Verified against Midjourney · 2026-07-23
Get literal, unembellished architecture and interior renders with --style raw
A --style raw brief for architectural and interior visualization where Midjourney's default painterly beautification actively works against the brief — real estate, portfolio, and pitch renders that need to look like the actual space, not an idealized painting of it.
The prompt
Ready to copy — highlighted parts are example details you can swap.
SPACE AND LAYOUT a narrow galley kitchen, roughly 3 by 4 meters, with a window at one end MATERIALS honed grey quartz countertops, matte navy shaker cabinets, wide-plank white oak flooring — name the actual materials, not just a style category; Midjourney's default rendering tends to generalize "modern kitchen" into its own idea of what that means, while naming the specific countertop stone, cabinet finish, and flooring material forces it to render those materials specifically rather than a generic stand-in for the category. LIGHT SOURCE daylight through a single window at the far end, plus a warm-white under-cabinet LED strip — state whether this is daylight through a specific window arrangement, or a specific artificial fixture layout, since an unstated light source defaults to a flattering, idealized studio-style wash that real spaces rarely actually have. CAMERA POSITION standing at the kitchen entrance looking straight down the galley toward the window — a real estate or portfolio render is judged by whether the spatial layout is legible and believable from this angle, not by how flattering the angle is; state the actual vantage point a person would stand at, not an impossible floating camera position. RAW MODE --style raw — this suppresses Midjourney's default aesthetic embellishment layer, which otherwise adds dramatic lighting, exaggerated depth, and a more "painted" quality that looks appealing as a standalone image but actively misrepresents a real or planned space by making it look more dramatic or spacious than it actually is or will be. WHAT TO AVOID --no text, watermark, people, staged props, exaggerated lens flare STYLIZE VALUE --stylize 50 — keep this low even with --style raw active, since the two settings work together: raw mode removes the default embellishment layer, and a low stylize value on top of that keeps the model from reintroducing dramatic flourishes through a different mechanism. PARAMETERS --style raw --stylize 50 --ar 16:9 --v 7 OUTPUT a narrow galley kitchen, roughly 3 by 4 meters, with a window at one end, honed grey quartz countertops, matte navy shaker cabinets, wide-plank white oak flooring, daylight through a single window at the far end, plus a warm-white under-cabinet LED strip, standing at the kitchen entrance looking straight down the galley toward the window --no text, watermark, people, staged props, exaggerated lens flare --style raw --stylize 50 --ar 16:9 --v 7 CHECKING THE RESULT FOR HONESTY Compare the generated render's apparent room proportions and ceiling height against the actual space this is meant to represent, if it exists yet — even with raw mode active, Midjourney can still subtly exaggerate room scale and light quality relative to a genuinely average real space, since "average and slightly ordinary" is still underrepresented in what the model considers a good architectural image to produce. If the render reads noticeably more dramatic or spacious than the real brief, that is a sign to describe the space's actual limitations explicitly rather than trust raw mode alone to correct for it.
Customize
Optional — swap in your own details for the highlighted parts above.
Why this works
--style raw suppresses a specific, well-documented default: Midjourney's baseline aesthetic layer, trained to make images look appealing as standalone art, adds dramatic contrast, exaggerated depth, and a more painted quality that is exactly wrong for an architectural or interior render whose entire job is to represent a real or planned space honestly. Without raw mode, a real estate render of an ordinary galley kitchen risks coming back looking like a dramatically lit, aspirational magazine spread — beautiful as an image, but misleading about what the actual space looks or will look like, which defeats the render's actual purpose.
Naming specific materials rather than a style category addresses how Midjourney actually handles underspecified prompts: "modern kitchen" is resolved by falling back on the model's own generalized, statistically average idea of what a modern kitchen contains, which may include cabinet colors, countertop materials, or a layout that has nothing to do with the actual space being represented. Naming the exact quartz, cabinet color, and flooring forces the model to render those specific materials rather than substitute its own genre-typical stand-in, which matters enormously for a client-facing render meant to represent a real, specific design decision.
Pairing raw mode with a low --stylize value rather than raw mode alone closes a real gap between the two settings: raw mode removes one specific layer of embellishment, but stylize is a separate dial that can still push the rendering toward more dramatic contrast and depth through its own independent mechanism even with raw mode active. Treating raw mode as sufficient on its own and leaving stylize at a moderate or high default value is a common mistake that quietly reintroduces some of the exact drama raw mode was meant to suppress.
The honesty-check instruction at the end matters because raw mode changes how the model renders a described space — it does not change the training data's underlying skew toward spacious, well-lit, generously-proportioned rooms being more common and more rewarded during training than genuinely average or slightly cramped ones. A galley kitchen described accurately can still come back looking subtly roomier or better-lit than it actually is, simply because "cramped and slightly awkward" is a rarer target in the model's learned sense of what a good architectural image looks like — checking the output against the real space's actual limitations, and describing those limitations explicitly if they're missing, is the only reliable correction available.
What you get back
A flatly and evenly lit galley-kitchen render that reads as a plausible, slightly ordinary real space rather than a dramatic magazine spread — proportions, cabinet color, and countertop material matching the stated brief closely enough to use in a client presentation without over-promising the space.
Verified against
Midjourney v7 · 2026-07-23
Changelog
- 2026-07-23 — Initial publish, verified against Midjourney v7 --style raw for honest architectural and interior rendering.
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