Interior Design as a Game – €4M Says That's Not a Metaphor

01 /The Concept

The Scandinavian startup's website currently offers nothing beyond a statement of intent. But those intentions are interesting enough, and the startup just closed a €4M seed round – despite promising to ship its product only next year.

Worth writing about now, if only to spark ideas in adjacent directions.

On LinkedIn, Studio555 has categorized itself under mobile gaming.

Yet its website says the startup plans to deliver "the world's best interior design experience – with an unprecedented interface and visual quality."

So is this a game or an interior design tool? That's exactly the interesting part.

02 /Why It Matters

The founders say they're building a new app category – one where interior design intersects with gaming and social media.

The goal is a fundamentally different level of engagement: taking what is, frankly, a fairly dry design process and layering on game mechanics, interactivity, and radical ease of use.

Through "smart use of automation, innovation, and collaboration features," the studio wants to build something bigger than a design tool. The founders want to give people a way to express themselves through design.

One investor described the future product as "Pinterest becoming three-dimensional and meeting TikTok – but exclusively in the world of interior design."

A tech publication called it a "gamified interior design app."

These vague but evocative descriptions suggest two obvious analogies.

The first is Minecraft – one of whose core mechanics is letting users build structures and whole cities that they and other players can then explore. The second is Roblox, which offers a similar mechanic: build anything, play it yourself, let others play it too.

So Studio555 might end up as a kind of Minecraft or Roblox – but for interior design.

The Pinterest and TikTok references hint at something more accessible – perhaps an infinite scroll of user-created room designs that you can quickly skim until one pulls you in to explore and interact with.

This kind of model has already appeared in the world of physical product design.

The startup Off/Script ([covered here](/review/dazhe-chast-ot-2-trillionov-jeto-ogromnye-dengi)) built a platform where anyone – regardless of design background – can create their own product designs using built-in AI tools.

All designs flow into a community feed where users vote by placing pre-orders. Designs that hit a threshold go into production through contract manufacturers and become purchasable in the app's store.

This turns any user into a potential product designer. Self-expression through making things is one of the central themes Studio555 is also going after – which suggests its app will likely need an AI design assistant that lets anyone create their dream interior without professional training.

The same conceptual thread runs through Arcade ([covered here](/review/hochesh-kupit-veshh-mechty)), which raised $25M in new funding earlier this year. Users design physical objects they'd like to own using AI, then find craftspeople on a built-in marketplace who can make them. Designers can also license their work so craftspeople can sell to other users, earning royalties on each sale. Currently focused on jewelry and rugs.

Arcade feels more like a traditional marketplace than a TikTok or Pinterest equivalent, which in the current environment looks like a missed opportunity.

One thing worth asking: will Studio555 connect to the real world? The first level is obvious – I can use the app to design my own space or borrow ideas from other users. But it would be genuinely exciting if the same app let you hire a renovation team to bring that digital design into your actual apartment.

03 /Opportunities

A small detour that's actually relevant. Creating a web service or app used to require programming skills. Non-programmers could only use what programmers chose to build – with all the limitations that implies.

AI that can program has changed this. Anyone can now, in principle, build a custom web service or app tailored to their own needs – some people are already doing this, and the trend is accelerating. These tools can be practical and professional, or they can be playful.

For instance, Roam ([covered here](/review/a-teper-mozhno-vzjat-i-sozhrat-video)) raised $5M in initial funding for what it calls "TikTok for games" – a platform where users create their own games and play games others have made, surfaced through a personalized algorithmic feed.

The pattern is clear: platforms like these let anyone fulfill themselves as a creator of serious or playful applications, and offer far more variety than before, when you were essentially dependent on what programmers decided to build.

And this same tendency is pushing into the physical world. Off/Script proves anyone can be a clothing designer. Arcade shows anyone can be a jewelry designer. Studio555, by all appearances, is building proof that anyone can be an interior designer.

The general direction: platforms and apps that enable personal creative expression – letting people become makers in any field they choose, earning followers and buyers in the process.

Expanding the creator audience, though, requires a transition from niche-professional to mass-accessible. That means making these platforms simple and fun. Otherwise they never go mainstream.

More precisely: the ones that do go mainstream will be the ones that figured out how to be simple and fun – for instance, at the intersection of Pinterest, TikTok, and gaming. Which is exactly what Studio555 is building.

If this is the direction you want to dig into, that's the detail to keep front of mind.