Exteriors you can sell,
before construction starts

3D exterior rendering services for architects, developers and housebuilders. Facades and buildings modelled from your drawings, dressed in your materials, and set in the real street.

Fixed price quote in 30 minutes, first preview in days
Clay view first, so camera and sun are agreed before any texturing starts
4K delivery standard, full usage rights included

Upload your drawings, get a quote Get the guide

We take a limited number of projects each month, so no scene is rushed.

1,247

Projects completed

Years in business

Countries delivered to

★★★★★ Rated 5.0 on Clutch · See our reviews

Architects, developers & interior designers

Working for 215 companies since 2013

125 of 220 clients came back

More than half of our clients have hired us again

What are 3D exterior rendering services?

Modelling a building from its drawings, applying the materials on the schedule, and lighting it so the image passes for a photograph taken once the scaffolding is down.

The model comes off your drawings. The cladding, glazing and roofing are the ones you specified. The street, the neighbours and the planting are modelled around it. Then it is lit to a real hour and rendered at photographic quality.

An exterior is the image a scheme is judged on. It goes in front of a planning committee, into an investor deck, onto a hoarding and onto a portal listing, and in each of those rooms it is doing the same job: making a building that does not exist yet feel inevitable.

Which is why the work that matters is rarely the building. It is the light, the materials and the context around it, and that is where a render either convinces or announces itself as CGI.

How it differs from a drawing or a photograph

An elevation asks a committee to imagine depth and light for themselves. A physical model shows massing but not materials. A photograph needs the building to exist. A render does not, but it is held to the drawings all the same: that cladding, that roofline, the shadow it throws on the neighbour at the hour a committee will ask about. Change the cladding in the model and nothing on site moves.

Stills, flythroughs and 360° panoramas

Most exterior briefs are still frames: the hero shot for a hoarding, the set for a brochure or a portal listing. When a scheme needs to be walked rather than glanced at, the same model produces a flythrough or a 360° panorama the viewer can look around inside.

Where it is used in a project

An exterior is paid for at two moments and reused at a third: the planning submission, where a committee decides whether the building happens at all; the launch, where a buyer commits to a flat that is still a hole in the ground; and later the practice's own portfolio, where it stands in for a photograph until there is one. One well-built scene usually serves all three.

Costing a scheme? The sector notes say what each building type needs, the cost drivers say what moves the price, and the buyer's guide says what to send.

One render, three different rooms

The planning committee

Committees do not read elevations the way architects do. A view from the pavement, at a real hour, with the neighbouring buildings shown honestly, answers the massing objection before it is made.

Overstate the context and you lose them permanently, so we do not.

The buyer, months early

Off-plan sales run on exteriors. The hero view is what a portal listing leads with and what a brochure opens on, and it is working for the whole period between launch and completion when there is nothing else to show.

Buyers do not read plans either. They read whether the balcony gets the evening sun, and the render answers that before the sales suite opens.

The design decision

Seeing a cladding at full size, in the right light, next to the material it butts against, ends arguments that drawings prolong. Changing it in the model costs an afternoon. Changing it on site costs considerably more.

A house and a distribution shed are not the same job

Different buyers, different objections, different image. What stays constant is that the context gets as much attention as the building.

3D exterior rendering of a white modern house cantilevered above a stone wall, Norway

Houses and villas

Single dwellings, where 3D house rendering is often the only thing a client sees before committing. Materials at full size, the garden as it will be planted, and the light of the hour the house is best in.

3D exterior rendering of a residential block among pines with a playground below, Estonia

Apartment and residential blocks

The marketing set that sells units off-plan: the hero approach, the courtyard, the balcony view, the entrance at dusk with the lobby lit. Consistent enough that a brochure reads as one building rather than six.

3D exterior rendering of a gold and glass commercial arcade entrance, Tallinn, Estonia

Commercial and mixed use

Offices, retail and mixed-use frontages. Commercial rendering is judged at the ground floor: signage zones, entrance thresholds and the street life a leasing agent needs the image to promise.

3D exterior rendering of a hotel with a faceted metal facade on a city street at dusk, Estonia

Hospitality

Hotels and resorts, usually at dusk, because that is when the building is warmest and the guest is deciding. Arrival sequence, forecourt and the terrace the brochure will lead on.

3D exterior rendering of a turf-roofed timber cabin with a glazed gable among pines, Norway

Cabins and rural builds

Timber, turf roofs and hard weather. These live or die on the landscape around them being as carefully built as the building, which is most of the work on a rural scheme.

