Commercial buyers are notoriously difficult clients to land. They have high expectations and are putting a lot of money on the line. For builders and designers, that means the challenge is about demonstrating the value of your services to not just one person, but multiple decision-makers with a lot of skin in the game.
When you’re already facing fierce competition for these high-value jobs, how do you go about showing what you’re capable of and convincing a commercial buyer to sign with you? With commercial renderings.
Commercial building renderings immediately show your skills and capabilities, and you don’t have to spend thousands to create them. In this post, we take a dive into everything you need to know about commercial project renderings. Read on to learn more.
What is Commercial Rendering?
Commercial rendering is the act of creating a detailed and highly realistic digital representation of a construction project. The level of detail should reach all the way up to furnishings and decorations, and the viewer should be able to see the highly detailed rendering from multiple angles and viewpoints.
A commercial project rendering can be in 2D, 3D or photorealistic high-definition quality, complete with walk-through tourability and adjustable lighting.
People call a wide variety of digital representations of construction projects “commercial renderings,” but the best ones are just as good as seeing the finished project in real life.
Types of Commercial Renderings
Commercial building renderings are highly detailed representations of a construction project, but they don’t all include the same items and viewpoints. In fact, there are several kinds of commercial renderings:
Exterior Renderings
Exterior renderings show the outside of a building. This is the type of project rendering that can show a commercial client the curb appeal of their future building. Clients should get a feel of the height of the building, the exterior surface materials, windows, doors and even roofing when looking at an exterior rendering.
Renderings of building exteriors shouldn’t just show the building’s facade, though. They should also show exterior walkways, parking lots, signage and anything else that would be relevant to the client and their plans for the site.
Interior Renderings
As you might guess, interior renderings show the inside of a commercial space. Because commercial clients want to get an idea of what could go where, the potential for interior decoration and overall usability, interior renderings are essential in the commercial building sales process.
Your renderings of the inside of commercial projects shouldn’t stop with the walls, windows and bathrooms. You need to go deeper if you want to compete and close the deal. To do that, you can add interior furnishings and specify interior colors and surface materials.
Aerial Renderings
Before they will spend potentially millions of dollars on a new commercial construction project, commercial clients need to get a bird’s eye view of the project. There’s no better way to do that than with an aerial rendering.
This type of commercial rendering shows the future commercial building from the air — what it might look like to a passing airplane or bird. These types of renderings are useful for giving clients a sense of how their building will occupy the building site, as well as what the roof will look like.
Landscape Renderings
Landscape renderings have a particular focus on the outdoor area surrounding a commercial building. This may seem unimportant when you consider the cost and purpose of the actual structure you intend to build or design, but it really matters to commercial clients.
For example, hotel companies want to see relaxing pools and quiet, shaded patios. Retail companies want to make sure they will have enough parking to accommodate the holiday rush. And sometimes, owners of commercial office buildings want to make sure their new property will put shame to the competition’s landscaping. Show them the landscaping possibilities with a landscape rendering.
Real Estate Renderings
Real estate renderings are an incredibly important sales and marketing tool in the real estate industry, and if you’re trying to close a deal with a commercial real estate client, they will want to know whether the property they are investing in will actually be attractive to commercial tenants.
You can convince them of that with a real estate rendering. If, for example, you are trying to close a deal to build a shopping mall, you need to create a rendering that shows those empty shop stalls filled with life. Show what the space will look like at full occupancy to help commercial real estate clients see the value of your services.
Who Uses Commercial Renderings?
Commercial project renderings are useful to a wide variety of building and design professionals. Commercial builders, interior designers and landscapers all find themselves sharing the same boat — one filled with extreme competition and clients with high expectations. For that reason, they all find a similar solution in commercial renderings.
Commercial builders
Design-build commercial construction companies and even those that work with other people’s designs can put commercial building renderings to good use. Here’s how: with a software like Cedreo, you can create a complete commercial building design in as little as two hours. Compare that to the usual design process, which can take weeks or months. On top of that, you can quickly make changes to a digitally rendered commercial building design — as opposed to having to redraft the entire thing with traditional paper-based renderings.
Commercial interior designers
How do you convince a commercial client that you can handle the interior design of their specific building without actually doing the work first? By showing them what you can do — digitally. A commercial rendering of what you might do if given the interior design job will give potential clients a taste of your style and abilities. Then, when you have the job, you can show the client what you plan to do and incorporate feedback instead of having to make costly changes to the real thing.
