You may be used to trying out furniture in AR. | Image: Pinterest
Pinterest is adding a âTry On for Home Decorâ feature to its app, letting you see furniture from stores like Crate & Barrel, CB2, Walmart, West Elm, and Wayfair in your house through the power of augmented reality. While itâs certainly not a new idea (Pinterest itself already has a similar feature in its app for cosmetics), it could make shopping in the app a little more enjoyable â and Pinterest seems very into shopping right now.
According to the companyâs announcement post, youâll be able to use its Lens camera to try out over 80,000 pieces of furniture from âshoppable Pins.â If you like what you see, youâll be able to follow a link to the retailerâs website, where you can buy that new chaise or lamp that fits so well next to your coffee table.
Image: Pinterest
Trying out a West Elm chair in the Pinterest app. Please stop crowding that poor plant?
Of course, this isnât a new idea â Ikeaâs app lets you drop virtual furniture into your house in 2013, and in the almost decade since, companies like Target, Amazon, Shopify, and even Etsy have introduced ways to let you see how certain products will work in your house. Other companies, like Walmart, have gone even further, imagining (and trademarking ideas for) entire virtual shopping experiences.
Still, itâs nice to have the tech available at yet another place and could be handy if youâre big on using Pinterest to shop (or to dream about how youâd like your living room to look). The feature didnât seem to be available yet when I tried using it in Pinterestâs iOS app, but when it goes live, you should see an AR symbol on product pins that support it, and tapping on them should give you access to the âtry in your spaceâ button. If you absolutely cannot wait, Crate & Barrel has a section on its website that shows you all the products with AR models available (you can view them straight from Safari on iOS), and Wayfairâs app has its own âview in roomâ mode.