Why 3D Rendering Is Essential Before You Spend a Dime on Renovation

Renovating a home without falling into trend traps requires deliberate choices and a clear vision. Scott and I just purchased a mid-century modern house as an investment property, planning to renovate and sell it within six weeks. This process has sparked fascinating conversations about maintaining design integrity while creating broad appeal for unknown future owners.

Walking through established neighborhoods reveals volumes about renovation history—you can immediately spot which houses were updated in the 80s, 90s, or 2000s because they bear the unmistakable marks of those era-specific trends. Our current project house has suffered this exact fate, with multiple owners making disjointed updates that ignored the home's original mid-century character. Some elements added "old world" vibes popular in the 90s while others introduced modern touches from later decades, creating a visual disconnect throughout the space.

The revolutionary approach we're using involves comprehensive 3D visualization of the entire property before spending a dollar on actual renovations. This technology allows us to virtually walk through the transformed space, making critical budget decisions by seeing exactly how including or excluding specific elements will impact the final aesthetic. It's essentially "taking a photo in the future" of your finished space, eliminating the surprise factor that so often leads to disappointment in renovation projects. Whether you're planning a full home remodel or a simple kitchen update, investing in this visualization process saves time, prevents costly mistakes, and ensures your renovation honors your home's authentic character while thoughtfully updating it for contemporary living. Discover how you can apply these principles to your own projects by visiting twinteriors.com.

Learn more at:
https://twinteriors.com/podcast/

https://scottwoolley.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing iDesign Lab Podcast

Transcript

Voice Over: 0:00

This is iDesign Lab, a podcast where creativity and curiosity meet style and design. Curator of interiors, furnishings and lifestyles. Hosted by Tiffany Woolley, an interior designer and a style enthusiast, along with her serial entrepreneur husband Scott, idesign Lab is your ultimate design podcast where we explore the rich and vibrant world of design and its constant evolution in style and trends. Idesign Lab provides industry insight, discussing the latest trends, styles and everything in between to better help you style your life, through advice from trendsetters, designers, influencers, innovators, fabricators and manufacturers, as well as personal stories that inspire, motivate and excite. And join us on this elevated, informative and lively journey into the world of all things design.

Tiffany Woolley: 0:50

Welcome to iDesignLab Tidbit. Today we're going to discuss design aesthetic, which you know is kind of a big word with a lot of different meanings, and the reason I wanted to talk about this topic is being an interior designer obviously myself, and doing this every day for other people. I'm doing this as an investment, for the first time, for our family and the one thing that is super important to me, as I, you know, help curate other people's homes and you know like try to take what their vision is for the house. This time I'm doing it for an end user that I don't know, so I don't want to fall into a lot of traps that I've seen a lot through the years, where people try to.

Scott Woolley: 1:44

So we just bought a house that we're going to renovate, remodel and then six weeks later put it back on the market to sell, and so there's a little bit of back and forth between Tiffany and I on what are we going to spend money on and what we're not going to spend money on and what's the aesthetic going to look like in the end. You know, tiffany wants to change the driveway, she wants to change the color of the house, she wants to put a new roof on the house.

Scott Woolley: 2:12

She wants to put a whole new patio in the backyard, redo the pool, and we haven't even got inside the house yet. And that's the budget.

Tiffany Woolley: 2:19

And I guess. So where I'm starting with this is in any area around the country, around the world, you know, aesthetics kind of come into play. This particular neighborhood was started in the late 70s. It has a very, very strong mid-century modern aesthetic and it's actually super cool. But as you drive through the neighborhood you realize what house was renovated in the 90s and what house was renovated in the 80s and what house was renovated in the 2000s, because they've all fallen pitfalls to a trend.

Scott Woolley: 2:59

An aesthetic of that time frame.

Tiffany Woolley: 3:01

Correct, and that is my biggest, you know kind of frustration when I approach a project is that people just fall into trends instead of really accepting an aesthetic that you're working with and bringing it to its best up-to-date fruition. So this particular house has a few decades.

Scott Woolley: 3:29

Well, it evidently has had a number of owners over the years, and each time a new owner bought this house, changes were made with no reflection or thinking of what the house was when they added onto it, or change the kitchen, and the kitchen doesn't really match.