Commercial landscapers
Commercial clients tend to have a lot of opinions about their landscaping. You can’t go into a project and do the work without some assurances that you’re on the right track in terms of satisfying the client’s particular needs. The obvious solution to that problem is to create a digital representation of your landscaping plans — a commercial project rendering — and get feedback on that rather than on the completed job.
5 Benefits of Commercial Renderings
If you’re not convinced of the value of commercial renderings for your building or design business, you’re about to be. Check out these five key benefits of commercial building renderings.
Commercial renderings help clients visualize projects
You’re a great commercial builder or designer, but you may not be the world’s best communicator. Even if your communication skills are incredibly good, you still may struggle to get your commercial clients to truly visualize what you’re telling them you’re going to do with their building.
Relying on the client to create an accurate mental picture of your plans is risky, but you don’t have to rely on that. Instead, you can use software like Cedreo to quickly create detailed commercial renderings that help your clients visualize the final product.
Commercial renderings enhance collaboration
When you’re working with a busy commercial client, getting input and feedback can be like pulling teeth. But you need that collaborative energy to actually get the job done to the client’s satisfaction. You need to give them something to look at — a rendering of the project.
That way, instead of asking your clients to read a description or look at flat, 2D building plans and respond, you’re sending them something that’s fun to look at. It may even be tourable, but in any case, it gets them excited. And it gives them things to point to when they give feedback and direction. More collaboration means more successful projects.
Commercial renderings improve marketing
No commercial client is going to drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on you if they’re not completely convinced of your ability to do the job. This is another enormous benefit of commercial renderings: you can show them to clients as examples of your work.
Instead of asking them to visit one of the buildings you designed or just take your word for it, you’re asking them to look at a detailed, accurate rendering of a job you’ve already completed. There’s no better proof of your abilities than that.
Commercial renderings can boost sales prices
All the power of commercial renderings for builders and designers translates into an amazing benefit: more money. High-quality renderings are an asset — one that not only convinces clients of your abilities but gives them something to show to colleagues, investors and their own clients. If you’re doing renderings and your competitors aren’t, you can command higher sales prices.
Commercial renderings can increase conversion rates
Images sell, and when you boil them down, commercial building renderings are images. With beautiful renderings to show, you are suddenly more than words on a page or another faceless company. You are suddenly a talented building or design professional who can prove their skills. That translates to increased conversion rates — in other words, more sales.
Create Professional Commercial Renderings
Renderings of commercial building projects can bring a lot of value to designers and builders. But how, exactly, are you supposed to create them? With Cedreo, it’s simple. Cedreo’s 3D commercial rendering software allows you to create interior, exterior and landscape renderings in a matter of minutes — not days. The software is easy to use with absolutely no CAD experience. And it’s comprehensive; there are no expensive plugins and add-ons to eat away at your bottom line.
Here’s how it works:
- Choose interior and exterior atmospheres: In your completed design, adjust everything that can contribute to the atmosphere of the project. That may include interior lighting, the time of day, the angle of the camera, interior decoration and furnishing styles and more.
- Furnish and decorate: Choose from a library of more than 7,000 3D objects, including individual pieces of furniture, collections of furnishings and decorations.
- Customize surfaces: The walls, floors, countertops, walkways and outdoor areas of your commercial building rendering are all surfaces you can customize in Cedreo. Choose from hundreds of surface materials to find the perfect ones to match your client’s style and preferences.
- Add exterior design elements: Plants, pools, patios, outdoor furniture, walkways and outdoor lights are all key parts of the exterior space in a commercial rendering, but you can also customize the surface materials on the exterior of the building to add a new level of detail to your rendering.
- Configure sun orientation and lighting: Cedreo allows you to adjust the sun orientation and outdoor lighting to give your renderings a real-world feel. Showcase the building at different times of the day, or adjust the sun orientation to match that of the actual building site.
- Save multiple camera viewpoints: One view of your building design is powerful, but why stop there? With Cedreo, you can save multiple camera viewpoints to make additional renderings that show all angles.
- Generate HD renderings with one click: When your project is complete, you only need to click once to start the rendering process. In a matter of minutes, you’ll have a stunning HD rendering in your possession.
- Share renderings with your team and clients: With the rendering complete, the only thing left to do is share it. You can download the rendering quickly in one of several file formats to share it with your colleagues and clients.
It’s really that simple. In just a few steps, you can have jaw-dropping commercial renderings that can help you close millions in sales. With that much at stake, there’s no reason to wait. Click here to learn more about 3D rendering with Cedreo.
