Decofy, the AI-powered mobile retail channel, launched in April to help home decorators realize their design dreams, and, at the same time, end systemic paint waste and the environmental damage it can cause.

It’s a common sight in most people’s garages; half-full paint cans and half-used rolls of wallpaper. Indeed, the old adage is that it’s better to buy too much paint than not enough. Decofy believes it’s time to use technology to change these old habits when it comes to decorating homes.

That’s because globally, it’s estimated that up to 10% of all paint purchased is wasted, ending up incinerated, in a landfill, or in the ocean. 75 million gallons of paint are wasted every year in the United States alone – that’s enough to fill 114 Olympic-sized swimming pools. 50% of the microplastics polluting our oceans and waterways and poisoning wildlife are particulates from paint.

Decofy is a new fully integrated retail channel and white-label shopping app for coatings and DIY brands. Decofy gives consumers a smarter, simpler, more sustainable way to shop for paint, wallpaper, and decorating products, while solving the problem of wasted paint and wallpaper in two ground-breaking ways.

First, Decofy allows home decorators to use their mobile's AI shopping app to take a smart 360-degree video of any room, and with a single tap, decorate the walls virtually with any number of paint colors, finishes or wallpapers. By combining spatial computing with personalized, AI-driven recommendations, Decofy helps users find and realize design ideas before they buy, eliminating the guesswork decorating has always involved. That means no need for samples and no need to buy alternative paint or wallpaper because the first attempt didn’t produce the expected look.

Secondly, Decofy’s smart video technology uses AI, combined with data, on each coating product to automatically calculate how much of a given paint or wallpaper is required for each wall or room. No more moving furniture, measuring walls, doors, or windows, or reaching for the calculator to work out coverage areas; Decofy’s smart video uses spatial computing to map the room – even when furniture is blocking the view – and calculate exact quantities required. There’s no guesswork for the user, and of course, every product can be purchased with a single click.

With Decofy, brands can, for the first time, understand the dimensions of customers’ interiors, the precise amount of product they require, which in turn opens up the potential for new, more sustainable ways of fulfilment; for example, being able to buy customized volumes of paint tailored to each customer’s exact needs rather than standardized quantities that result in high waste quantities.

Decofy was founded by Al Maxwell, who previously founded one of the world’s first Augmented Reality (AR) platforms, String. Decofy developed smart video because AR has limitations in home-decorating applications; it forces the user to be physically present in the space holding up the mobile camera and it demands a lot of screen real estate, which limits the ability to simultaneously browse for inspiration.

Al Maxwell, founder of Decofy said, “DIY has gone through a massive boom over the past few years, especially during lockdown, and painting is the number one home improvement activity. It’s great that more people are expressing themselves creatively through interior design but, on the flip side, the more people experiment, the more materials they tend to waste. We wanted to build a mobile-first retail channel that paint brands, DIY companies, and the wider coatings industry can easily integrate to make their customers’ shopping experience seamless – while also eliminating the DIY guesstimating and wastage that home decorating has always involved. The AI, spatial computing and next-gen smart video we’ve developed means better, more creative interiors can be imagined and achieved with no waste. Decofy is a new AI-powered way to shop, which I hope the still very traditional coatings industry will embrace. We know customers want to be smarter and more sustainable in the way they decorate their homes – we’ve launched Decofy to make that change happen.”

*All images and videos courtesy of Decofy.