Before You Build It, See It

Test material, colour and design decisions before they become expensive

Ed Griffiths
July 17, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Most CGIs are commissioned after the important decisions have already been made.

The materials are chosen.
The façade treatment is agreed.
The colour palette is largely fixed.

The image is then produced to support planning, marketing, investment or sales.

All of that is valid. It is where visualisation is most commonly used, and for good reason. A good image can help a planning officer understand a proposal, help an occupier imagine a space, or help an investor see the direction of a scheme.

But there is another use for CGI that tends to get less attention.

Using it earlier.

Before material and colour decisions become expensive commitments.

A Different Use for Visualisation

A/B Design testing © Blink Image Limited

CGI is often treated as a way of communicating design decisions once they have been made.

But it can also help test those decisions while they are still open.

If I am honest, we have probably underplayed this ourselves. For nearly thirty years, most conversations have started with planning or marketing. That is where the immediate need usually sits.

But clients have been using CGIs to inform design decisions for years – testing materials, colours, façade treatments and lighting conditions before anything is ordered or installed.

We have been helping them do it without always framing it that way.

This is not a different kind of visualisation.

It is a different moment to use it.

The Problem With the Traditional Tools

A really useful diagram. But far from reality.

A manufacturer’s brochure is designed to sell a product.

The photography is carefully lit, the material is shown at its most flattering, and the scale is usually intimate.

A physical sample is useful, but it shows the material in isolation. It does not show what happens when that material covers several thousand square metres of façade, sits next to another finish, or faces a particular direction in a particular light.

A flat elevation in an architect’s design package is valuable too, but it is still a diagram. It can indicate colour, texture and setting out, but it is not trying to simulate reality.

None of these tools answer the question that often matters most at design stage:

What will this actually look like when it is built?

What Changes at Building Scale

Scale changes almost everything.

A RAL colour that looks clear and confident on a swatch can behave very differently across a large elevation.

A dark finish that feels rich and considered at sample size can feel heavy and imposing once applied to the whole building. It may absorb light rather than work with it.

Reflective and semi-reflective materials are even harder to judge in isolation.

Metal cladding can change dramatically between an overcast morning and a clear afternoon, between a north-facing elevation in winter and a south-facing elevation in summer.

What a manufacturer photographs under controlled conditions does not always tell you how the same panel will perform on a real scheme, in real context, under real light.

Adjacent materials complicate this further.

A brick that reads as warm next to timber can look entirely different next to white render, dark glazing or metal cladding.

The relationships between materials matter as much as the materials themselves.

And those relationships are difficult to judge properly until everything is seen together, at scale, in context.

What CGI Offers Instead

Snapshot of CGI showing fine detail of brick types and coursing © Blink Image Limited

CGI cannot promise absolute accuracy.

It is a simulation, and real-world conditions will always introduce variables: weather, workmanship, material batches, maintenance, ageing, reflections, and all the other things that make built reality slightly unpredictable.

But it can get considerably closer to reality than a brochure image, a sample board or a flat elevation can usually provide at design stage.

More importantly, it gives the design team something to test.

Different cladding colours on the same building.
The same brick under different lighting conditions.
Two façade treatments compared side by side.
A darker option against a lighter one.
A warmer material palette against a cooler one.
A scheme viewed in bright sun, soft overcast light, or at dusk.

These are decisions that often happen late in the process, sometimes under pressure, when procurement is approaching and the direction of travel already feels fixed.

Visualisation gives those conversations a better place to happen.

Earlier.

Before the cost of changing direction becomes much higher.

Changing a CGI Is Not Free

Testing different scenarios and fitouts © Blink Image Limited

It is worth being clear about this.

Changing materials, colours or façade treatments during image production still takes time.

Models may need to be updated.
Materials need to be rebuilt.
Lighting may need to be adjusted.
Images may need to be re-rendered and reviewed again.

So no, CGI does not make change free.

But it does move the decision to a point where change is usually far less expensive than it would be later.

Changing a cladding colour in a render has a cost.

Changing it after panels have been ordered, fabricated, delivered or installed is a very different conversation.

That is the value.

Not avoiding cost altogether, but reducing the risk of discovering a problem when the options have narrowed and the consequences are much larger.

Beyond the Static Image

The same thinking can extend beyond still imagery.

VR environments and interactive 3D models allow clients and design teams to experience a scheme before a single panel is ordered.

You can move around a building, understand how materials read from different angles, test the relationship between inside and outside, and see how decisions behave at the scale they will actually be encountered.

A static image can answer a lot.

An interactive model can answer different questions.

But the principle is the same:

See it before committing to it.

A Different Way of Thinking About the Brief

The conventional brief for a CGI often starts when design decisions have largely been made.

Materials are specified.
Facades are fixed.
The visualisation is there to communicate the outcome.
To a planning committee.
To the market.
To investors.
To occupiers.

But there is no reason the conversation has to start that late.

Bringing visualisation into the design process earlier can turn it from a communication tool into something more useful: a way of making better decisions with greater confidence before the real world makes those decisions final.

That does not mean every project needs endless options, or that every design decision should be tested visually.

It does mean that when a material, colour or façade treatment matters, CGI can give the team a clearer basis for discussion than samples, brochures and drawings alone.

The best time to discover that something does not quite work is not after procurement.

And definitely not after installation.

It is while changing direction is still relatively painless.

CGI is not just for showing a finished decision.

Used at the right moment, it can help make the decision in the first place.

If you are approaching material choices, colour decisions or façade options on a scheme – and want to understand how they might read before anything is specified or ordered – it is worth a conversation.

Until next week…
Rich

richard.birket@blinkimage.com