How I Created My Dining Room Mockup Using ChatGPT (A Step-By-Step Walkthrough)
Yesterday, I showed y’all a mockup of my dining room that I did using ChatGPT. I’ve done a few mockups of various areas of our house (mostly exterior ideas) over the last few months, but I think this was the first time I did an interior room and got ChatGPT to implement my ideas accurately. I mean, that finished version was spot on.
I think part of that is that ChatGPT has improved dramatically over the last few months. The rate at which AI is improving is quite amazing. And yes, it’s also a bit terrifying as well, but that’s a whole different topic for a completely different type of blog/website/podcast, and I’ve listened to many of those podcasts over the last few weeks. So today, we’re not going to focus so much on how AI is going to enslave us all or how the robots are going to rise up and destroy humanity. We’ll let the podcasters and whistleblowers cover the deep stuff and see if they have any solutions for us. So in the time we have left before that happens, we’re just going to have some fun with a few pictures. 😀
First, while I do think that ChatGPT has come a long way in the last year, I think it’s important to have an idea of what you want before you start asking it to edit your photos. If you just leave all of the decorating decision to ChatGPT, it’s unlikely that you’ll get what you want. Let me show you.
Just as a test, I uploaded these two photos of what our living room looked like when we bought the house.
Here are the instructions I gave it:
I want you to give me an idea for how to decorate my living room by editing the first image. I’ve included the second image so that you can see how the front door of the house opens into this room with about five feet of space to the right of the front door. Here’s what I want and like:
- I like bright, colorful rooms. My favorite colors are white, really light gray/greige, dark teal, all shades of pink, green, with accents of yellow and orange.
- I love flowers and anything floral and stripes.
- I love large prints and textures.
- There is hardwood flooring under the green carpet, which obviously needs to go. The hardwood floors are red oak, so they can be stained or left natural.
- I love pinch-pleated draperies on windows.
- The whole room needs to be arranged with the front door in mind. While I don’t have an actual entryway in the house, I’d like to create an entryway feel with the furniture placement.
- The old windows need to be replaced with updated windows, but I’d like them to be the same size.
- The polystyrene ceiling tiles need to be removed and the ceiling needs new drywall.
And here’s what it gave me. 😀
Ummmmm…yeah. I don’t know who this room is for, but it’s certainly not me. Of course, once it spits out a picture, you can ask it to edit things. But my goodness, where would I even start with this?
But I did give it the following instructions just to see if we could make any headway:
Replace the area rug with a rug that has a geometric pattern (not stripes, but something else) in the right colors. Also replace the blue and white ginger jar lamp with something a little more modern and less traditional.
And here’s the result…
So the lesson here is that if you’re going to use ChatGPT to do a mockup of a room, have some ideas in mind and have some photos of things you like gathered so that you can upload them and guide it along in the redesign of your room. Here’s how I did that with my dining room…
First, I wanted to start with trying out the green table, so I uploaded this photo of my dining room with the table and chairs…
And at the same time, I also uploaded this image of the green table that I found a while back…
I gave it the following instructions:
The first picture shows my dining room table and chairs. Edit the table and make it the same green color as the table in the second picture. Also, remove the clutter from the table top.
And this is what it did…
Next, I clicked on the “Edit” button at the bottom of the photo it generated, then I uploaded this photo…
And I gave it the following instructions:
The table looks great! Now make the following changes:
- Remove the area rug and make the whole floor the dark red oak hardwood floor that is seen in the bottom left corner of the photo.
- Remove the shelves, framed TV, and artwork on the wall above the buffet and replace it with the artwork shown in the photo I’ve attached.
- Make the wall color the light blue shown in the photo I’ve attached, but keep the trim around the windows and the baseboards white.
And this is what it gave me. So far, so good!
Next, I clicked the “edit” button at the bottom of that new photo that ChatGPT created to continue editing. I grabbed this photo from Spoonflower of the fabric I designed shown as curtains. This is all that Spoonflower shows, but I uploaded this photo…
And I gave it these instructions:
Add these draperies to the left side of the curtain rod where the curtain rod rings are. Make the curtains floor-length.
And this is what it generated. It’s not a perfect representation of the curtain fabric, but it’s close enough.
Next, I clicked that “edit” button on the last photo and uploaded this clear image of the drapery fabric pattern…
And I gave it the following instructions:
Everything is looking great so far! Now let’s work on the chairs.
- Paint the wood parts of the chairs white to match the crown molding and baseboards in the room.
- On the upholstered parts of the chairs, let’s do the following: (1) On the back of the chair backs, replace the solid fabric with a section of the fabric print that I’ve attached so that the bird is centered top-to-bottom, but sitting slightly to the right instead of being centered left-to-right, (2) make the upholstered seats a fun striped fabric using colors from the fabric pattern I’ve attached with the stripes going front to back and not side-to-side, (3) make the front of the upholstered backs a solid dark pink from the fabric pattern I’ve attached.
And it gave me this…
And finally, I clicked that “edit” button one last time, uploaded the following picture…
And then I gave it these instructions:
It’s looking so great!! One final change — Swap out the ceiling light fixture for the chandelier attached. Make the chandelier hang down so that it’s about 36 inches above the tabletop and make the leaves (or flowers, whatever they are) more of a brighter white (more the color of the wood on the chairs) than the cream color they are in the photo attached.
And that’s when it resulted in this final picture…
So it took me several steps to go from the before picture to the final mockup.
Could it have done all of that in one step if I had given it all of those instructions at once? Maybe. I don’t know. I just know that I’ve had much better results if I kind of hold its virtual hand and walk it through the process one step at a time.