Tiffany Woolley: 3:48

They tried to like fall into the old world vibe of the 90s and then it went to the more modern vibe of so there's a lot of different renovations that reflect a lot of different ages. So what I'm trying to do is kind of take all that back, take it away. I really spent a lot of time reflecting on where I could update, modernize and keep the original aesthetic intention Because there is a lot of beauty to that aesthetic intention but also make it where it would be, you know, to some other. You know a young generation, a retired couple, a young family, you know.

Scott Woolley: 4:37

So this house can so what we're doing to achieve that aesthetic and to get and create the goals of what what tiffany's vision is, is where we're basically. We've planned out the entire house.

Scott Woolley: 4:49

We've 3'd the entire house so we can walk through visually and see exactly what the house is going to look like before we even start. And it's also a blueprint and a photograph, for lack of better words. As we do it, you can hold up the photograph, saying, okay, that's not where that sconce is supposed to be, it's supposed to be. We're seeing everything what it looks like before we even start.

Tiffany Woolley: 5:15

And knowing what the budget has to be is so critical and so important, before the overall investment, but also for this aesthetic. So, as Scott mentioned, I would like to change everything, but there's some things that have to be changed and some things that are not going to be changed. So the house, for South Florida purposes, it does have impact glass already. Now, if I was buying impact glass from the very beginning, I would have selected and chosen a different vibe, a different color framing a different product location, blah, blah, blah.

Tiffany Woolley: 5:51

Same thing with the driveway and the pool decking Like it's new, it's in beautiful condition, it's not necessary to change it, so it's going to be staying. So the items that we are changing, which is a lot of interior items, a lot of wall, different delineations of space, as well as a roof that needs to be changed we are working to create a vibe that makes the driveway intentional, so it's not like, oh, they redid all this, but now look at that driveway. So we're not going to fall into those pitfalls, god willing, because we'll talk back here in about eight weeks.

Scott Woolley: 6:34

But in stepping into it, we came up with a budget. You're designing it, you're taking the entire design intent of what you've created and we're putting it into the house without spending a dollar or a nickel and then looking at it going, okay, this is absolutely beautiful, but we're a little over budget. So if we take this out, how will that look and how will that affect?

Tiffany Woolley: 6:57

the aesthetic of the house, or if we switch this for that.

Scott Woolley: 7:00

And so we've been able to, as you say, value engineer and make those changes. And, as we're- making those changes. We're actually seeing what it's going to look like with those changes, which is an amazing process to go through.

Tiffany Woolley: 7:16

And it is a value of a service that you know we can offer and extend to other people who are trying to take on some of these routes for income and for investment.

Scott Woolley: 7:30

It's really a way that everyone should be If they're doing a remodel, if they're doing a new renovate. You know building a new house, seeing a 3D, you know renderings, you know it's not very costly to do it.

Tiffany Woolley: 7:44

And it saves mistakes. Oh, it saves mistakes and saves time.

Scott Woolley: 7:47

But then you know exactly what you're getting. It's like going and buying a car. You go into the car dealership, you're able to sit in the car, you're able to drive the car. You know exactly how it operates, you know exactly how it feels, you know exactly what it looks like.

Tiffany Woolley: 8:01

And that way you're not designing it, picking it up and being like wait. I thought I had black headliner but it's white. You know, like it's really knowing and getting into the nitty gritty details, I really do just believe that it's going to save you time and add value. So whatever money you put up front in your process of investment, whether it be for an end user or yourself, we just did a very small little project for someone.

Scott Woolley: 8:30

It's a little apartment where we basically redid the kitchen. They had a very, very small budget, but we 3D'd it. They knew exactly what the cost was going to be.

Tiffany Woolley: 8:39

The client's done. We kind of did it as a sweet little extra.

Scott Woolley: 8:44

Yeah, and they actually know exactly what it's going to look like, like someone took a photo in the future of that kitchen. So now, when they're spending their money, they know exactly what they're getting and exactly what it's going to look like when it's done, and that's something that people should be thinking about very seriously when they're getting ready to remodel or to build a home.

Tiffany Woolley: 9:06

So that's our little tidbit for today.

Voice Over: 9:08

Happy iDesign iDesign Labs Podcast is an SW Group production in association with the Five Star and TW Interiors. To learn more about iDesign Lab or TW Interiors, please visit twinteriorscom.