Photo-based room preview vs AR furniture apps: what to install on your store

Retail blogs still lump “AR” and “room visualization” together. For furniture Shopify stores, the choice is usually phone AR vs photo upload composite — not whether to use magic. They solve different jobs.

Phone AR strengths

• Feels novel in showroom kiosks with staff coaching.
• Works when the shopper is already in an empty room with the app installed.

Phone AR weaknesses on PDPs

• App Store friction — most shoppers will not install for one sofa.
• Lighting drift — live camera feed rarely matches catalogue colour.
• Device fragmentation — ARKit vs ARCore vs neither on older phones.

Photo upload preview (our model)

Shopper uploads one still image of their room. We composite the catalog product into that image in ~30 seconds, in the browser, on the PDP. No download. Billing: 10p per preview for the merchant.

When to offer both

AR for flagship showroom tablets; photo preview for the PDP that actually drives revenue. Do not make AR the only path online.

Decision table

Question	Photo preview	Phone AR
Works on mobile web PDP?	Yes	Rarely without app
Uses shopper’s real walls?	Yes (from photo)	Approximate
Setup for merchant	~5 min script	Often custom app

Consumer try-it: /custom-furniture · Retailer install: /signup