If you are selling your house, you may decide that some exterior painting or interior decorating may be required to make the house competitive in today’s Minnesota real estate market. But how will you know what colors or materials will make the best impression? Fortunately, there are a number of digital imaging products available that can help you make these sorts of decisions.
Home Exterior Remodeling Simulations
ReVision Home can simulate “after” images of your home before you remodel your home with windows, siding, doors, with a variety of materials. The service is not proprietary. This means that they can simulate an image of your home with a variety of materials regardless of the manufacturer. The software used is complex, but you do not need to learn how to use it. ReVision will create the images for you. Because they are professional designers, they can offer a variety of suggestions. They can add any feature you like to the simulation of your home, as long as you can find a picture of it.
“Before” photo*
Materials simulated include wood, vinyl, fiberboard, siding, cement fiberboard, shingles, stucco, cultured stone, or just about anything. Most photo simulations are made by placing, scaling, and coloring other photos into an original. If your home within their Twin Cities service area, they will meet with you in person. Otherwise, you can arrange to email photos of your home, provided the photos meet their specifications.
“After” photo (after simulation of exterior remodel)*
Cost of this service varies, but you can get a rough estimate over the phone by calling 612-600-1681. This investment may save you thousands of dollars and spare you disappointment from costly design blunders.
Paint Color Simulators
Color Smart from Behr is an online subscription service that allows you to upload your photos and test thousands of color schemes and combinations with simulations of your actual home. Cost is only $4.95 per year. If you really want to play it safe, you can order 8 oz samples from a selection of 37,000 colors and test them out before you invest time and money on paint.
Sherwin Williams Color Visualizer is an online program that you can use to simulate repainting both the interior and exterior of your home. You don’t upload your photo, but you can browse the visualizer for an exterior home style or rooms that are similar to your own, and test thousands of colors. Best of all, its free.
Benjamin Moore offers a CD or downloadable paint color simulator called Personal Color Viewer 2.0 .This program allows you to upload your own photos, test unlimited number of photos from your digital camera or scanner, save up to 4 custom color combinations with each image for easy comparison, will work with high-resolution photos, and will allow you to email before and after painting simulations to friends and family. You can choose from over 3,000 colors.
Do you have any favorite house color simulators? Please use the comment section to tell us about them.
*The home depicted in photo was supplied courtesy of ReVision Home. This home is neither listed nor promoted by IBR.
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