Showing Clients the Room Before It Exists: Two Independent Interior Designers and AI Visuals

An interior designer's job is to describe a room that does not exist yet, clearly enough that a client can say yes and a builder can construct it. Drawings and mood boards only go so far. Photorealistic renderings close the gap, but they take time, specialist software and money, and many clients refuse to pay for them.

Two independent interior designers show how AI changes that. One uses an AI tool to lift his own renders to a quality his practice could not produce before. The other uses ChatGPT to show clients ideas quickly, without a renderer.

This article is for designers, architects and other visual professionals, and for anyone with a creative skill who is thinking about working for themselves. We look at what each of them hands to AI, and then, in a separate section, at what their experience as designers still has to do.

Jacob A Adams: render quality a sole practice could not buy

Jacob A Adams runs Jacob Design & Visualisation, which Gendo, the AI rendering company he uses, describes as a sole practice. The business name is registered to him as a sole trader in South Australia, according to the Australian Business Register. He has run it for the last six years on close to three decades of interior design experience, working on commercial, medical, retail and hospitality projects, and offering visualisation services to outside clients. In his own words, quoted by Gendo, the studio is him.

The problem

According to Gendo, his constraints were time, software limitations, cost and access to affordable 3D content such as furniture and fittings. Covering the whole modelling and rendering process properly was slow, and the results were good rather than the best they could be. Earlier AI rendering tools he tried had been unusable.

How he uses AI

According to Gendo's customer story:

• Model first, then enhance. He models in SketchUp and renders in Enscape. He gets the best results by bringing a finished Enscape render into Gendo and asking it to enhance the image, rather than sending raw SketchUp geometry.
• Materials and content by instruction. He changes materials directly on the image and adds scene content such as furnishings by instruction, instead of sourcing and placing 3D content by hand.
• Keeping the design exact. Feeding SketchUp models straight into AI made the output too loose for work a builder relies on, so he keeps Enscape in the process to control the geometry.

What it changed

According to Gendo, after three weeks of use he was already producing imagery he could not deliver before. He works the same way across briefs as different as a physiotherapy clinic, a retirement village interior and a commercial concierge desk. So far he uses the tool internally, rebuilding his own portfolio and website images before putting the work in front of clients.

Jessica Dorling: showing clients what words cannot

Jessica Dorling is an interior designer based in Seattle and the owner and principal of Dorling Design Studio, which her website describes as a design-build studio working with a network of builders, architects and tradespeople. According to Business of Home, an interior design trade publication, a client once asked her for a photorealistic rendering of a living room design. A high-quality rendering can cost upward of $1,500, and the client chose not to pay for it. She told the publication that she could never get clients to invest in renderings.

How she uses AI

According to Business of Home's January 2026 article:

• ChatGPT for visuals. She has experimented with ChatGPT over the last couple of years to create images that help clients picture a design.
• Better inputs. She uses images made in Canva to improve ChatGPT's results.
• Very specific prompts. She stresses that exceedingly specific prompts produce better, more realistic images.

What it changed

She calls it a game-changer. In her words, things can be lost in translation however much you explain a design to a client, and a visual takes the ambiguity out of the conversation.

What design experience gave them that AI could not

This section is our analysis, not a claim made by either designer.

• Knowing where accuracy matters. Adams keeps AI away from the geometry because builders work from his images. Knowing which visuals must be exact and which only need to convey an idea comes from years of seeing projects built.
• Knowing what a client needs to see. Dorling uses AI to settle the questions clients struggle to imagine. Choosing what to show is the designer's judgment.
• Spotting what looks wrong. AI image tools still struggle with scale, patterns and textures, as the same Business of Home article notes. A trained eye catches the errors before a client does.
• Testing on their own work first. Adams is rebuilding his own portfolio images before using the tool for clients, setting the standard on his own material.

The two cases side by side:

	Jacob A Adams	Jessica Dorling
Practice	Jacob Design & Visualisation, sole practice, South Australia	Dorling Design Studio, Seattle (owner and principal)
Work	Commercial, medical, retail and hospitality interiors; visualisation services	Interior design for clients
Main AI tool	Gendo (AI rendering)	ChatGPT
How AI is used	Enhancing finished Enscape renders; changing materials; adding content	Creating quick visuals to show clients ideas
What stays human	Modelling, exact geometry, final imagery standard	Design decisions, prompts, choosing what to show
Reported result	Imagery beyond what his previous tools allowed	Less ambiguity in client conversations

What you can copy

These are our suggestions, drawn from the two stories.

1. Separate "convey an idea" from "build from this." Use AI freely for the first; keep tight control for the second.
2. Give AI a strong starting point. A finished render or a well-prepared reference image produces better results than a vague prompt.
3. Be specific. Detailed prompts make the difference between a generic image and one that shows your design.
4. Try it on your own portfolio first. Learn a tool's limits before a client sees its output.
5. Check every image. Look for errors in scale, pattern and proportion before you present.

Notes on the sources

The facts about Jacob A Adams come from a customer story published by Gendo, the AI rendering company he uses, so it is written to promote the product; the story does not give a date or location. His location comes from the Australian Business Register, where the business name has been registered to him as a sole trader since 2019. The facts about Jessica Dorling's use of AI come from an article by Jen Fernandez in Business of Home, published on January 28, 2026; the article does not describe the size of her practice. Her studio's website names her as owner and principal and lists no other designers or staff. Neither source gives revenue or client numbers.

Sources

• Render Quality a Sole Practice Could Not Otherwise Buy, Gendo (customer story)
• ABN 75 884 870 671 (Jacob Design and Visualisation), Australian Business Register
• Will AI put renderers out of business?, Jen Fernandez, Business of Home, January 28, 2026
• About Dorling Design Studio, Dorling Design Studio