3D exterior rendering of a low white office and warehouse building with flagpoles, Finland

Industrial and logistics

Sheds, yards and distribution buildings. Unglamorous briefs that still have to be sold to a tenant, an investor or a planning committee, and are usually judged on whether the yard and the access are shown as they will be.

A studio you can argue with, not a render queue

European hours, overnight for North America

An Estonian studio rendering exteriors since 2013 for practices and developers in the Nordics, Germany, the UK, North America and Australia. Your evening comments are a revised frame by your morning, and Helsinki, Oslo and Stockholm are within an hour of our clock.

Confidentiality and NDA as standard

An unconsented scheme, a competition entry or a site you have not exchanged on yet is commercially sensitive. NDA without being asked, no frame shown anywhere until the scheme is public, and nothing in our portfolio without your say-so.

Direct communication, no account-manager wall

The artist lighting your facade reads your comments, not an account manager paraphrasing them. Send the drawings, get a real number, brief that person directly, and there is nobody in between to lose the detail that mattered.

One consistent visual language

Phase two rendered three years after phase one should sit beside it without a seam. Same sun height, same lens, same brick, so a developer's second launch reuses the first campaign instead of restarting it.

What separates a facade that convinces from one that gives itself away

Low winter sun raking across the balconies of a timber apartment block, each floor throwing its own shadow, Norway

Light that reads as depth

Flat overhead light removes the shadows that describe depth, and a facade without them reads as a cardboard cutout. We light for an hour low enough to separate one plane from the next, the way the low sun here lifts every balcony off the wall behind it.

Brick mixed-use frontage where the brickwork varies course to course

Materials with real wear

Real brick varies course to course, real concrete stains under a sill, real glass takes the colour of whatever faces it. We build materials from the specification rather than a preset, because a preset announces itself instantly.

A town square rendering populated with people at cafe tables and on the pavement

Context that reads as real

A building with nobody near it has no scale, so we place people at the right size doing ordinary things. And we plant what will be there on handover, not the mature trees that flatter an image and give the trick away.

Delivery

~1 week single view · 2–3 weeks sets

Resolution

4K standard, larger crops for hoardings & print

Revisions

Two rounds, then refined until sign-off

Source files

CAD · PDF · SketchUp · Revit · ArchiCAD

From drawings to final frame

Fixed price first, then the clay view, then the finished frame, with nothing textured until the camera and the hour are signed off. About a week for a hero view, two to three for a set.

Brief

Brief and fixed quote

Send the DWG set, the PDF elevations or the SketchUp file, with the cladding schedule if there is one and a site photograph if there is not. From that alone we reply with a fixed price for the whole job and a delivery date.

Clay model of a market-hall interior, no materials and no light yet

Days 1-3

Camera, sun and neighbours on the clay

The building goes up as grey geometry with the real neighbours around it, and the camera is placed where a person would stand. Standing point, lens and the sun for the chosen hour are agreed on this view, where moving any of them costs minutes.

Week 1

Preview render

Cladding from the schedule, glazing that reflects the real sky, and the light we agreed: dusk with the apartments lit, or low morning sun across the brick. Deliberately early, while a material or the weather can still change without touching the camera.

Delivery

Final render

The remaining angles come off the scene already built. Delivered at 4K, with the hoarding crop, the portal thumbnail and the brochure spread cut from the same frames, and full usage rights.

2 revision rounds included, then refined until you sign off. Delivered on the date we agree.

Drag to see what the render adds

On the left is the clay view every exterior starts from: the walls, the deck and the neighbour in the right place, and nothing else yet. No material, no weather, no hour.

Everything to the right of the handle is the part a planning committee and a buyer respond to. Same model, same camera, same building.

The studio's own clay view and delivered frame of one terrace in Norway, from the same camera.

Clay model of the same terrace from the same camera

Clay modelFinal render

Facades that did not exist yet

Exterior work across the Nordics, the Baltics, Europe, the UK, the US and Australia. Filter by sector, by light, or by market.

See the full portfolio

AI gives you a mood. A studio gives you a frame a committee can check

AI image tools are useful for a fast, loose impression of a street. What they cannot do is answer to a drawing: the parapet height on the elevation, the brick on the schedule, the neighbour's roofline as it stands, the sun at the hour the officer's report will quote. They produce a building that looks plausible, not your building.

