The crux of the challenge (and the opportunity!) in furniture marketing is how to present your products to capture customers’ attention in today’s overstimulated world.
The ever-growing need for fresh content, especially lifestyle imagery, poses a huge challenge for furniture businesses. Even though the dedicated budgets for content creation grow each year, it seems that the need for versatile lifestyle imagery grows at a faster rate.
The question is: How do you exit this vicious cycle and find a way to create lifestyle imagery at scale without breaking the bank? Here’s where 3D lifestyle imagery comes into the picture.
The advantages of 3D lifestyle imagery compared to lifestyle photography
While furniture brands will always have a dedicated budget for traditional lifestyle photography, the logistics behind it and the required investment of time, money, and resources make it unsustainable for large-scale lifestyle imagery production.
The involvement and time needed to plan and execute a product photoshoot to produce images that can quickly become obsolete (e.g., seasonal shots) has pointed out all the inefficiencies in the process, forcing furniture businesses to look for a better solution. This pain point is exacerbated when multiple products come in various materials or textures and offer different customizations.
A simplified and cost-efficient process
While in the past, businesses had to compromise between the quality of lifestyle imagery and the cost of it, today, the advancement of 3D product visualization has simplified the process, enabling furniture businesses to create photorealistic lifestyle imagery without going through the daunting process of organizing a photoshoot. The cost efficiency, flexibility, environment control, and turnaround time are just some of the advantages of 3D lifestyle imagery compared with traditional photography.
Boosting sales
Most furniture businesses have already incorporated 3D technology as part of their product visualization workflow. According to a study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Cylindo, 66% of furniture leaders are using the power of 3D to create photorealistic lifestyle imagery — making this the number one use case for 3D product visualization among furniture businesses.
There’s no doubt that 3D technology has become an essential component of furniture businesses’ success. Results from the study are a testament to that. According to 68% of furniture leaders, 3D product visualization is impactful in increasing sales, and 64% see it as crucial for improving the customer experience. Additionally, according to 47% of those leaders, 3D product visualization helps in reducing costs as well.
Customizable lifestyle imagery
Lifestyle photography has a major drawback in that it cannot display all available product variations. Firstly, bringing products in all the different colors for a photoshoot is prohibitively expensive. Secondly, manufacturing all those products just for photography purposes is simply excessive.
As a result, e-commerce and digital merchandising teams are left using just one lifestyle photograph per product. So, when customers select a different color on the product configurator, they still see the same lifestyle photograph, showing the product in a color they haven’t selected — which creates friction in the buyer journey.
Using 3D product visualization, furniture businesses can create customizable lifestyle imagery for virtually every product, in every color variation, offering the ability to depict products within context.
On top of this, customizable lifestyle imagery can easily be modified, updated, or refined based on customer preferences, marketing trends, or changing brand narratives, ensuring the content remains relevant and fresh.
What are the different types of 3D lifestyle images?
Furniture marketing has evolved significantly over the years. Today, leading furniture businesses are setting the standard for product marketing, not just in the furniture industry but in business in general.
The versatility of the lifestyle images furniture businesses have at their disposal allows them to address the most common customer concerns and encourage them to make a purchase.
Context is a vital component of effective furniture marketing. It helps customers visualize their space and imagine how a piece of furniture would fit in their home. Using the power of visual imagery, you will be top of mind whenever your customers are shopping for furniture. Let’s look at some of the most common types of 3D lifestyle imagery and the problems they are addressing:
- Silo shot - an industry term for images shot against a seamless white or neutral background. This is the basic type of product imagery that customers expect to see when shopping for furniture.
- Wall product shot - an image of the product against a wall. Companies that want to spice things up often use a wall product shot as an alternative to the silo shot.
- Hero shot - is a rendering in which a single product is the hero of the scene, and all other elements are props to enhance the beauty and functionality of the main product.
- Group shot - features multiple products that complement each other in one setting. Furniture businesses usually use this type of lifestyle imagery to present a new collection.
