Highgrove Bathrooms

Transforming Bathroom Planning: Highgrove Bathrooms AR + 3D Solution & Bathroom Planner Case Study

In the fast-evolving world of bathroom renovation, Highgrove Bathrooms has taken a bold step forward by integrating leading-edge AR + 3D technology into their online experience. Their new Augmented Reality and 3D Configurator solutions, coupled with an advanced 3D Bathroom Planner, are revolutionising how customers visualise and plan their bathroom spaces. This case study dives into the details of these innovative solutions, exploring the requirements, development process and success.

Highgrove Bathrooms is a leading bathware retailer in Australia, renown for its stylish and affordable range of products. With over 50 showrooms nationwide, they cater to DIY renovators, tradespeople, commercial developers, and interior stylists. Their extensive bathware collection includes taps, basins, showers, and vanities and has even attracted the attention of design celebrities like Neale Whitaker from The Block, who have selected Highgrove Bathrooms’ products for their renovation projects.

After establishing a highly successful brick-and-mortar presence, Highgrove Bathrooms aimed to expand their dominance in the ecommerce space. They sought an innovative retail technology to enhance online customer engagement and boost purchase confidence. To achieve this, they partnered with INHAABIT, utilising industry-leading AR + 3D Product Configuration technology and 3D Bathroom Planning, to bring the showroom experience directly to customers.

The Challenges

Designing a perfect bathroom can be a daunting task. Customers often struggle to visualise how different design elements – tiles, accessories, fixtures and fittings – will come together in their space. Traditional bathroom planning methods, such as 2D floor planners and static images fall short in conveying the true look and feel of a new bathroom. Highgrove Bathrooms identified this gap and set out to create an online solution that would enhance customer confidence and satisfaction, providing an engaging and immersive design experience.

The Solutions

Highgrove Bathrooms integrated INHAABIT’s ultra-realistic AR and 3D Product Viewer, Product Configurator and online Bathroom Planning technology into their website. The goal was to improve online sales for their bathware range and enable customers to speed up their renovation and floor plan design, via an industry leading bathroom design tool. The solutions included:

3D Product Viewer & Augmented Reality

INHAABIT’s ultra-realistic 3D products are highlighted by a 360 icon on the Highgrove Bathrooms website and seamlessly integrated into the product pages. They allow customers to explore beautiful 3D bathware, zoom in to key features, rotate to any angle and try products in their home with Augmented Reality. The high quality 3D visualisation solution works on desktop or mobile devices and the AR experience can display products with realistic dimensions and materials. When using AR, customers can explore different design ideas and try any product and material option in their real bathroom to see how it will improve their interior.

Interactive & Animated 3D Products

Highgrove Bathrooms also sell advanced products such as the CORA Smart Toilet. This toilet has many advanced features that could not be easily conveyed via the imagery on the page. INHAABIT was able to bring the smart toilet to life by creating immersive 3D animations and annotations to showcase key features. Featuring advanced 3D technology, the animations can be viewed in 360 degrees and provide a more effective and immersive way for customers to understand the product features.

3D Product Configurators

Highgrove Bathrooms sell a large range of bathware products and many of these can be customised to suit a customer’s specific requirements. Product ranges such as the Integrated Shower System and vanity units can feature 1000’s of different style and size combinations, making them challenging to display online.

With the above in mind, INHAABIT developed a suite of easy to use 3D Product Configurators which allow customers to build, visualise and calculate pricing for configurable products. The 3D configurators are designed with intuitive stages that help customers personalise parts and narrow down selections. They are fully integrated with Highgrove Bathrooms’ website, showcasing instant, real time pricing and allowing customers to add their options directly to the shopping cart.

3D Bathroom Planner

Customers looking to start planning a new bathroom can use Highrove Bathroom’s ultra-realistic 3D Bathroom Planner. Built on INHAABIT’s Room Planner technology, it allows customers to create their ideal bathroom with an extensive range of Highgrove toilets, showers, taps vanity units, tiles, windows and doors. Easy drag & drop functionality means no special skills are required and bathroom furniture and fittings can be customised to fit any room size.

