SketchUp to Real Life Case Study
In this post I share the before and after photos, plus SketchUp drawings, of a project I worked on in Sydney’s upper north shore suburb of Roseville.
SketchUp is a great tool for creating designs of your renovation projects (or those of your design clients). It helps people visualise the finished spaces before they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars renovating.
And you can play around with all the different real life furniture, materials and finishes inside SketchUp, to avoid making mistakes on these aspects of your project in real life.
Find out how my interior design process worked with clients on this project and where my SketchUp drawings fit in.
The project brief
My clients engaged me to help them with the interior design of their renovation.
They had already been working with an architect but they were looking for some help with getting their cabinetry designed and assistance with selecting all the interior colours, fixtures and fittings. They also wanted some help with styling the home once the renovation was completed.
Before Photos and Floor Plan Changes
The house was a Californian Bungalow in Sydney’s upper north shore suburb of Roseville.
The renovation was extensive and involved a floor plan change in the existing bungalow as well as an extensive addition to the rear of the existing home. You can see the before and after floor plans in the images below.
FLOOR PLAN - BEFORE
FLOOR PLAN - AFTER (Architect: SBH Design)
Here are some before photos of the project - as you can see the home was quite outdated.
The SketchUp drawings
As mentioned, the clients had already been working with an architect to create the main structural changes of the project but I was engaged to draw up all the other internal elements of the home including all joinery (millwork/cabinetry) detailing, selection of colours plus the selection of fixtures, fittings and furniture as well.
The designs were drawn up in SketchUp and Layout and you can see some of the pages from the final documentation drawings below.
If you are interested in learning how to use SketchUp I offer an online course all about how to do these sorts of drawings for yourself. You can learn about that here.
SketchUp is a great tool as it helps clients see what their finished spaces are going to look like before they are built and helps avoid costly errors as well. Using the free tool that comes with SketchUp Pro (called Layout) you can also draw up plans and elevations to scale, which is what I do for all my interior design projects.
After Photos
As you can see the home was completely transformed and modernised. To see the full transformation scroll the after images in the gallery below!
Project Credits
Architect: Stacy Bark of SBH Design
Builder: Red Cedar Constructions
All interior design: The Little Design Corner
Photographer: Vkiram Hingmire
Learn SketchUp with our fun online course for beginners…
If you want improve your work with design clients or you are about to start renovating or remodeling then you will love SketchUp.
With this software you can mock up an entire home in 2D (floor plans, joinery/millwork elevations, lighting and electrical plans and more) and 3D (renderings and perspective drawings) so you can picture exactly what it will look like when it is finished plus prepare your technical drawings for use with your clients, trades and contractors.
Learning SketchUp will save you time, money, mistakes and so much more! It is a well known piece of software in the interior design and architecture industries and will give you a solid technical drawing skill that will immediately upgrade the professionalism of the work you are doing.
I teach an online course for beginners that is focused specifically on using SketchUp for interior design purposes. We have had more than 10,000 students come through the course with so many fantastic projects designed and built!
We have all sorts of students in the course including designers and architects, cabinet makers, home renovators/remodelers, kitchen and bathroom designers, event planners, landscape designers and design enthusiasts.
To find out more about the courses we have on offer click the link below. And reach out if you have any questions I can help with :)
Enjoy the rest of your day!
Clare x
