Artificial intelligence has the potential to reduce home interior costs by up to 10% as developers and proptech firms use data-driven tools to streamline design, procurement, and execution. The same tool can reduce project timelines from the design stage to actual production by at least 80%, experts said.
AI-powered visualisation platforms let buyers digitally furnish empty apartments and experiment with layouts, colours and décor before finalising packages. By minimising revisions, material waste and on-site errors, these tools help curb inefficiencies that typically drive up costs and extend project timelines, they said.
AI can reduce the interior design project timeline by at least one-fifth
According to Swetank Jain, CEO of Bonito Designs, artificial intelligence can be applied to the interiors business in two distinct ways: on the sales side and in the core design process.
“With AI involved, a designer’s productivity and turnaround time can improve five to six times. Designers will increasingly focus on understanding client aspirations and lifestyle needs, while AI handles labour-intensive backend work, 3D creation, first-layer layouts, technical detailing and documentation,” he said. As integration deepens between design software and factory production systems, the impact could extend to execution timelines,” he told Hindustan Times Real Estate.
“There is a lot of repetitive work when someone designs a home. AI can reduce that drastically, potentially bringing down the timeline from designing to the time it goes into production to at least one-fifth or reduce the overall time by at least 80%,” he said.
Bonito Designs is working towards an integrated platform that connects client inputs, lifestyle requirements, spatial dimensions and budget, directly to production workflows. The system would generate an initial design concept, allow clients to refine it digitally, and then carry it forward seamlessly into manufacturing and installation. While full-scale end-to-end integration is still evolving in India, Jain believes the potential is substantial.
According to Amit Agarwal, CEO and co-founder of NoBroker, nearly 40% of design bandwidth can be freed up through AI-assisted visualisation and requirement mapping. “Customers can visualise finishes in realistic conditions and close decisions almost 20% faster. That gives designers additional space and reduces the overall project cost,” he said.
The company estimates that about 4% of the savings come from faster and more efficient design work, while another 3% can be achieved by using materials and logistics more carefully. AI tools can suggest layout options that offer the same functionality while using fewer boards and laminates, reducing waste caused by design mistakes or a lack of training. In factories, AI can track inventory and plan production only when needed, helping reduce storage and warehouse costs.
“AI-based quality checks can also reduce the need for large design review teams. Round-the-clock AI tools that interact with customers can lower the cost of acquiring new clients, adding roughly 2% in savings. When combined with faster project completion times and reduced supervision needs, total savings could reach 8–10%. The entire cost is being passed on to homebuyers,” Agarwal said.
Architects say AI can also aggregate and analyse large datasets to make design recommendations more contextual. For instance, it can assess local geographic and demographic trends to understand which design types are preferred in specific micro-markets. It can factor in budgets and automatically suggest material libraries aligned with cost constraints. “AI can pick materials based on what suits that price point and design language, something that currently takes significant manual effort,” Jain explained.
Architects say that immersive technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are further transforming the customer experience. “In the future, clients could virtually walk through their designed apartments before practical execution and truly feel the space. Today, we rely on 3D renders and illustrations. Tomorrow, it could be a fully immersive experience,” Jain said.
Also Read: Will Artificial Intelligence-era job uncertainty cool Bengaluru’s red-hot real estate market?
Drawbacks in the ecosystem
To date, several design firms and architects have already experimented with AI to generate designs for standard plots, such as 60×40 sites, but found that while the technology can assist with visual representation, it cannot replace contextual thinking or creative interpretation.
“AI cannot replicate out-of-the-box thinking or fully interpret a client’s nuanced brief the way an architect does,” according to Subhash Saraf of A360 Architects.
Looking ahead, Saraf believes AI’s role may become stronger in project management and enhanced design visualisation rather than in core concept creation. “It can help us imagine and present designs more clearly through drawings and 3D perspectives. But the actual design thinking, the way we approach space, light, climate and client aspirations, still needs human judgment,” he said.
To date, less than 1% of developers‘ revenue in India has been invested in technology, Nirupa Shankar, Joint Managing Director of Brigade Enterprises, told Hindustan Times Real Estate earlier.
“AI by itself is not sustainable, but it can help build larger and more efficient cities. It is already beginning to influence construction timelines, especially through technologies like precast and prefab, which can significantly reduce build time,” she had said.
“However, for these systems to work, construction drawings have to be near-perfect. In India, many changes are still made on-site as afterthoughts. We haven’t yet reached a stage where drawings are final and there are no revisions. With precast or prefab, you cannot make changes once components are produced. That is why some developers still prefer conventional construction methods,” she pointed out.