For a mood board that is fine. For the image a planning officer lays against the elevations or a buyer puts a deposit on, plausible is a liability: one wrong window count and every other image in the submission is in doubt. Holding a frame to the drawings is a different craft, and the one worth paying for.

AI-generated take on the same view: a cream block with a different storey count and window rhythm, moved balconies, roof lanterns gone from the terraces, trees at full maturity

AI draft

AI render

Plausible, fast, unaccountable

A draft in seconds at near-zero cost
Roughly the right massing, invented detail
Window rhythm, cladding and neighbours drift from the drawings
Cannot be measured against the elevations
Right for an early mood, wrong for a submission

Finished 3D exterior rendering of the same view, modelled to the drawings

Finished render

Studio 3D exterior rendering

To the drawing, in the real street

Modelled from the elevations and the survey
Cladding, glazing and roofing from the schedule
Neighbours, road and planting as they will stand at handover
Shadows cast at the hour named in the submission
Defensible when the building is built

What an exterior render costs

Priced per project rather than per image, because a single house and a forty-frame development set have almost nothing in common. Rather than a from number that is true of nothing, here is what moves an exterior quote.

Number of views
The first frame pays for the model, the site, the planting and the light. Every angle after it is markedly cheaper.
Building and facade complexity
A rendered box and a faceted metal facade with a modelled balcony to every apartment are hours apart before anything is lit.
How much context there is
A rural plot needs a landscape. A city infill needs the neighbours, the road, the street furniture and the pavement, all of which have to be right.
How ready your files are
Clean CAD with elevations and a material schedule renders faster than a PDF we have to interpret and a spec we have to chase.
Resolution and crops
4K as standard, larger for hoardings and print, plus how many aspect ratios you need cut from the same scene.
Hour and weather
A dusk frame with every interior lit, or snow on the ground, is more work than the same building at midday and is usually worth it.
Motion or 360 from the same scene
A flythrough or a panorama added afterwards reuses the scene instead of building it twice.

Free guide

The Exterior CGI Buyer's Guide

What sets the price of an exterior, and what to send so it comes back fast.

Why view two of the same building costs a fraction of view one
Which drawings, schedules and site photographs to send with the brief
How to pick the hour and the standing point before the clay view
No sales call, one fixed price back in 30 minutes

Get a fixed quote

Opens the upload form. Send what you have; no sales call.

Built for the people who have to get it approved

An exterior is almost never bought for its own sake. It is bought because somebody has to say yes to a building nobody can walk round yet.

Architecture studios

Competition boards and planning sets where every view has to agree: the same sun, the same materials, the same neighbours from every angle, because a committee will hold view 3 against view 1.

Property developers

The hero view for the portal listing, the street scene for the hoarding and the set the sales suite runs on until the show flat exists, which is usually the whole sales period.

Housebuilders and agents

House types rendered once and reused across every plot, plus the street scenes and plot-specific views a listing needs before there is anything on site to photograph.

Hospitality and commercial owners

Hotels, retail and mixed-use frontages that have to be leased, financed or booked ahead of opening. The operator wants the arrival sequence; the lender wants the neighbours left in, at their real height. One image usually has to do both.

Urban planners and masterplan teams

Consultation boards and committee packs, with the neighbours modelled from survey and the camera where the viewpoint schedule puts it, because an objector who catches one moved viewpoint stops trusting the pack.

Contractors and design-build firms

Tender boards, phasing views and the sales set, cut from the model your design team already built, so the client's board, the funder and the site team are arguing about the same picture.

How we plug into your workflow

You send whatever the project has produced so far, from a DWG set with a cladding schedule to a photograph of a sketch, and we build the brief from it.

What we accept

DrawingsElevations and a site plan as DWG or PDF at minimum; sections and a roof plan help

3D and BIMRevit, ArchiCAD, SketchUp or 3ds Max models used as they come, so nothing is re-drawn

The siteSite photographs, a survey, a street view link, or nothing at all if it is a greenfield plot

SpecificationCladding, glazing and roofing schedules, RAL or NCS references, supplier sheets, precedent images

No perfect briefElevations and one precedent image are enough to quote; the cladding schedule can follow once the clay is agreed

What you receive

Final frames4K as standard, up to 8K to 12K on request for hoardings and large-format print

Every cropHero, web, social and print ratios cut from one scene, with no re-ordering for formats

Preview and revisionsThe clay view first, then 2 revision rounds on the finished frame and refinement until sign-off

Optional extrasAn aerial, an animation or a panorama, quoted as additions to the same job

Full ownershipOf the delivered images, for marketing, planning, portals and your own portfolio

Need interiors for the same building, or the whole scheme from the air? See interior rendering and architectural visualization.