But the main thing I’ve learned is to never let ChatGPT have carte blanche when it comes to decorating your room for you. Because, as you can see from my living room experiment, when you tell ChatGPT something like, “I like florals and stripes,” it will put florals and strips on just about everything. ChatGPT does not have decorating taste. It just has the ability to respond to your inputs. So the clearer and more explicit you are in your instructions, the better the outcome will be. But more importantly, the more ideas and photos you bring to it, the easier it will be to get the results you want.
I hope that helps those of you who have been struggling to get the results you want with ChatGPT or another AI chatbots. Perhaps we can get some good use out of it and at least have some beautifully decorated rooms before the AGI takeover of humanity. 😀 (I laugh so that I don’t cry because some of these whistleblowers are seriously freaking me out with their dire predictions.)
More About Our Breakfast Room
see all breakfast
room diy projects
read all breakfast
room blog posts
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
Thank you for posting the step by step directions you gave to ChatGPT in order to get your dining room mockup. It is amazing how it works! I may have to try it out.
And yet ChatGPT wisely left the most important decor drtail intact: ♡the cooper hound♡
Love the insights you share!
XO
And it didn’t even add a fifth leg or a second tail! 😀
A fantastically well laid out and useful tutorial on how to use ChatGPT to help with decorating our homes!
Many thanks for this.
Excellent detailed instructions. Thank you!
I used the free but limited Chat gpt for awhile and had it place a mural in my breakfast room. It turned out pretty well, but as you’ve said there are multiple steps and the free version was limited to X-number of tries per day. I think it was 20 or so. Anyway, I’ve decided to go for a paid version for 20$/month (there’s no commitment so I can cancel anytime). What I plan to use it for is travel planning . I’m terrible at that and need all the help I can get without the cost of a travel agent. Our community has multiple clubs in conjunction with the rec center and one of the best is the computer club where an amazing instructor for Apple products has monthly tutorials. I’ve learned much about chat gpt through her (she is a beta tester and knows a lot!) and I’ve lost some of my fear of this AI platform. We still need strong human guardrails to keep it under control, no doubt about it.
Superb, you and ChatGPT make a great combo!.
Just a small reminder sweet girl: Matthew 6:24, John 14:27, Romans 8:28
That turned out excellent! Love it. Asking ChatGPT reminds me of asking Amelia Bedelia to do something. LOL..
For those who don’t know (she was a children’s Book Character) If you asked her to dust the Furniture, she got out the Bath Powder and dusted all the furniture. LOL
Lol. I forgot about those books. I should get a few for my grand. She’s a beginning reader.
We are laughing right along with you on this subject. I love the dining room, it’s gorgeous. Not to throw a monkey wrench into the mix, but one of the pictures that you used as a reference had “French” doors out of the room, wouldn’t that be something to be able to walk out to your little patio/water feature you’ve thought about. Something to chew on. Love the colors and the design look.
Cheers to you, Matt, and the Fur Inspection Team!
P.S. You may not have loved your living room, but for me, it was a home run. But I’m older than you, and have always had more formal tastes, but love your creativity and take a page out of your workbook constantly.
Cheers!
I have a couple of questions…
1. Will you paint the ceilings the same light blue color as the ChatGPT rendering, or plain white like they are now?
2. What if you did upholster two captain’s chairs but put them under the artwork and sconces (instead of benches) on either side of the pantry door? That way they would be there and be available for when you want to extend the table, but they are out of the way and functioning kind of as decor when not in use?
Your rendering looks so good and I am excited for the dining room and the storage room!
1. No, I plan to keep the ceiling white. I’m just a big fan of white ceilings unless I’m going to do something really special and different like I did in the guest hallway bathroom.
2. Several people have suggested that, but I don’t think I like the idea for two reasons. First, those walls are about 53 inches wide, and chairs would only be about 20 inches wide. So that’s 33 inches of empty space on both walls. Not that I think that all walls need to be filled up from one side to the other, but I would like something wider on those walls. Also, if I put chairs with backs on them, that means that I’d have to use shorter artwork to fit between the tops of the chair backs and the sconces. I prefer taller, bigger artwork there. But also, by the time I had decided to use the table in its smaller round form, I had already ordered new legs for the new benches I plan to build there. I’m pretty excited about my plan for those benches.
Yes, I have a friend who uses it often. He says do it step by step. If you try to do it all at once, it gets confused. (It put his barn in the middle of his pond.) 😁😁. He uses it a lot to get landscaping ideas. I’ve not tried it myself yet.
I love the mockup of your dining room, btw!
Thank-you for ‘splaining it! I learned something today. I was thinking about designing some quilt patterns. This gives me some trails to follow and how to word things.
I love the results.
So I am assuming that if you “talk” to it (by voice or typing words) as if you are speaking to a person face to face, your vision is understood, just as it would be to a human! No wonder they are shouting alarms about AI! Just imagine if you tell it to blow something up! But for us normal folks, it did a great job with your precise directions! I’m still trying to get the hang of download/upload and copy/paste! Wish I had been born a decade or two late, in a way. Maybe I would have more abilities on a computer! LOL!
I am so impressed with your expertise using ChatGPT. Even carefully reading what steps you took, I don’t think I could do it. I’ll have to play with it. I really like the final product.
I’m back, and I did my art room over following some of the same prompts you gave. I pulled an old realtor pic from when the house was empty.
I love the results! Thanks for the post on this.
Ps- is it possible you’d design your site to be able to add photos to our comments? Or even a 👍 or 👎🏻 to another’s post?
That’s a good idea! I’ll have to see if there’s a Wordpress plugin that will allow that. Heck, I can’t even figure out how to let people add pictures to comments on my A2D Facebook page. 😒 But I’ll see what I can find.
I love using it to look at reupholstery options!