mydeco

mydeco makes home design easy, the site where you can choose furniture from a huge list of retailers, recreate room settings using 3D technology and finally buy items online.

COMPARE & SHOP

This new company, with Lastminute.com's co-founder Brent Hoberman behind it, aims to change the way we shop for our homes, giving visitors the chance to visualize new furniture in their homes and the opportunity to compare and shop for products online. Combine that with plenty of editorial, a soon to be buzzing online community, the site makes home design easy, quick and entertaining. This site is good, full of gizmos where you can have some fun whilst at the same time bringing together retailers (500 so far) and one million pieces of furniture, all under one very natty roof. Visitors can compare ideas, find inspiration, join the mydeco community and blog for England on a number of subjects.

3D TECHNOLOGY

The real gem at mydeco is the 3D technology that allows you to build your own rooms and furnish them with products on the site. A camera allows you to see the room from all angles making it even more fun. Once you're happy with the look, save it and take a snapshot. This technology even allows users to upload pictures of their own home and paste in furniture they find online. It's all fairly foolproof, even for the pre Nintendo generation. To see how your efforts compare to other users, make sure you look at the week's best designs, where visitors can leave their own comments. With practice, you will become perfect.

BUZZING ONLINE COMMUNITY

As the site grows, the community will become a similarly valuable tool where you can check customer reviews of the products listed before buying. As on amazon, product reviews can save on dud buys and when you're looking at high expense items, this is definitely worth it. Bloggers can find like-minded souls in a number of forums. It's early days here but within time, this will be a useful resource to exchange ideas.

INSPIRING

For those looking for inspiration, there are a number of avenues to follow. Head for The Magazine with articles on style, a planning and buyer's guide, notes on colour and living green. Buy the Look lets you sift through some ready-made style menus so if it's classic, country or minimalism that gets you going, just click the boxes and mydeco will do the searching.

Quickshop is a one stop shop to help you find what you want in a few clicks. Expect to see names such as Heals, John Lewis, Oka Direct, Lombok, Multiyork and Argos and it's building. mydeco is worth a visit and in time will become one of those essential sites.