All articles · 6 min read

Can I walk through my home on my phone before I move in?

Yes — if the home has been scanned with LiDAR, several apps can drop you into the rooms in first person and let you walk around yourself, instead of just rotating a 3D model from outside. That is a different thing from looking at a floor plan, and it answers questions numbers can't.

Why it's different from a 3D model you rotate from outside

Most 3D models show the house like a dollhouse: you see it from outside or above, rotate it with your finger, and can zoom in. That's good for understanding how the rooms connect in the plan — but it isn't the same as standing in the room yourself. Eye height changes what you experience: a ceiling that looks low on a drawing can feel quite different when you "stand" beneath it, and a hallway that looks narrow on paper can turn out to be perfectly fine to walk through, because you're seeing it from the angle you'll actually use it from.

A first-person walkthrough simulates exactly that experience: the phone sets you down in the room at a realistic eye height and lets you move around as though you were physically there.

What does it take to make this possible?

The feature is built on a LiDAR scan of the home — the same technology behind the measured floor plan. Without a scan, there is no geometry to walk through. That also means the walkthrough only covers the rooms that have actually been scanned: if only the living room and kitchen have been scanned, you can only walk through those two rooms, not the rest of the house. For the whole home to be experienced that way, the whole home has to be scanned first.

Is the hallway wide enough?

That's exactly what a walkthrough at eye level is good at revealing. A width on paper — "the hallway is 92 cm wide" — is a number most people don't have an immediate feel for. Walking through the same hallway in a simulation, with collision against the walls, gives a completely different experience: you notice whether you need to turn your shoulder to get past a corner, or whether two people can pass each other there without squeezing by.

It isn't a replacement for measuring — but it's a good supplement, because it translates a number into a feeling. Collision is typically calculated against the wall lines themselves, and doorways and openings are gaps you can walk through, while windows are solid, just as they are in reality.

How do you get a feel for a room's size before you move in?

That's the whole point of the feature, and it solves a problem many people know: a house seen in photos or a floor plan can feel either bigger or smaller than it actually feels to stand in. Some rooms "eat" space visually — a high ceiling can make a small room feel spacious, while a low ceiling can make a large room feel cramped. That kind of impression is hard to read from a square-metre figure alone.

A walkthrough at eye level lets you stand where the bed would go and see how much room there really is for a wardrobe next to it. It lets you stand in the kitchen and see whether there's room to open the oven door and a cupboard door at the same time. Those are questions a floor plan can answer with numbers — but a walkthrough answers them with an experience most people find easier to trust.

What a walkthrough in the app does NOT replace

• A physical visit. Light, sound, smell and the overall feel of a home are things no simulation can give you. A walkthrough on the phone is a good preparation tool — not a substitute for seeing the home yourself.
• The actual size of furniture, unless you've added it yourself with real measurements. If furniture hasn't been added, or has been added with rough measurements, the walkthrough only shows the empty room.
• Surfaces and details that weren't scanned. The walkthrough shows the shape of the building — walls, doors, windows, ceiling — not the wallpaper, the condition of the floor, or small details that only a photo or a visit will catch.

When is a walkthrough most useful?

1. Before a renovation. Walk through a new room layout before anything is built, and see whether it works the way you imagined.
2. When sharing with a partner or family who haven't seen the home themselves. A walkthrough gives a shared impression that's easier to discuss than a flat drawing.
3. To compare two homes, if both have been scanned — walk through them the same day, and compare the feel while it's fresh.
4. To plan furniture placement before moving in, if the furniture has been added with real measurements.

What affects how realistic the walkthrough feels?

Three things determine how much you can actually trust the impression. The quality of the scan comes first: if a room was scanned imprecisely, the walkthrough inherits the same inaccuracy, and a hallway that's really 90 cm wide can show up as 85 or 95 in the model. The furniture measurements come next — if the sofa has been added with its real width and depth, it gives a usable sense of how much space is left; if it hasn't been added at all, the room looks emptier than it will be in reality. Eye height is the last factor: a fixed, realistic eye height gives an honest impression, while a camera set too low or too high distorts how spacious a room feels.

What HouseSense does

In HouseSense the feature is called "Walk inside": a first-person view at roughly 170 cm eye height, steered with two joysticks — left to move, right to look. Collision is calculated against the wall lines, while doors and openings are gaps you can walk through, and windows are solid. The feature requires at least one scanned room — just like the 3D house — and only covers the rooms that have actually been scanned. The sun in the walkthrough is calculated from the home's real location and orientation, if set, so the light falls correctly no matter what time of day you "walk" around.

The honest caveat

A walkthrough on the phone is a model of the rooms, not the rooms themselves. It can give you a good sense of proportions and distances, but it can never fully replace standing in the home on your own two feet. Use it to prepare and to ask the right questions at a physical visit — not to skip the visit.