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Livingetc’s “The Meaning of Home” series examines how social media has given homes a public life, shaping how people present and judge domestic spaces. Designers and creators describe a tension between online visibility and everyday use, but the report does not claim that all homes or residents have become performances.
Livingetc has launched “The Meaning of Home,” a series examining how culture and design shape domestic life, with its opening report focused on social media’s influence on interiors. The feature describes homes as both places to live and images for public audiences, while noting that creators may not experience their own homes as sets.
The report argues that domestic spaces have long communicated identity, status and aspiration, but social platforms have expanded the potential audience for those signals. Instagram, TikTok, Twitch and Pinterest circulate interior images and can influence the standards people use to assess their own homes, according to architect and academic Javier Fernández Contreras.
Fernández Contreras, author of The Interiors of Social Media: Architecture, Space, and Technology in the 21st Century, says platforms can produce what he calls “aspirational futures” and make the home a “container for visual representation.” The report presents these as his interpretation of social media’s influence, not as evidence that every user changes their home to meet online expectations.
The feature also describes the pandemic as an accelerant: people increasingly worked, appeared on camera and shared daily life from home. For content creators, a room can serve as residence, workspace and backdrop, while renovation projects can be shared in stages. But the report says online exposure does not necessarily mean residents experience their homes as performance spaces in everyday life.
When Home Becomes Public
The report matters because the images people encounter online may affect not only decorating choices but also what feels like a normal or desirable home. If interiors are repeatedly presented as carefully composed images, viewers may compare their own lived-in spaces with homes designed or selected for the camera. Fernández Contreras warns that social media can promote normative models of domesticity, drawing a parallel with ideals of appearance.
That influence is not necessarily one-way or wholly negative. The feature notes that the overlap among art, craft and furniture can support creative interiors, and that people can use platforms for inspiration without treating their homes as sets. The tension is between a space’s visual legibility to an audience and its practical, personal use by the people who live there.
For readers, the question is less whether an Instagram-ready home is inherently good or bad than who the home is being arranged for. A room may be both expressive and comfortable, but the report leaves open how often online expectations displace residents’ own needs.
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Livingetc introduces the feature as part of “The Meaning of Home,” a series that plans to examine domestic life through essays, interviews and personal stories grounded in design. The opening report situates social media within a longer history: people have used objects and rooms to express identity well before digital platforms existed.
What has changed, the report argues, is the home’s potential permanent public audience. During the pandemic, homes became more visible as people worked and appeared on video from domestic settings. Bookshelves, kitchen islands and walls behind desks could become part of a public-facing image, even when the room’s primary purpose remained everyday use.
The feature also cites Dima and Guy of The Berlin Chapters, a creative duo whose interior-focused Instagram content has attracted nearly 82,000 followers, according to the source. Their account began sharing snapshots of their life and design style the previous year. They say their home remains a home first, and that content production is affected more by practical factors such as light and weather than by furniture choices.
““Aspirational futures””
— Javier Fernández Contreras, architect and academic
How Far Does the Gaze Reach?
The feature does not quantify how many people change their interiors because of social media, or how much time or money they spend pursuing online aesthetics. It also does not establish that exposure to interior content causes dissatisfaction with one’s own home. The effects may vary between viewers, creators and people who use platforms mainly for inspiration.
The report’s claims about changing domestic expectations are presented through interpretation and personal accounts, rather than a population-wide study. The scale of the effect remains unclear, as does how often visual presentation conflicts with comfort, affordability or other practical needs.
More Questions About Home
Livingetc says “The Meaning of Home” will continue through essays, interviews and personal stories examining the forces that shape domestic life. The source does not provide a schedule for future installments or name their subjects.
Further reporting may show how other residents and designers negotiate the divide between a home’s public image and its private function. For now, the opening feature frames the issue as an open question: how much should a home answer to an online audience, and how much should it be shaped by the people who live there?
Key Questions
What is the “performed home” idea?
It describes the possibility that a home is arranged or understood partly as an image for an audience, as well as a place for everyday life. Livingetc’s report presents this as a tension, not a claim that all homes are performances.
He argues that platforms can create “aspirational futures” and promote normative ideas about domesticity, influencing how people evaluate their own spaces.
Do the creators in the report feel they live on a set?
No. Dima and Guy of The Berlin Chapters say that when they are not making content, they do not feel as though they are walking around a set; they describe the space as their home first.
No. The feature offers analysis and personal accounts but does not quantify the effect or establish that social media causes dissatisfaction.
Source: livingetc.com
