Commercial 3D Rendering for Offices, Retail and Hospitality

Pre-letting imagery for offices and commercial space

Commercial space is often let before practical completion, and an agent walking a prospective tenant round a concrete shell needs more than a floor plan. Pre-letting CGIs show the finished reception, a typical floor with daylight running across it, the roof terrace and the arrival from the street, so occupiers can picture their own business in the building. We compose each view to answer a question a tenant will ask: how far the light reaches into the floor plate, what the entrance feels like, where the cycle store and showers are.

The same set then works across the agent's particulars, the marketing website, the letting brochure and the screens in a marketing suite. Crops for each are planned at the outset, so a landscape hero for the website also yields a portrait brochure cover without a re-render. For multi-let buildings, one well-modelled typical floor can be rendered in more than one fit-out style, letting agents show a corporate occupier and a creative one how the same space might work for each of them.

CAT A and CAT B fit-out visuals

Office fit-out is described in categories, and the images should match the category being sold. A CAT A render shows the space as the landlord hands it over: raised floors, suspended or exposed ceilings, lighting, air conditioning, finished cores and washrooms, but no partitions or furniture. It is honest about what the tenant is getting, and it is the version agents use when the occupier will design its own layout.

A CAT B render shows the space as an occupier will use it, with meeting rooms, tea points, reception desks, workstations and brand colours. Landlords offering a fitted, ready-to-occupy floor commission CAT B images of the show floor to demonstrate it. Rendering both versions from the same camera position is one of the clearest ways to explain the difference to a prospective tenant. For refurbished buildings, CAT A images also show what the upgrade has delivered, which matters when the building is competing with new stock nearby.

• CAT A: the landlord's specification, empty and accurate.
• CAT A+: a fitted show floor marketed as ready to move into.
• CAT B: the occupier's own design, used for approvals, tenders and staff briefings.

Fit-out tenders and landlord approval

For fit-out contractors and interior designers, a render is often part of the tender itself. A client choosing between three bids responds more readily to an image of the reception they will walk through every morning than to a finishes schedule. Our portfolio includes an office fit-out tender for an interior designer: reception, two breakout areas and the main office, with green, blue and black feature walls, mustard-yellow upholstery and the same LED panel lighting held identical in every view. Two views were delivered the day before the tender deadline, and two more followed when the deadline was extended.

Once a tenant has a design, many commercial leases require the landlord's consent before work starts, usually through a licence for alterations. Renders help at that stage too. A landlord or building manager reviewing the proposal can see exactly how a new partition meets the glazing, what a branded reception does to the common parts and how the shopfront or entrance treatment will sit against the existing building, which tends to shorten the back-and-forth over drawings.

Retail, hospitality and leisure

Retail and hospitality images have to carry atmosphere as well as layout. For shops and shopping centres we render shopfronts in their street, mall units with tenant zones left neutral, and store interiors that show the circulation and display strategy a retailer is being asked to sign up to. For hotels the brief usually follows the guest: arrival, lobby and bar, a typical bedroom, the bathroom and any restaurant or spa, often in two or three design options for the operator to choose between. Serviced office and co-working operators sit somewhere between hospitality and workplace, and their images lean on lounge-style breakout space and the membership offer.

Leisure schemes, from gyms and climbing centres to cinemas and food halls, depend on showing people using the space. We populate those views with figures in proportion to the expected footfall rather than a crowd the building could never hold. Dusk and night views matter more here than in office work, because restaurants, bars and leisure venues trade after dark and the lighting design is part of what is being sold. A short architectural animation through the lobby or along a high street frontage is worth considering for launch campaigns.

Student accommodation, healthcare and education

Purpose-built student accommodation is marketed to two very different groups: students and parents choosing a room for the year, and the investors and universities behind the scheme. We render studios and cluster flats with realistic furniture and storage, plus the shared spaces that so often decide a booking, such as study rooms, gyms, cinema rooms and roof terraces.

Healthcare and education projects are usually commissioned by architects and public-sector clients rather than marketers, and the images support consultation and funding decisions. Typical briefs include the entrance to a GP surgery or community health centre, a clinic waiting area, a new classroom block or a refurbished library. In our archive, an architecture practice commissioned eye-level views of nursery rooms and outdoor play space inside two existing schools, built from its Revit models, with revisions covering ceiling grids, window frames, whiteboards and railings so the visuals matched the specification. In this kind of work accuracy matters more than mood, because the people reviewing it will hold the finished building to what the image showed.

Industrial and logistics schemes

Logistics and industrial buildings are let and sold on specification: eaves height, yard depth, the number of dock levellers and level-access doors, office content and power supply. The CGIs need to make those facts visible. We render warehouse and light-industrial units from a high three-quarter view that shows the yard and loading docks, alongside an aerial of the whole site with access roads, HGV and car parking and landscaping, so an occupier can read the operational layout at a glance.

These images go into letting and investment particulars, onto agents' websites and into presentations for occupiers comparing several sites. For speculative schemes the units can be shown with neutral cladding and no tenant branding, so the same images keep working whoever signs. Multi-unit industrial parks are best modelled once as a whole site, with each unit then rendered from its own camera, which keeps the materials and context consistent across the set and makes adding a phase later a modest job. Night views with yard lighting on and the office pods lit from inside are useful for schemes marketed to operators who run around the clock.

Hoardings, investment decks and planning

Construction hoardings are usually the first public view of a commercial scheme, seen at full size by everyone who passes. We render hoarding imagery at the resolution a large-format printer needs and compose it for the long, narrow proportions of a site hoarding, rather than stretching a standard view and hoping it holds. The hoarding can carry the same hero view as the brochure, so the scheme looks identical wherever somebody first meets it. Investment and funding decks need a different set again: an aerial in context, a hero exterior and one or two interiors that make the case for rent and value.

Planning work is separate. Where a local planning authority needs images it can rely on for scale and position, such as views from protected viewpoints or within a conservation area, the right product is verified views prepared with a documented method rather than marketing CGIs. Developers marketing homes alongside commercial space can see our property CGIs for the residential side. Looking for prices? Our guide to 3D rendering cost in the UK sets out how commercial sets are put together.

What to send for a commercial brief

Commercial projects usually arrive with more information than residential ones, and the more of it you share, the fewer revision rounds you need. The core is plans, elevations and sections, ideally with a Revit, ArchiCAD or SketchUp model if one exists. For interior views, add the finishes schedule, furniture specification and lighting layout; for exterior views, the materials palette and a site plan or survey showing the neighbouring buildings.

• Architectural drawings or a BIM model (Revit, ArchiCAD, SketchUp or IFC).
• Finishes, furniture and lighting schedules for interior views.
• Site photographs and a location plan for exterior and aerial views.
• Brand guidelines wherever a tenant's identity appears in the image.
• The intended use of each image, so crops and resolutions are right first time.