein quartz at $75–125/sf. A brushed brass bridge faucet at $220–380. Those roll up to a cost estimate per room, with a color palette and the reasoning behind each direction, as a PDF you keep and can re-open for a year.
The point isn't the picture. It's that the picture is quotable. Numbered markers in the rendering map to the material tiles, so "that surface, right there" has a name, a finish, and a price. That's a document a contractor can respond to — rather than a photo they have to interpret.
Not a mood board. A materials list with prices.
Not furniture you can buy. Materials a contractor can quote.
Estimates are concept-level ranges, not bids, and we label them that way. A range you can trust beats a single number you can't.
Two things worth knowing about how this is priced. It's one payment, not a subscription — you're buying a decision, not a monthly seat, and there's no clock running while you think. And if you're evaluating a house rather than a house you already own, Formaus also produces a pre-offer Score Report ($19) on the same home: age, condition, and the repair exposure sitting behind the asking price. Buy that first and you get one concept rendering of your space free from your tour photos. Renovation is rarely the only thing a house needs, and you can run both in one sitting. How we read a home before an offer →
Which One Should You Use?
Most people should use more than one:
- Exploring styles, no commitment yet → ChatGPT Images or Midjourney. Free or cheap, instant, no wrong answers.
- Changing the layout → Planner 5D.
- Choosing a specific floor or countertop you've already narrowed down → Roomvo, through the retailer.
- Browsing listings and wondering about a room → Redfin Redesign, free and right there.
- Staging a property, or furnishing a room with real products → REimagineHome.
- Picking siding, roofing, or exterior color → Renoworks, through a contractor.
- Just browsing, and not ready to pay for anything → free tools are genuinely enough. We've written about when free is enough, and we mean it.
- Deciding whether a renovation is worth doing — and what the materials would cost → that's ours.