Customers can create a custom room layout and bathroom floor plan, select from an extensive range of tile materials and download render-like images from any angle. The online bathroom planner brings together all of Highgrove Bathroom’s product range, allowing customers to add configurable showers, vanity units and everything they need to design a dream bathroom.

With an intuitive user friendly interface, customers can create their dream bathroom in minutes, using drag & drop to position products in their desired positions. Augmented Reality enables customers to walk through their virtual bathroom to visualise sizing and product positioning. What was originally a complex and time consuming process for staff, is now easier than ever thanks to the 3D Bathroom Planner.

Key AR + 3D Solution Features & Benefits

The integration of AR + 3D products, 3D Configurator solutions and a comprehensive Bathroom Planner has generated many business advantages:

Enhanced Customer Engagement

Customers can explore and visualise Highgrove Bathroom’s products in 360 degrees, leading to greater product engagement, time spent browsing the product pages and purchase confidence. With Augmented Reality, customers can understand the physicality of products when browsing online, leading to a more effective ecommerce experience.

Increased Multi-Product Sales

The online Bathroom Planner allows customers to design a new bathroom featuring Highgrove Bathroom’s product range. It allows them to combine multiple products and styling in an ultra-realistic planning experience. This creates a unique design experience that is tailored specifically for Highgrove’s customers.

Improved Product Marketing

3D products and Augmented Reality help Highgrove’s products stand out online and bridge the gap between the physical showroom and online shopping. Customers can better understand product features by exploring products from any angle and are not limited to photos which only show one product angle.

Greater Competitive Advantage

With multiple stores around Australia, Highgrove Bathrooms have established a dominant physical presence. Online, AR + 3D products, 3D Configurators and online Bathroom Planners give them a similar advantage, providing a benchmark ecommerce experience. Customers can access realistic 360 degree products from the comfort of their homes, creating better brand loyalty and providing a memorable browsing experience that stands out from the crowd.

Better Customisation & Personalisation

The Shower Kit Configurator and Vanity Unit Configurators allow for a high level of product customisation, ensuring customers can tailor a product to their exact specifications. This personalised approach enhances customer satisfaction and simplifies the buying process, giving customers a superior way to buy online.

The Results: Transforming Customer Experience With AR & 3D Technology

Highgrove Bathrooms deployed their AR + 3D solution in phases to engage customers and introduce new features. The initial release of 360 degree products led to overwhelmingly positive results.

Customers were spending more time engaging with and exploring 3D products online. When new products were released, the interactive 3D models provided a much more realistic view of the features, compared to images that only showed a single perspective.

3D Product Configurators opened the door to increased sales for customisable products. Prior to implementing the configurators, only selected kits were available online. The 3D Configurators allowed for many more combinations to be purchased, increasing sales and the total range of products available. Staff were also able to use the configurators to guide customers through the options and streamline the purchasing process.

The 3D Bathroom Planner helped to speed up floor planning and renovation processes. It increased sales opportunities by letting customers do their initial exploration via the online bathroom planner. Without a bathroom design tool, many customers would have progressed slowly or needed to engage a designer. The 3D Bathroom Planner helped to instill greater confidence to build a bathroom, specifically with Highgrove’s product range.

Conclusion

Highgrove Bathrooms’ AR + 3D products and online Bathroom Planner represent a significant leap forward in the home renovation and bathware industry. By leveraging advanced technology to improve the customer experience, Highgrove Bathrooms is setting a new standard for retail, design and ecommerce. The case study demonstrates the transformative potential of AR and 3D bathroom planning tools in empowering customers and as the 3D technology continues to evolve, we can expect even more exciting developments in the world of bathware.

To learn more about INHAABIT’s innovative AR + 3D bathware solutions, explore our 3D Product Configurators, 3D Bathroom Planners and 3D Product Viewers.