Free to try
Upload a picture of the front of your house and see the whole exterior redesigned in seconds: siding, roof, windows, trim, front door, porch, stone and brick. Your roofline, your window openings and your street stay exactly where they are, so you are judging a direction on your own house instead of a stock one.
No account for your first render · takes seconds · nothing to trace or model
Try a direction
The same direction lands differently on peeling clapboard than on 1990s brick, which is the whole reason to render your own house rather than admire somebody else’s. Pick a house, pick a direction, and watch the real render wipe in over the original photo. Every sentence below is the one that produced that image, and where the model missed part of it, the card says so.
Before Modern farmhouse rendered in 9s Two storeys of peeling clapboard, a bare entry and a cracked front walk. Every direction below keeps the roofline, the window positions and the chimney.
A 1990s brick two-storey with a Palladian window, white garage doors and a red front door. The brick is the thing most owners of this house are undecided about.
Beige stucco, a terracotta tile roof and three garage doors facing the street. The tile roof is kept in every direction because replacing it is the one change nobody makes for looks.
A grey Cape Cod with two dormers, black shutters and a mint front door. Small house, big roof: the roof is close to half of what the street sees.
A small brick ranch with a tired roof, white windows and a plain front door. The kind of house where one change at a time is the realistic plan.
Redesign this house exterior as a modern farmhouse: white board-and-batten siding, black window frames, a black front door, a small black standing-seam metal roof over the entry, and a tidy lawn with foundation shrubs. Keep the roofline, the window positions and the chimney exactly where they are.
Where it missed: It gave the house horizontal lap siding, not the board-and-batten the sentence asked for.
Every render on this page is unretouched output on a real homeowner photo. Nothing was re-rolled until it looked right, which is why some of them say where the model missed: that is what you will get too, and it is still the fastest way to see a direction.
One thing at a time
Most exterior projects are not a whole-house redesign. They are a new front door this spring, garage doors next year, the roof when it finally needs it. Say the one change, say what stays, and the render holds everything else.
New garage doors 7s “Replace the two white garage doors on this house with dark stained wood carriage-style garage doors with black hardware. Keep the brick, the roof, the windows, the front door and everything else exactly as they are.”
The garage doors are the biggest flat plane facing the street on most suburban houses, and on this one they were the brightest thing in the photo. Wood doors pull the eye back to the entry where it belongs.
Try this on your house
A metal roof 13s “Replace the roof on this house with a black standing-seam metal roof. Keep the grey siding, the shutters, the mint green front door, the windows and everything else exactly as they are.”
On a Cape Cod the roof is nearly half the facade, so a roof decision is a whole-house decision. This is the change nobody can picture from a shingle sample, and the one that costs the most to get wrong.
Try this on your house
A new front door 10s “Replace the front door on this house with a natural oak wood front door with a small square window at the top and black hardware. Keep the brick, the roof, the black shutters, the windows, the railings and everything else exactly as they are.”
The cheapest change on this page and the one visitors notice first. If you only do one thing this year, it is this, and a render tells you in ten seconds whether a wood door warms the brick or disappears into it.
Where it missed: The door landed. It also turned the black shutters white, which the sentence told it not to do.
Try this on your house
Modern garage doors 6s “Replace the three beige garage doors on this house with modern black garage doors that have a row of frosted glass panels near the top. Keep the stucco, the tile roof, the windows and everything else exactly as they are.”
Three doors in a row is a wall. Going dark turns the wall into a base for the house to sit on, and the glass row gives the street something to look at other than beige.
Try this on your houseThe single-change sentences are the reliable ones. Three whole-house sentences above asked for a new roof and kept the old one; the roof-only sentence on the Cape Cod got a metal roof first time. A whole-house sentence asks the model to hold twelve things and change eight, a roof sentence asks it to hold everything and change one. If the thing you care most about did not land, give it its own sentence.
How it works
No 3D model, no tracing round the windows, no measuring the facade. The photo you can take from the sidewalk right now is the input.
