Renders vs Reality: Self-designed kitchen with taobao rendering
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- Mid-Century Modern
- HDB (BTO)
- ~1,000 sqft
- 3 br
- Couple Living with Kids
Hi Everyone!~ If you've followed my posts quite closely, you will know that I self-designed my renovation with only a contractor and not an interior designer. I found a designer on taobao to render for me with just my carpentry drawing from my carpenter, which I have drawn on my iPad beforehand and discussed with my carpenter and finalised. It costs me about $90 just for the kitchen rendering, but I was impressed cause it was a virtual render with 3D, so you can 'walk around' the entire space with a link. You can also ask them to render other parts of the house as well and it will be more expensive than just $90, mandarin must be strong to communicate haha. I told them I have a ceiling fan here and did not specify which type so please ignore the weird white ceiling fan in the render she used.. I asked her to put some handles on and realised it is not aesthetically pleasing. so .. NOPE to handles unless I'm doing french shaker style with golden handles .. but NOPE. I did told her that the right side is supposed to be dish drying rack but I guess she don't have the stock photo to put it realistically on.. 
The only place I have to render to help me visualise is my kitchen where most of the carpentry is and bulk of the carpentry laminate is there as well so I thought it was really important to visualise the pairing of the 2 laminates I have chosen for the kitchen. Whereas in the Master bedroom and the Master bathroom, the laminate chosen is only of one colour and I do not have other carpentry elsewhere eg. to cover my bomb shelter. I tagged the taobao designer if anyone wants to know. I told her that the cabinet below the 2 curves is also curved, she said she is unable to do minor changes after giving me the entire render.. so.. I guess taobao has its limitations. Obviously I thought my reality turned out way better. I told my carpenter to do horizontal grains for my wood laminate on the top cabinets to make my kitchen look longer. Compared to the vertical laminate on the render, it looked suffocating. The 3d designer from taobao can only see my laminates from my photos and the website itself. Interior designers also can only try to get something or the effect to be as close as possible to the real laminate but the final rendering is not always accurate. The final product will still depend on the real laminates, always look at the bigger piece in the showroom and choose wisely. The laminate's teal colour is more vibrant and not as dull as the render. 
There is one update after my full kitchen and house tour post if you've read them. We removed the door to this cabinet and placed this chateau wine chiller bar fridge over here at this spot, it was planned to have a socket already inside but we bought the wine chiller much later recently. To match my mid modern century theme, I chose this because of the retro feel and design of the wine chiller itself. We considered smeg but that is overpriced haha.
- 25 September
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