To make spectacular and alluring images, architectural visualization studios apply highly varying artistic methods. Renderings are styled as anything from glossy photographs to impressionist landscape paintings. Sometimes it is not instantly clear which style or artistic reference will work best with your design.

We propose some simple questions to guide you to the manner and mood of visualization that befits your project the most. You can meditate on them to navigate the world of digital archviz with ease.

Are you making a country home for an art dealer in Brandenburg or a getaway for an Instagram blogger in Provence? Is your client a real estate investment company from Greece or a city council of a Tier 3 town in Southern China?

All those people have distinct personal tastes and cultural backgrounds, and, as a result, a different understanding of beauty, craftsmanship, sophistication, luxury, and so on. Those cultural differences should be taken into account when tailoring a visualization. Renderings must relay the values of your clients with symbols clear to them. To some, luxury feels like a sunny day with cheerful colors. Others could see luxury in an almost monochrome palette of a foggy evening. What impresses one will repulse another.

Is your client conservative or eager to experiment? If you make an avant-garde design, some of your promo images could be less conventional. You could order some additional renderings that represent your project from sharp expressive angles. Such images may turn out very good-looking, even if they don’t necessarily make your design readable. Another option is to employ some experimental styles of digital visualization (post-digital collage, axonometric projection, hand-drawn elements) separately or in combination with realistic digital visualization.

What is the aim of your design? Is it a private home museum or a center for contemporary art? Is it a cheerful fashion store or a solemn war memorial? What about a residential skyscraper in lower Manhattan or a TikTok house in Croatia? Is it a toy museum or a medieval sculpture museum? Did you design it as elegant subtle neo-modernism or as opulent digital architecture?

The function of the building should be clear from its visualization as much as from its design. There shouldn’t be a dissonance between the style of the building itself and the style of its representation. Visualization represents not only architecture itself, but also the local context of the project (culture, climate, etc.). A contemporary art museum in Kuala Lumpur and a contemporary art museum in Oslo are not only designed, but visualized differently.

Visualization: 'Lumos' by iddqd Studio. Calm and meditative design requires a calm and meditative visualization.

What are your feelings about the project you have envisioned? Is it light and airy or massive, feasible, with deep shadows? Is it glossy or heavily textured? Will your design work best on a rainy day or at a dreamy sunset? Visualization must not simply stand out; it should depict the stronger sides of your project and help to relay its idea.

What are the main features of your design: color, shape, mass, texture, light, and shade? Which of those qualities should be empathized in a visualization? If your design heavily relies on textures, you wouldn’t want to pick a blurry render. You may prioritize some qualities above others. Extra-sharp rendering will draw attention to the rich textures of the materials, while visualization of a foggy day may convey the general atmosphere of the building.

Visualization: 'Shannan Retreat' by iddqd Studio. Notice how the visualization underlines the most prominent features of the design: the curved staircase with the tree are in the composition senter of the image, strong texture of concrete is well-defined and displayed in an interplay with the grey mountains in the background.

Now that you’ve considered the key aspects of the project, you can seek studios that predominantly work in the particular style that will make your ideas shine. The answers you’ve come up with will help you decide on the best render type and communicate your wishes to the architectural visualization firm.

However, it is equally important not to dictate your will to the rendering studio. Once you’ve found your perfect archviz company, trust the artists who work there and listen to their suggestions. Just as you are an expert in your field, they have extensive expertise in theirs. Architectural rendering firms know how to make any design look good in an image. Give them free rein, and they make visualizations more alluring than you imagine. Your criteria of the perfect visualization should become guidelines rather than imagination killers.

Header illustration: 'Desert Resort' by iddqd Studio.