Polygon count for furniture: how much geometry is enough?

Polygon count is a budget. You get a certain number of triangles before performance degrades, and the budget is different for every use case. A catalog render has no budget limit. A phone AR session has a hard cap of around 100K triangles before Quick Look starts refusing to load.

Why polygon count matters

Every polygon in a 3D model requires the GPU to process it. In a web browser running WebGL, at 60 frames per second, that processing happens 60 times per second for every polygon in the scene. Past a threshold, the frame rate drops below 60 — the viewer stutters, the buyer leaves.

For AR on a phone, the GPU is also running the camera feed, AR tracking, and real-time lighting estimation simultaneously. The polygon budget for AR is roughly half that of a desktop web viewer.

Target counts by use case

Where to spend your polygon budget

Not all surfaces contribute equally to perceived quality. Spend polygons where the eye goes; save them where the eye doesn't.

• Curved edges and joints. A sofa arm that transitions from wood to fabric needs enough polygons to look smooth at close range. Faceted curves read as cheap immediately.
• Cushion seams and tufting. Stitched or tufted upholstery is the signature detail buyers inspect in photos. It needs geometry, not just normal map tricks.
• Hardware. Drawer pulls, hinges, and feet at close distances are visible. Keep them clean.
• Character details. If the design has an unusual joint, a distinctive silhouette, or a signature element — this is where buyers look. Spend here.

Where to save

• Interior geometry. The inside of a cabinet that's never shown in the viewer doesn't need to exist. Remove it.
• Flat surfaces. A tabletop is four vertices and two triangles. Don't subdivide it.
• Unseen backs and bottoms. The underside of a table, the back panel of a sideboard — if it's never in camera, delete it. This alone often cuts file size by 20%.
• Distant hardware. Small bolts and screws visible from 3 metres don't need 1,000 triangles each. 8-sided cylinders are sufficient.

LOD: do you actually need it?

LOD (Level of Detail) means maintaining multiple versions of the same model at different polygon counts, and switching between them based on camera distance. It's standard in game engines and useful for scenes with many objects.

For most furniture brand use cases, LOD is overkill:

If you're showing one sofa at a time on a product page, optimize the model once to the AR target (100K triangles) and use that for web too. One file, one pipeline, no LOD management.