December 10, 2015

Houzz Inc. has launched Sketch within its app for iPhone and iPad devices. The feature is optimized for iPad Pro with Apple Pencil™ support. With Sketch, users can select any of the more than eight million retina-quality photos on the Houzz® platform, or take one of their own, to add products from the Houzz Marketplace, and annotate photos with a number of tools, including stickers, for easy communication. Sketch also allows for real-time collaboration, where multiple people can simultaneously annotate the same photo.  

“People use the Houzz app at all stages of a home project, whether they’re looking for design inspiration, hiring a home professional, shopping, or collaborating with others through ideabooks,” said Alon Cohen, president and cofounder of Houzz. “We’re always looking for ways to make the home renovation and design process even more fun and productive.Sketch is a powerful new function in the Houzz app that enables people to add products from Houzz to any photo, and to communicate and collaborate more effectively through photos with their home professional or others involved in the project.”

Users flip through more than one billion photos on Houzz apps every month, and spend over an hour a month on average on the Houzz app for iPhone and iPad. Sketch makes design planning with photos easy and fun, by enabling users to:

    •    Add Products to Any Photo — Users can select  any of the products and materials in the Houzz Marketplace and place them directly into any photo, allowing them to experiment with home decor options. The size and position of the items can be adjusted as desired. When ready, users can tap a product in their Sketch and buy it on Houzz.
    •    Make Notes Directly on Photos Users can write, type or sketch on any image, whether to circle a design feature that inspires them, note the dimensions of a room, or sketch where they envision adding a new picture window.
    •    Get expressive with Stickers — Users can select from over 150 stickers to make quick and simple notes of things they like and areas they would like to change, as well as to insert placeholders for products, materials and features they would like to add to the space.
    •    Work with Mood Boards and Floor Plans — Homeowners and professionals can take charge of their design vision by selecting any of the two dozen available Sketch Canvases to create mood boards and floor plans in an easy and lightweight way.
    •    Collaborate with Multiple People on a Single Image Users can save their updated Sketches to their Houzz ideabooks to easily share input and ideas with family, friends and professionals on a single image, at the same time. With push notifications, everyone stays up to speed whenever a Sketch is updated and multiple users can even make edits to a Sketch simultaneously.

To start Sketch’ing, users simply tap the Sketch button on any photo on Houzz or upload a photo to an ideabook. From now until December 25, Houzz users are automatically entered to win the products they add to their Sketch, up to $1,000 in value.