Your photo One shot from the curb in daylight, with the roof and the ground both in frame. A phone snap is enough. No measuring, no floor plan, no cleaning up the yard first.
Redesign this house exterior as a modern farmhouse: white board-and-batten siding, black window frames, a black front door, a small black standing-seam metal roof over the entry, and a tidy lawn with foundation shrubs. Keep the roofline, the window positions and the chimney exactly where they are.
Type it the way you would say it to a contractor. Name the siding, the windows, the door, the roof. Say what stays, because everything you do not mention is meant to be held.
9s The render A photorealistic render of your own house in that direction, in seconds. Keep it, change one element, or run three more directions on the same photo and compare.
The render above came back in 9 seconds. Four directions on the same photo and you have a shortlist before the contractor calls back.
Every element
The whole facade or a single element. Every image below is a real render from this page, and every link goes to the tool or the read that goes deeper on that one element.
Lap, board-and-batten, fiber cement, cedar accents, or a mix. The biggest change on the house and the one you cannot test-patch, which is why it is worth rendering first.
Only changing the colour? Use the paint visualizerShingle colour, standing-seam metal, or a metal accent over the porch alone. From the sidewalk the roof is a third of the house, and on a Cape or a ranch it is closer to half.
See the metal roof render
Black frames modernise a house faster than any other single swap. Say “black window frames” or “cream trim” and only the trim moves; the openings stay where they are.
Trim and window colours on a 1990s brick houseOne door, one afternoon, and it is the first thing a visitor looks at. Name the colour and the glass and see it against your own brick or siding.
How to pick a front door colour
A portico, tapered columns, a cedar surround, a metal awning. The render shows whether the house wants one. A contractor tells you what it takes to build it.
Remodel a house from a picture
A stone veneer base, painted brick, limewash, or a brick house that stays brick with everything around it updated. The change most people regret rushing.
Three directions we tested on red brickThe garage doors are the largest flat surface on most facades and the driveway is the largest surface on the lot. Both change how the house reads from the street.
Redesign the driveway too
Foundation beds, a walkway, a shade tree. Cheap next to siding, and it decides whether the house looks finished. Render the house, then hand the same photo to the landscape tool.
Design the yard from the same photoPrefer to read it first? How to modernize a 1990s brick house without painting the brick is the same brick house as the second tab above, taken three ways, and what colour to paint a front door on a grey house is the Cape Cod in the fourth. If paint is the whole question, start with is there an app to see what your house exterior would look like painted or upload a picture of your house and try paint colours.
What to change first
Eight exterior changes, from the one that costs a weekend to the one that needs a permit. The list runs cheapest to dearest, and that is roughly the order to do them in, with one exception: decide the expensive things before you buy the cheap ones, because the door colour depends on the siding and the siding depends on the roof.
Render the bottom of this list first. Nobody regrets a door colour for long. People regret siding for twenty years.
Visitors look at the entry before they look at the house. A painted or replaced door, matching hardware, new numbers and a pair of lights change the first impression for less than anything else on this list. Do this first regardless of what else is planned.
Clean bed lines, mulch, a few evergreens against the foundation and a walk that is not cracking. Landscaping is what makes a house look cared for, and it is the change that photographs best against every siding colour.
Contrast is what reads as “updated” from the street: dark trim on light siding, or the reverse. Painting the garage doors to match the body or to set against it changes the whole facade, and it is a paint job, not a replacement.
Replacing rather than painting them. Carriage style, modern glass-row, or wood: on a garage-forward house the doors are the largest single element facing the road, which is why they come this early in the order despite the cost.
New windows change the style of the house more than any other single swap, and they usually happen when the glass is failing anyway. If replacement is coming, decide the frame colour now, because it fixes the trim and door choices below it.
Whole-house cladding is the most expensive change on the list and the one you cannot sample on a wall. Lap to board-and-batten, vinyl to fiber cement, or cedar accents at the entry only. This is the decision a render was built for.
