Project: Bathroom Renovation (Part 2)

Generating realistic images of the bathroom

In the first installment of Project: Bathroom Renovation, I had Chat GPT help me build a basic plan to renovate our sad little guest bathroom. By now, I had a bathroom filled the brim with tile and floor samples—but I wanted some help visualizing how the room would look with some of them. Having one tiny square of flooring or a single 2x8 tile just wasn't cutting it. Enter—ChatGPT.

Honestly? Not bad. But I learned a few things…

It changed things that I didn't instruct it to… like the color of the light fixture, towel rack, etc.
The angle of the image is pretty different from the original—which honestly didn't bother me too much, but might become an issue later.
I need to tell Chat GPT what NOT to do, it seems just as important as telling it what I did want.

I did several more rounds trying out different finishes…

As you can see, this is where we started going astray—particularly with the layout of the room itself and the angle of the picture. After tinkering for a while, here's what I learned:

Chat GPT Tips

Remember to address every aspect of the image. If parts are left unmentioned, chances are that Chat GPT will infer some random change.

Provide images vs links. At first, I simply added a URL for a product (such as a vanity or tile) within the prompt itself. While Chat GPT did a decent job finding the URL, I found that providing it actual images of the items I wanted resulted in much more accurate results.

Using the command "commit this to memory" was helpful in capturing certain aspects that I did not want Chat GPT to update in each iteration. For example, I uploaded a photo of my existing bathroom and said "Assess this photo for angle, layout, and orientation of the objects within it. Commit this to memory, and for all future versions please do NOT change any of those aspects of the image." This helped address the jumping toilet, shower orientation, etc.

Highlighting sections of an image it had generated also resulted in fewer "random" inferred changes that I didn't ask for.

Descriptive prompt only