I Tried AI to Redecorate My Living Room

A good sofa can change your life, a bad sofa can break your back, and finding the right style for your lifestyle can lead to major decision paralysis if you don’t know what you’re doing.

When my neck started to hurt after long gaming sessions on my admittedly 5-year-old Ikea couch that had been moved too many times to be considered stable, I knew it was time to at least change the seating at home.

Here’s how I used AI tool Gepetto to let my search for a new sofa lead me to an aesthetic overhaul of my mismatched living room—and how you can use AI to reimagine your living space, too.

The AI ​​tool: Gepetto

Gepetto was created primarily for real estate professionals who need to cost-effectively stage homes and apartments for online listings without having to rent furniture.

It’s like a text-to-image AI tool, except instead of writing a prompt that creates an image, you’re asked to upload a photo of the room you want to remodel or furnish and select from a drop-down menu different interior design styles to apply.

You can change things like wall colors and give the tool more or less creative freedom in its results using the browser workspace.

As I’m looking for a complete overhaul to go along with a more comfortable and better-made sofa, I let Gepetto redesign my entire living room into a more cohesive look to replace the current mix of styles I’ve pieced together over the years, bit by bit.

Using the browser-based tool is simple:

1. Go to the Gepetto AI website and click on To startCreate a login using your Apple, Google, or Microsoft account.
2. Take a photo of the room you want to remodel.
3. Upload the photo to Gepetto.
4. Tell Gepetto which room in the house it is: you can choose between the bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom, home office, dining room, balcony, garden and other spaces. There are also options for professional spaces, such as a clothing store, a bar and a coworking space.
5. Select the interior design style you want to apply to the image. Possible options include Provence, Normandy, Modern, Mid-Century Retro, Bali, Classic, Colonial, Cyberpunk, Hampton, Miami, Minimal, Californian, Rococo, Scandinavian, and Kids Room (a style system only for children’s rooms).
6. You can also choose whether you want the walls to be repainted and whether you want to keep the same type of furniture you already have, and then increase or decrease the creativity meter before pressing Generate.
7. It takes about 15 seconds to generate an image for you, then you can scroll through the results and select your favorites!

There is also an option to keep everything in the room the same and simply change or add furniture, which is potentially useful for people moving into a new house or apartment and starting with empty spaces.

Gepetto is free for the first seven times, and then you have to pay a little over $43 per month for unlimited use and image scaling. I tried seven different styles, which resulted in a mix of tastefully appointed rooms and flashy living spaces that a Russian oligarch might feel right at home in.

Amidst miles of burlap, ornate ceiling murals, curtains that seemed to melt from the windows, and probably unaffordable flooring changes, I found a helpful suggestion (just ignore the two wide-brimmed sun hats that the AI ​​tool decided made into high-end wall art).

Shop the AI ​​look online

At the end of the process, you can click the button purchases on the right side of the browser window and browse the Google Image search results of websites where you might find furniture and decor similar to the generated room.

The first results weren’t the most helpful. Real estate sites like Zillow and Apartments.com or short-term rental sites like Airbnb and Vrbo were the first to appear, but scrolling down a bit revealed retailers like Etsy that sold items similar to the decor and furniture Gepetto created.

I dropped the image I liked the most into Google outside of Gepetto and was presented with decent furniture options from reputable online retailers like West Elm, Amazon, Soul & Lane, Etsy, Article, and of course Pinterest.

Now I just need to find a new couch that won’t put a strain on my spine or my bank account.

If you’re looking for more visual ways to use AI, here’s how to use Midjourney to design cheap, custom wedding invitations and how to use AI to design your own business logo . For more AI news, tips and reviews, check out CNET’s AI Atlas hub.