Roofs get replaced because they are old, not because they are ugly, so the decision is which colour and material when the time comes. Render it before the roofer’s sample board, because a black metal roof and a brown shingle roof are two different houses.
Anything that adds a roof or a footing is a building project. A render shows you whether the house wants a covered entry or a stone base before you pay anyone to design one. It cannot tell you what the footing needs.
Straight answers
An exterior render is a direction-finding tool. It answers “would I like my house like that?” in seconds, for free, before anyone quotes you for siding.
Questions
You upload a photo of the front of your house, describe the exterior you want in a sentence, and the model paints that design into your photo. Siding, roof, windows, trim, front door, porch, stone, garage doors and the planting in front can all change at once, or one at a time. The house in the result is your house, from your camera angle, with your neighbour’s roof still in the corner of the frame.
Your first render does not need an account, and new accounts get free credits after that with no card. Pro adds volume, higher-resolution downloads and exports without the watermark. The renders themselves come off the same engine either way, and every before and after on this page was produced on it.
No. The box at the top of this page runs in the browser, and there is an app for iPhone and Android if you would rather stand at the curb and do it from your phone. Nothing to install on a desktop, no 3D model of the house to build before you see a result.
That is the whole job, and it is the box at the top of this page. Add the photo, type the direction, and the redesigned house comes back in seconds. Every example on this page started as a real homeowner photo, not a stock house.
Yes. Paint-only is what the exterior paint visualizer is for. This page is for the material and the shape: lap siding to board-and-batten, a shingle roof to standing-seam metal, white window frames to black, a plain entry to a covered porch on stone piers. Say the change and the model renders the material, not just the colour.
Yes, and it is more reliable than a whole-house sentence. “Replace the front door with a black modern door with a vertical glass panel and keep everything else exactly as it is” is a normal sentence for it, and the single-change examples above are exactly that. Naming what stays is as important as naming what changes.
Accurate enough to decide a direction with, not accurate enough to build from. The roofline, the window openings, the chimney and the camera angle stay put, so you are judging the design and not a different house. Two honest patterns from this page: twice a render asked for board-and-batten came back with lap siding, and three times a whole-house sentence that included a new roof kept the old one. The single-change roof sentence worked first time. Read what came back rather than assuming every word landed, and give the roof its own sentence.
No. There is no floor plan, no elevation drawing, no dimensions and no structural check. If the render adds a porch, it is showing you what a porch would look like on your house, not whether your foundation can carry one. Take the render to a contractor or an architect for that part.
In rough order of impact per dollar: the front door and entry lighting, then the beds and walkway, then trim and shutter colour, then garage doors, then windows, then siding, then the roof, then anything structural like a porch. The order-of-work section above walks through why. The expensive items are the ones to render first, because they are the ones you cannot undo.
Yes, from the same photo. The renders on this page hold the yard mostly as it was so the house is the only thing that changed, but you can say “add foundation planting and a flagstone walk” in the same sentence, or hand the redesigned house to the AI landscape design tool and work on the yard on its own.
Seconds. The renders on this page came back in six to fourteen seconds each, measured end to end. Long enough to read the sentence back, short enough to try a second direction before you have put the phone down.
Renovate AI runs on iPhone and Android as well as in the browser. Stand on the sidewalk, photograph the front of the house, type the change, and the render comes back on the phone before you have walked back inside. If you are on a phone right now, the box at the top of this page works without installing anything.
Keep going
Keeping the siding and only changing the colour? That is a different question, and this is the tool built for it: siding, brick, stucco, trim and door, repainted from one photo.
Paint the houseThe yard is the other half of the street view. Beds, walkway, lawn and trees redesigned from the same photo you used for the house.
Design the yardPavers, concrete, gravel or a widened approach. The biggest surface on the lot, and the one nobody renders before pouring it.
Redesign the drivewayThe same engine pointed indoors: kitchens, bathrooms, living rooms and bedrooms remodelled from a photo.
Remodel a roomOne photo from the curb, one sentence, and the whole exterior comes back redesigned in seconds. Free to try, on iPhone, Android and the web.
