How Cyncly AI is transforming kitchen design and sales

The pace of AI innovation is breathtaking and Cyncly is contributing to the vanguard of AI tools that make a real business difference. Today I’m thrilled to be sharing an update on Cyncly’s new Inspire Image-to-Design, an AI-powered tool that is arguably one of the biggest advances in kitchen design since the invention of 3D CAD modeling. This tool answers a question facing every retailer: How can I quickly generate an accurate proposal with shoppable, available products that perfectly matches my client's taste?

As part of Spaces Flex, Inspire Image-to-Design is an AI tool that lets retailers transform consumer inspiration into fully realized 3D kitchen designs in just one click. A proposal that used to take 45 minutes to create can now be completed in just a few minutes. It’s one of those new capabilities that remains truly impressive even when you’ve seen it work hundreds of times.

The state of AI to date: Inspiration, not design

First though, some thoughts on AI in the design community and how we got here. Many in the design community are already experimenting with generative AI tools for design inspiration. Tools such as Midjourney, Gemini and DALL-E can turn a written description of a kitchen or bathroom into an image almost instantly, helping designers inspire and helping consumers articulate their vision.

While these AI-driven tools can enhance your creative process, to date they’ve had one real problem: they’re just pictures. Generative AI tools create the appearance of an interior space but really they’re pixel dreaming – they don’t understand the physical constraints of an interior. This makes them great for inspiration, but also a dead end from a design perspective. They’re simply not able to generate renderings of real items and feasible projects that can be quoted and installed.

Why is that? Fundamentally it’s about the training data. General-purpose AI tools are trained on images of interior spaces, but they don’t have the real data about each room: the dimensions, physical configuration, product attributes, entrances and windows, design standards from NKBA, etc. As a result, they end up generating models that have inaccurate dimensions, that distort the existing layout of the consumer’s space, and that can’t be edited.

The business value of AI: speed, accuracy and consumer engagement

Retailers know all too well how hard it can be for consumers to turn their vision into a real project. The homeowner may start their journey scanning Pinterest, looking at design blogs, or even taking pictures in showrooms. Next, they would come to a retailer with their inspiration, at which point the detailed planning starts. Often, this stage of the process can be anything but smooth: designers at the store might struggle to find similar items in the consumer’s price range, or the consumer may change their mind about their preferred style or layout, or any number of other roadblocks to a project. By the time the customer receives a project proposal – and the retailer has invested countless hours in the design – they might already have started working with a competitor.

The experience online is even trickier. Trying to capture consumer intent, taste and range, and quickly propose a solution is even more challenging when the consumer is working through a web browser.

The common questions in each case are, how can a consumer get inspired by real products they can buy, and how can the retailer quickly turn that inspiration into an accurate proposal that perfectly matches the client’s taste and requirements?

Introducing Inspire Image-to-Design

Inspire Image-to-Design is a feature of Spaces Flex, a web app that supports the full consumer journey across web and in-person retail. Here’s how it works in practice:

First, a consumer or designer inputs the room’s layout (galley, L-shape, island, etc.) and measurements. They can do this manually or use Cyncly Scan, available on the App Store, an AI-assisted mobile measuring application that lets users quickly map a room in LiDAR and import the floor plan directly into a project.

Second, the consumer uploads an image of a kitchen that inspires them. Using AI object detection modules Cyncly developed, our software can identify kitchen products, styles and colors, and match those to real products that manufacturers offer. We do this by identifying the product and looking for the closest matches within Cyncly’s Content Platform.

Third, with one click, Spaces Flex auto-generates a kitchen that matches everything the consumer wants: the style and layout in dimensions that really work with their existing space.

This isn’t just a pretty picture – it's a real 3D design that the retailer can then edit and customize. Or, the consumer can auto-generate more designs, each of which will be unique based on the generative AI model, but will also match their requirements.

Spaces Flex can do this because Cyncly’s is bringing three advantages:

First, we have the industry knowledge of over 30 years in the business. Our in-house team, intimately familiar with the workflows and priorities of our design and retail customers, works closely with AI experts to apply new technologies with the right business context.

Second, our AI solution is trained on a unique data set: thousands of manufacturer catalogs of that represent millions of real products, represented as digital twin assets. The breadth of these catalogs is unmatched and spans almost every product that goes into or around a space for living: kitchens, bathrooms, furniture, flooring, appliances, decorative items, doors, glass panels, even windows and curtain walls. We have also structured these items to be useful for training: our catalog content is built around a consistent taxonomy, so each item has a 3D parametric model and metadata that turns a simple 3D volume into a real digital twin of its physical counterpart.

Third, we’re executing with a total focus on what our customers need. We’re working closely with industry leaders to tailor our solutions and the power of AI to their needs.

Instant excitement, faster sales

What do retailers get when they can show consumers their dream kitchen instantly? Greater excitement and faster decisions.

Retailers using this tool can expect several outcomes:

• Better conversion rates because consumers are hooked right from the beginning
• Faster sales cycles because you can automate what used to be a long, manual, iterative design process
• More productive sales teams, who can create great designs without specialized training
• More consumers served because you can turn around each project in a fraction of the time

As consumers come to your door with ever-rising expectations for customization and fast service, we’re bringing kitchen retailers the world’s best technology to wow them. Cyncly’s commitment to AI, and our advantages in industry knowledge, digital twin platform and customer focus, position us to continue to deliver the leading edge in innovation.