Amazon now lets you design a whole room of augmented-reality furniture
The Room Decorator tools became available starting Monday for iOS users.
Amazon's Room Decorator lets you look at multiple pieces of AR furniture at the same time.
Amazon has made its augmented-reality shopping tools more powerful, now letting you create full rooms of AR furniture when planning out what to buy.
The e-retailer in 2017 started offering AR shopping features with "AR view," which allows people to see 3D images of furniture in their homes by using their phone cameras. But you could only look at one item at a time.
Amazon said Tuesday it's now expanded its AR capabilities with its Room Decorator tools, letting people add and arrange dozens of furniture pieces within the same room, save up to 100 of those designs and keep editing the arrangements on mobile or desktop. Amazon will also recommend items to combine in a design.
These features are part of a growing set of AR capabilities that tech companies offer, including games, design tools and shopping features. Retailers such as Wayfair and Ikea also offer AR tools that help people get a better idea of the size and shape of items before buying them, helping cut down on returns. Shopping for furniture online using these tools can be especially useful for people looking to avoid going to stores during the coronavirus pandemic.
Amazon said Room Decorator can be used with tens of thousands of items sold by both Amazon and independent merchants on its site. You can access the new tools by clicking on the "view in you room" button available on the pages of these items.
Like with Amazon's prior AR features, these new tools will only be available at first for Apple's iOS users. Room Decorator is now available for about half of iOS customers in the US and will roll out to the rest of that group over the next few weeks. It will come to Android in the next few months.