TL;DR
Get home appliances delivered free with Prime
- Fast, free delivery on millions of items
- Prime Video, Amazon Music and more included
- Member-only deals all year
A Livingetc feature explores how social media has made the home both a lived-in space and a potential public image, shaping expectations of interior design. Architect and academic Javier Fernández Contreras warns that online platforms can promote narrow domestic ideals, while creators Dima and Guy of The Berlin Chapters say their home remains a home first. The report does not establish how widespread these effects are or measure their impact.
Livingetc has published a feature on how social media is changing the way homes are presented and judged, arguing that domestic spaces now serve both their residents and an online audience. The report brings together the analysis of architect and academic Javier Fernández Contreras and the experience of content creators Dima and Guy of The Berlin Chapters, but does not claim that every person who shares a home online experiences it as a set.
The article describes a shift from treating the home as a private setting to seeing it as a space with a public life through images and video. Platforms including Instagram, TikTok, Twitch and Pinterest circulate interiors and design ideas, while giving residents new ways to present identity, taste and aspiration. The report’s central question is not only whether social media changes how homes look, but whether it changes what people expect their homes to do.
Fernández Contreras, author of The Interiors of Social Media: Architecture, Space, and Technology in the 21st Century, argues that online platforms can create what he calls “aspirational futures” and turn the home into a “container for visual representation.” His comments are an interpretation of how platforms influence domestic expectations, rather than a quantified finding about users as a whole.
The feature also cites Dima and Guy, whose interior-focused posts have attracted an online audience. They say they do not consciously design or inhabit their home for that audience. Content production, they explain, can depend on practical conditions such as light and weather; outside those working moments, they say, their space does not feel like a set. Livingetc reports that the duo began sharing their home on Instagram the previous year and had nearly 82,000 followers at the time described in the article. That figure is a reported audience count, not a measure of the wider trend.
When Home Becomes Public Image
The issue matters because social platforms can make domestic space visible to people beyond its occupants, while exposing users to a constant stream of carefully composed interiors. That may affect how people think a home should look or what it should communicate. Fernández Contreras says these platforms can promote “normative models of domesticity” that should be questioned, drawing a parallel with the way social media can consolidate expectations about bodies.
The feature does not say that sharing interiors automatically makes a home less personal. The Berlin Chapters’ account points to a distinction between a space’s role in content and its role in everyday life. For readers, the tension is practical as well as cultural: a room may be arranged for comfort, work and daily routines, but it can also be viewed, photographed and evaluated as an image. The report raises that tension without prescribing how people should decorate or use their homes.
Products Worth Considering
Philips Hue Festavia 130-Foot Indoor/Outdoor Smart String Lights, 500 LEDs
TCL QM64L 85-Inch QD-Mini LED 4K Smart Fire TV
LEVOIT Vital 200S-P Smart Air Purifier for Large Rooms
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
From Domestic Space to Digital Set
Livingetc places the current shift within a longer history: homes have long communicated status, identity and aspiration through their objects and arrangement. What social media changes, the feature argues, is the potential scale and permanence of the audience. A room can be lived in while also appearing in a portfolio, a post or a video viewed elsewhere.
The report identifies the COVID-19 pandemic as an accelerator. When many people worked and appeared on camera from home, bookshelves, kitchen islands and walls behind desks took on visible roles in online and professional life. For creators, the overlap can be more direct: the home may function as residence, studio and subject matter, and renovations can be presented as a sequence of posts. The article also describes a gallery-like aesthetic in some interiors, with artworks, furniture and objects given deliberate visual space. It presents this as a design tendency, not proof that domestic life has become less authentic.
““Aspirational futures””
— Javier Fernández Contreras, architect and academic
How Broad Is the Effect?
The feature offers analysis and personal testimony, but it does not provide survey data or research measuring how many people change their homes to suit social media. It is also unclear how strongly exposure to online interiors affects people’s spending, design decisions or satisfaction with their own spaces. The nearly 82,000-follower figure applies to The Berlin Chapters as reported in the article; it cannot establish the size or attitudes of a broader audience.
Nor does the report suggest that all creators experience their homes as performances. Dima and Guy describe their own relationship to content, while Fernández Contreras discusses a potential wider cultural pattern. The extent to which those experiences represent other creators or ordinary users remains unestablished.
The Debate Beyond the Feature
The supplied report does not announce a study, policy change or planned follow-up that would quantify social media’s effect on domestic choices. Its next step is a question for readers and designers: how can a home accommodate public presentation without being judged only by its appearance on screen? Further reporting or research would be needed to establish how common the pressures described are and whether they produce measurable changes in household decisions.
For now, the feature presents two perspectives that resist a simple conclusion: online platforms can shape the visual standards people encounter, while residents may still experience their spaces primarily as homes. Whether that balance varies by platform, audience or creator is not answered in the report.
Key Questions
What is the “performed home” idea?
It describes the home’s dual role as a place to live and a space that may be composed or shared for an online audience. Livingetc presents it as a cultural tension, not a claim that every home is staged.
He argues that platforms can circulate aspirational futures and influence ideas about what domestic spaces should look like. He also warns that they may promote narrow models of domesticity.
Do Dima and Guy say their home feels like a set?
No. The Berlin Chapters creators say that when they are not making content, they do not feel as if they are walking around a set and describe the space as their home first.
No. The feature offers expert analysis and a creator’s account, but provides no population-level measurement of how often people redesign or arrange homes for online presentation.
Source: livingetc.com
