Diwali 2016: Save time and renovate your homes online

New Delhi: With e-commerce making its way into every aspect of urban livelihood, the arduous ritual of decorating or renovating homes during Diwali is now just a click away.

Several online portals now act as a single-point contact to attend to all possible requirements of redoing a house, sparing customers the trouble of hiring carpenters or browsing through magazines for ideas, to make the process less tiresome.

"Home decor is considered to be a tedious activity. So, the incoming of online platforms is a welcome change because it gives consumers the luxury of choosing a designer while sitting in the comfort of their home," says Ritu Malhotra, co-founder of Renomania, an online platform for home designing and building.

The platforms make extensive use of technology to provide customers with a comprehensive yet compact service.

At a time when life is too fast-paced to even spend some quality moments with one's family, online renovation not only offers a lot of variety but also saves time, making the process much more relaxed and user friendly.

With options of virtual reality (VR) and 3-D technology becoming increasingly accessible, it is only a matter of few clicks and customers are able to see the final images of their redecorated homes, even before the process actually begins. This gives them an opportunity to decide what they exactly want.

Urban Ladder, for instance, has developed an interior design tool where furniture can be dragged and dropped to create a 3D view of the room in question. The tool has been connected to Google Cardboard for the customer to explore the room in VR. "The earlier solution with carpenters was not very visual or imaginative. With the power of technology, we are able to real-time generate photo quality output so that the customers can actually visualize how their homes would look.

"These images rendered to full quality give a visually realistic sense to the customer on how their homes would look well before the actual interior design service is done," says Rajiv Srivatsa, COO and Co-founder, Urban Ladder.

Besides offering facilities online, Bengaluru-based HomeLane also has experience centres in several cities including Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai, to educate their customers, considering the nascent stage of the industry.

"Customers can visit our experience centres to get professional inputs on the process and then take a call. We believe in educating our customers on materials, finishes, processes and choices, so that they may make informed decisions," says Rama, Co-Founder of HomeLane.

The brand hosts a virtual design platform, 'SpaceCraft', that aids one with relevant designs for their home with the option to iterate design and other elements and see how it affects cost right away.

"So you get to walk out with a design and a quotation in hand," says Rama.