DRAPER, UTAH, August 28, 2019 — When the core of your business relies on high-end clients spending large sums on integration projects, it pays to use the latest tools available for sales and design. For IntelliHOME, a leading Swiss home integration firm with a growing focus on home theaters, the newest tool in their kit is the Modus VR virtual reality design solution that allows them to recreate a customer’s actual room, then design the ideal home theater and present it to the client before a single wire is pulled.

“As electronic professionals, we are fascinated with new technologies and the possibilities they open,” said IntelliHOME COO Fabio Fragapane. “Modus VR provides a virtual design environment that no other company currently offers, in which the design process is fairly simple but includes many fine touches such as various finishes for walls and floors that allow us to show how different components affect the look and feel of a room in the real world.”

Most of IntelliHOME’s clientele walk in the door knowing for certain they want a luxurious home theater, so the company has so far used Modus VR to improve efficiency in the design timeline rather than to generate new sales. They predict that as general homeowners become more accustomed to VR as an everyday technology, more people at various levels of investment will look to hire integrators that offer VR design.

“It’s still a novel technology for nearly everyone, but once they put on the goggles they become fascinated, and we can see it actually touches them in a way that our physical showroom doesn’t,” Fragapane explained. “It’s because they can see that it’s actually their room, not a template or showroom, and they can get a true sense of what fits where, and what colors and fixtures will look like. We try to use it with every potential client, whether they want it or not, because the truth is that they don’t know they want it. It’s a classic case of not knowing what you don’t know.”

The IntelliHOME team has found that some things are far easier to explain when they can show them directly, such as how a room might accommodate only five recliner chairs when a client is asking for six. As they regularly work with clients’ interior designers, being able to actually lay five chairs out, or put specific colors on the walls, is a game changer for integrators in convincing clients what is possible and what’s ideal for their space. It also adds a level of excitement to consultations by providing a new experience that most clients don’t expect.

“You can do a lot with two-dimensional plans, but it’s very hard to get a client excited by showing them a blueprint,” Fragapane added. “Seeing a top-down view of a projection screen on a wall is nowhere near the experience of having the screen in front of you, where clients can see exactly the view they will have in real life, which also helps them see why we chose specific components for their space.”

They noted that home theaters have not penetrated the smaller homes market in Switzerland, but that interactive design software like Modus VR may help turn the tide by offering more homebuyers a realistic preview of what can be achieved in their home. After roughly eight months using Modus VR, the firm has already seen that Modus provides consistent updates to the software, giving them confidence that it will continue to improve and offer more possibilities in the future.