The Reality Behind Renders: What Every Homeowner Should Know

5295

Modern Organic
HDB (BTO)
~1,000 sqft
4 br
Couple Living

When you’re dreaming of owning a home, those fancy renderings can look amazing. They show off a picture-perfect version of what your place could be. But let’s be real: the reality often ends up a bit different (and sometimes better!). If we can be super honest with ourselves, we didn’t really like the renders - we went through quite a few rounds of changes but it just didn’t sit well with us yet we couldn’t really tell what’s wrong with it too. But we can say we really loveeee how our home turned out! So today we’ll share a few pointers to know when going through your renders:
1. Material variation The materials you see in renders might look a bit different in real life. Colors and textures can change based on lighting and manufacturing. Always try to see samples in person so you know what you're getting. As you can tell, our living room almost looks completely different and that’s because the limewash texture did not really pop in our render + the vinyl in the render was a bit flat whereas in reality, our vinyl has lots of saw cuts for the texture and feel. Giving it a little more of a wabi sabi influence on top of our cream base. Also, lighting and the right furnishing makes a huge huge diff!
2. Scale and Proportion Renders can make rooms look bigger than they really are. Check the floor plans carefully, and if you can, visit a model home to get a true sense of the space. For us, we had quite a few friends and family who were living in similar 4 room BTOs so we could check it out and that made it easier for us to visualise.
Our dining room render was the closest to reality! We decided to also go for curved cabinets at the top, and change our dining table to an off shelf extendable one as we like to host.
3. Personal Touches Renders can’t capture the personal touches that make a house a home. Your decor, furniture, and the lived-in feel will bring warmth and character, often making the reality even better than the render!
Compare this render with our reality above - love that we decided not to go with the L shape wardrobe because we felt it looked very structured and sharp. Likewise for the bedside tables - we managed to get cute rounded matching bedside tables! Decided to go without a built in bed head and love our woosa curved bedhead ❤️