AI interior design apps: can they really plan a room, or do they just make pretty pictures?

Moving into an empty flat and I have no eye for this. The AI room design apps show amazing before-and-after pictures. Do they produce something you can actually shop and build from, or is it fantasy furniture floating in an impossible room?

Designer's view: they are excellent at one thing and hopeless at another.

What they do well: mood and direction. Upload a photo, ask for "warm minimal, light wood, one bold colour", and in a minute you have five pictures that tell you what you like and, more usefully, what you do not. That step used to cost a consultation.

What they do badly: measurements and reality. The generated picture ignores where your windows, radiators and sockets are, invents furniture that does not exist in those sizes, and cheerfully puts a 2.4 metre sofa in a 2.1 metre wall. Nothing in the image is a product you can buy.

So use them in two steps. First the AI for the look. Then a boring floor-planner app (the free ones from the big furniture stores, or any 2D planner) with your real room measured in centimetres, placing real products with real dimensions. The picture is the brief; the planner is the plan.

One tip: measure the flat before anything else, including door widths and the lift. The most expensive design mistake is the sofa that does not go up the stairs.

Small trick: take the AI picture and ask the same tool "list the furniture in this image with approximate dimensions". It is wrong often enough to be funny, but it gives you a shopping list to reality-check.