Published about 7 min read
A note that works names the surface it belongs to, says what that surface should become in concrete terms — a material, a color, a finish — and asks for one change. "Matte deep navy paint" beats "make this nicer", and two marked areas with a short note each beat one area with a paragraph.
Notes are the part of Interify you control most directly, and the part most worth a second draft.
What the model actually receives
Each area you mark gets its own note, and each note is sent as an instruction about that area alone, numbered so it matches the outline you drew. The model also sees your photo and, depending on the kind of edit, a map of where your areas are. Everything outside those areas is kept from the original, unless a style preset is also running.
So a note is not a wish for the room. It is an instruction for one patch of pixels. Writing it that way is most of the skill.
The shape of a good note
Three parts, in any order:
- What the surface is. "The back wall", "this floor", "the armchair". Naming it stops the instruction from drifting to the wall behind.
- What it should become. The actual change: painted, replaced, removed, restyled.
- Something concrete. A material, a color with a value, a finish, a shape. This is where vague notes fail.
Put together: "Replace this floor with wide white oak planks, matte finish, running toward the window."
Pick the action type
Each note can carry an action type, which tells the model how to read what you wrote. It is worth setting, because the same five words mean different things depending on it.
| Action type | Use it for | A note that fits |
|---|---|---|
| Change color | Paint and finishes on a surface that stays | "Warm white, eggshell" |
| Replace material | Swapping what a surface is made of | "Honed gray limestone tile" |
| Add item | Something that is not in the room yet | "A low walnut sideboard against the wall" |
| Remove item | Clearing something out | "The exercise bike" |
| Restyle | Reworking an area in a style | "Mid-century modern, warm wood and olive upholstery" |
| Custom | Anything that is not one of the above | "Hang three framed prints in a row at eye level" |
The action type is picked from a menu rather than typed, and it changes how the same words land. "Change color" on a cabinet repaints the doors you have. "Replace material" on the same cabinet asks for the fronts in a different material — oak instead of painted. Swapping an object for a different object is "Add item" or "Custom", not "Replace material". If a result keeps changing the wrong property, the action type is usually the reason.
One change per area
The temptation is to mark the whole room and describe everything at once. Resist it. Mark the wall, mark the floor, mark the sofa, and write three short notes. You get a result where each change can be judged on its own, and when one of them is wrong you can fix that one.
Marking many small areas is fine; the editor will tell you if you reach its limit. What does not work is a single area covering half the photo with a note listing six unrelated changes, because there is nothing in the instruction tying each change to a place.
Be concrete, especially about color and material
Words like "modern", "cozy" and "nicer" describe a feeling, and two people reading them picture different rooms. Replace them with something you could buy.
| Vague | Concrete |
|---|---|
| "Nicer floor" | "Wide white oak planks, matte, laid toward the window" |
| "Modern kitchen" | "Flat-front cabinets in deep green with brushed brass bar handles" |
| "Brighter wall" | "Warm white paint, eggshell, no texture" |
| "Nice rug" | "A flat-weave wool rug in cream and charcoal, under the coffee table" |
| "Different lamp" | "A black metal arc floor lamp reaching over the sofa" |
For color, three things help: the hue ("blue-green"), how light or dark it is ("deep", "pale", or a published LRV if you have one), and the finish ("matte", "eggshell", "semi-gloss"). Naming a specific paint color from a manufacturer is reasonable as a description, but treat the result as an interpretation rather than a color match: see testing paint colors on your own walls for what to do before you buy.
For materials, say the material and something about its format: plank width, tile size, grain direction, whether it is polished or honed.
Say what should stay
Without a style, the areas you do not mark stay as they were, so a directed edit on its own needs nothing to protect them. Saying what should stay matters when you are restyling the whole room and still want one thing kept: write "keep the existing wooden floor" or "keep the curtains" in the "Additional instructions" box, and the restyle is asked to leave it alone.
That box is the whole-room instruction, and how far it reaches depends on what else you have set. With a style preset, or with nothing marked at all, it applies to the whole photo. Next to marked areas with no style it only shapes those areas, because everything outside them comes back from your photograph — so "warm evening lighting" beside one marked lamp relights the lamp, not the room.
The same box takes the things that are about the image rather than an object: "warm evening lighting", "keep the furniture layout".
When words run out, attach a photo
A note can point at a reference photo you attach to that area: the tile you are considering, the chair you found, a room whose lighting you liked. The reference belongs to the area it is attached to, so it answers "what should go here" rather than "what should the room feel like". A version can carry a few of them, and the editor stops you when you reach the limit.
A reference is most useful for things that are hard to describe and easy to show: a particular veining in stone, an unusual chair profile, a tile layout.
Keep the room's architecture out of it
Directed edits work on surfaces, furniture and finishes. Without a style, everything outside the areas you mark stays as it was, so the walls, windows, doors, ceiling height and camera angle stay where they are — that is what makes the result recognizable as your room. A note asking to move a window, knock through to the kitchen or raise the ceiling is asking for the one thing the approach is built not to do.
A whole-room style is the looser case. It regenerates the photo and is told to keep the same architecture, which it usually does, but there the room's geometry is asked for rather than held exactly. A whole-room instruction with nothing marked behaves the same way: it regenerates the photo under the same instruction to keep the walls, windows, doors and camera angle where they are.
Nor is any of this measured. Interify makes a photograph of a change, not a plan: there is nothing in a result you can scale off, and no cost attached to it. What AI room design can and can't do is the honest list.
Three worked examples
Written as "Action type — note" below. The part before the dash is the action type you pick from the menu, not something you type; everything after it is the note.
A living room where the wall and the sofa both go. Mark the wall behind the sofa: "Change color — deep blue-green, matte." Mark the sofa: "Custom — a cream boucle sofa, same size and position." Two areas, two short notes, and no instruction needed to keep the floor and the curtains, because nothing outside a marked area is touched. Add a style preset to the same two areas and "Keep the floor and the curtains" earns its place, since the restyle would otherwise reach them.
A kitchen refresh. Mark the upper cabinets: "Change color — warm white, satin." Mark the lower cabinets: "Change color — deep olive green, satin." Mark the backsplash: "Replace material — white zellige tile with pale gray grout." Nothing about the layout, because the layout is not changing. More of this in a kitchen refresh without a remodel.
A bedroom with a floor you are shopping for. Mark the floor: "Replace material — wide European oak planks, matte, light honey tone, running toward the window." Leave everything else alone, run it once per candidate floor, and compare. Visualizing new flooring covers the details that make a floor read as real.
Then iterate, and read the result properly
If a result is close but not right, you have three moves. Try again runs the same request for a different take, and the first one on each version is free. Tweak changes the style or the instruction behind the result and runs it again. Refine lets you brush over one part of the result and regenerate just that part, which is the right tool for a single wrong detail.
When a result misses, look at which part missed before rewriting everything. A wall that came back the wrong color needs a better color description. A wall that came back as a different wall needs a better outline. A room that changed in ways you never asked for usually means an area was marked larger than you thought.
Compare it against the original side by side, and the features page shows where each of those controls lives.