Case study · Mixed use

Mustamäe Keskus, Tallinn

A tower of flats over a shopping centre, at a road junction in a low-rise district of Tallinn. The upper floors are sold on what they look out at, so the frames were built from the balconies outward: the Old Town and the sea by day, the district lit at dusk, and an aerial to show the tower on its podium at the real junction.

Balcony views by day and at dusk, the Old Town spires and the sea in the right place
The podium, the crossings and the traffic at the junction as they are, not tidied away
The aerial is a still from the scheme's flythrough, the tower against the blocks around it

Balcony firstFramed from the flat, looking out

Day and duskThe same facade at two hours

Street and airJunction view and aerial of one scheme

Balcony of the Mustamäe Keskus tower by day, looking over the Old Town and the sea, Tallinn, Estonia

Exterior rendering FAQs

What architects and developers ask before a first exterior brief. If yours is not here, put it in the quote form and the answer comes back with the price.

Ask us directly

What is 3D exterior rendering?

A photoreal image of a building's outside, made from the architect's drawings before anything is built. Unlike a SketchUp screenshot or an AI mock-up, every element in it answers to a document: the cladding is the one on the schedule, the neighbours are the real neighbours, the shadows fall where they will on that site at that hour. It is used for planning submissions, investor decks, hoardings and off-plan sales.

How much does a 3D exterior rendering cost?

There is no list price, because the first view carries the whole scene build and every angle after it comes off a scene that already exists. In practice a single house view is the cheapest way to start, a launch set of six to twelve images is where most of the cost sits, and a dusk or snow setting adds work but usually earns it back. Our exterior 3D rendering services are quoted per project, fixed, within 30 minutes of receiving drawings; nothing is billed by the image.

How long does an exterior render take?

Roughly a week for one hero view from the day we have the drawings, two to three weeks for a full marketing set. The clay view lands in the first three days, and that is the cheap moment to move the camera or change the hour; once materials and light go on, a new angle is a new render.

What is the difference between exterior rendering and an aerial view?

Height and intent. An exterior render stands where a person would, so it sells the experience of arriving at the building. An aerial lifts the camera to show the scheme in its site: the neighbours, the boundary, the roofscape and the access. Most schemes want both, and because they come off the same model the second is much cheaper than the first.

Can you render a house from just a floor plan?

Yes, though the result is only as specific as what you give us. From a plan alone we have to make reasonable assumptions about heights, roof pitch and materials, and we will tell you which assumptions we made. Adding elevations or a photograph of the site removes most of that guesswork. If something essential is missing we say so when we quote, rather than halfway through.

Do you model the surroundings as well as the building?

Yes, and it is usually what separates a believable exterior from an obviously computer-generated one. Neighbouring buildings, the real road, planting at the size it will be on handover rather than in twenty years, and the parked cars and passers-by that give the frame its scale.

What time of day should the render be?

Whichever hour the building is best in, not whichever is easiest. A north-facing facade dies at midday and comes alive at dusk with the interiors lit. A rural house wants low sun and long shadows. We will recommend one and show you the clay view with the sun in that position before committing to it.

What files do you need to start?

Whatever you already have. A DWG set with elevations is ideal; a PDF, a SketchUp or Revit model, or a sketch photographed on your phone all work. You do not need a tidy file set to get a price, and you do not need to prepare anything first.

Do you do interior rendering too, or only exteriors?

Both. Alongside 3D exterior rendering we do interior rendering and aerial and whole-scheme views, usually on the same development and off the same model, so the exterior, the aerial and the rooms behind the facade agree with each other.

Can you work on a project in my country?

Yes. We are a 3D exterior rendering company based in Estonia, and the work has gone to 17 countries so far, from Finland and Norway next door to the UK, the US, Canada and Australia. An exterior needs nothing from us on site: your drawings and survey give us the building, a street view link gives us the road, and your site photographs do the rest.

Send the elevations, get a fixed quote in 30 minutes

A DWG set, a PDF or a SketchUp model is enough; the site photographs can follow. No budget dropdown, and nobody rings you before the number arrives.

Upload drawings, get a quote See the portfolio

We take a limited number of projects each month.