- Scale shot - is a rendering that aims to showcase the scale of a product relative to other elements around it (i.e., adding a side coffee table next to a sofa).
- Detail shot - focuses on one part of the product. This type of lifestyle shot aims to show the product details, usually the texture, stitching detail, and patterns.
- Colorway shot - is a rendering showing one product in a range of colors to allow the customer to visualize how the product looks in different colors. This type of lifestyle imagery is especially popular on social media.
- Concept product shot - is a type of lifestyle imagery used for storytelling and conveying an idea rather than showcasing specific product features or usage.
When you add the different angles you can choose from when creating lifestyle imagery, ranging from straight on, bird’s-eye view, hero view, low view, etc., it’s clear that the process of creating lifestyle shots is everything but straightforward.
The good news is that today, furniture businesses can overcome this challenge with a self-service lifestyle imagery creation tool that allows them to create room scenes with thousands of different products and variations at scale, solving one of the biggest hurdles for furniture businesses: visual consistency. Enter Cylindo Studio.
How to create 3D furniture lifestyle imagery at scale
Cylindo Studio allows marketing teams and other internal stakeholders — with no or limited 3D knowledge — to create a lifestyle image with their products in a photorealistic environment.
Using the self-service UI, you can place the product you want to position as the hero of the lifestyle imagery, choose from a universal library of pre-designed room templates, or create your own, styling the room with preexisting props from Cylindo’s library or custom props.
After you achieve the look you want, you can adjust the camera position by changing the height and the tilt angle. With Cylindo Studio, you can generate multiple shots of the same setup from different angles, including detail shots, for a consistent look and feel across product images.
Once you are ready, you can render the product in all configurations, creating consistent lifestyle imagery at scale.
The best part: You can always go back and create as many iterations of your rendering at no additional cost.
What are the benefits of using Cylindo Studio to create 3D lifestyle imagery?
In-context imagery is the backbone of furniture marketing. In today’s highly competitive landscape, you have to create the highest quality content in the shortest time possible to stay relevant — all without breaking the bank.
When looking for the right solution for 3D lifestyle imagery creation, you must consider the three most important variables: quality, speed, and cost. If you have to compromise on one of those variables, you will not get the best return on investment.
Your goal is to find the sweet spot with a solution that can provide the highest quality in the shortest amount of time with the lowest cost per asset. Cylindo Studio is at the intersection of these three variables. Let’s look at the benefits of using Cylindo Studio to create 3D lifestyle imagery.
Speed up the process of lifestyle imagery creation
The proliferation of content has made speed an essential component of content creation. With Cylindo Studio, you can easily create 3D lifestyle imagery for different products and generate content in as many combinations of features and materials as desired to show customers all possibilities.
Step up your furniture marketing with high-quality visuals for different channels
While many things have changed in furniture marketing as we know it today, one thing has stayed the same — you need high-quality product visuals to boost customers’ confidence and inspire purchases. With Cylindo Studio, you can create photorealistic 3D lifestyle imagery at scale.
Save costs without compromising product visual quality
Furniture businesses are constantly juggling between saving costs and maintaining standards when it comes to product visualization. You don’t need to compromise anymore. Find out how one of the leading furniture brands, Riverside Furniture, is saving up to $100,000 annually with Cylindo Studio.
Achieve visual consistency across different touchpoints
Keeping visual consistency while producing vast amounts of content for different touchpoints can be daunting. With Cylindo Studio, you are in control of every aspect of the 3D lifestyle imagery creation process — at scale.
Test, optimize, repeat
The best way to understand what resonates with your target audience is to test and optimize. Now, you can easily create different lifestyle imagery and find out what performs best across your marketing channels.
Transform your furniture marketing with Cylindo Studio
Whether you are a furniture manufacturer, retailer, or DTC brand — you need lifestyle imagery to boost furniture sales. From content on your product pages, product feed, and recommendations to email marketing, social media, catalogs, in-store experiences, and print ads — 3D lifestyle imagery can help you step up your furniture marketing efforts. Curious to find out how?
