Traditionally, an interior designer’s job is to help you find out what you want from a space and then work with you to create a personal decor solution that suits your room, style and budget. But in years to come, will interior designers be replaced by clever robots who can conjure up our dream schemes and know us better than we even know ourselves? Maybe — if the decorating tech that’s on the horizon (or already here) is any indication.
Paint Progress
The idea that designers will be null and void sounds far-fetched, but to some extent this is already happening. For years now, we’ve had “color-matching” services, where paint brands match and mix specific colors for us, from objects, swatches or via nifty apps (this customization process is one that used to only happen via the pros). But Nippon Paint (one of the largest paint manufacturers in Asia) has raised the bar with the recently-launched Paint New Happiness system, which allows you to connect to artificial intelligence that will trawl through your social media profiles, analyzing posts, pictures, and “moods” while harvesting personal data such as your age in order to design “the perfect palette of color for your life stage.”
The firm’s innovations don’t end there; Nippon Paint has also developed Odor-less Aircare—a new anti-pollution paint, which promises to reduce the pollution in your living environment by absorbing harmful free formaldehyde from the air and converting it into water vapor.
“Having a safe and comfortable home in the future will extend beyond the visible decoration,” suggests Dominic Harrison, a director at the London-based Foresight Factory, a consumer analytics company, specializing in trends. “I think we’re going to see more and more innovations like this that promise to clean the air that we breathe in our home or to monitor air quality.”
Sure enough, air monitoring devices are becoming commonplace in our homes and they’re blending in beautifully. In Beijing, where air quality is typically poor, start-up firm Origins has recently launched a sleek product called the Laser Egg, a cutting edge device that monitors indoor air quality accessible via your smart phone. Unlike clunky gadgets of days gone by, the Laser Egg is good-looking enough to leave out on display as a decorative home accessory.
Another super-stylish air monitor that’s making waves is Awair, which looks a bit like a retro radio with a smart wooden case making it a chic addition to any coffee table, nightstand or bookshelf. Awair monitors temperature, humidity, CO2, dust, and chemicals in your home and gives you personal recommendations for how to improve the interior air quality.
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