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Livingetc’s new “The Meaning of Home” series examines how social media has made domestic spaces both places to live and images for public consumption. The report draws on architect Javier Fernández Contreras and creators Dima and Guy of The Berlin Chapters, while leaving open how widely online ideals shape people’s choices at home.
Livingetc has introduced “The Meaning of Home,” a new series on how people live and think within domestic spaces, beginning with a report on social media’s influence on interior design and expectations of home. The report argues that platforms such as Instagram and TikTok have made the home both a place to inhabit and a space presented to an audience, while its interviewees describe that relationship differently in daily life.
The report’s central development is the launch of a Livingetc series that explores domestic life through design and subjects including culture, psychology, history, politics and economics. Its opening feature, “The Performed Home,” considers whether homes are increasingly arranged for photographs and videos as well as for the people who live in them. The publication frames this as a question about changing expectations, rather than evidence that every home has become a set.
Architect and academic Javier Fernández Contreras, author of The Interiors of Social Media: Architecture, Space, and Technology in the 21st Century, argues that platforms do more than distribute interior images. He says they can produce what he calls “aspirational futures” and recast the home as a “container for visual representation.” The report presents this as his interpretation of social media’s influence, not a measured finding about all users.
The feature also interviews Dima and Guy of The Berlin Chapters, whose home-focused online content has attracted a large audience. The report says they began sharing snapshots of their home and design style on Instagram the previous year and had nearly 82,000 followers at the time described. They say they do not consciously design or experience their home for that audience, though lighting and weather can affect the practical work of creating content.
When Private Rooms Become Public Images
The report matters because it describes a shift in how domestic spaces are seen: a room can be lived in, photographed, shared and judged at once. For people who post their homes, this can make interior choices part of a public-facing identity. For people who do not post, the steady circulation of polished interiors may still shape what feels desirable or ordinary.
Fernández Contreras warns that social platforms may promote “normative models of domesticity,” drawing a parallel with the way online imagery can reinforce ideals about bodies. That is an attributed concern, not proof that platforms cause particular design decisions. Still, it points to a practical question for readers: whether a home is being arranged around comfort and use, or around how it might appear in a feed.
The feature does not argue that visual presentation makes a home less authentic. It notes that the same attention to composition can bring art, craft and furniture into closer conversation. The tension is not simply between a “real” home and a staged one; it is between the different purposes a domestic space may serve.
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From Remote Work to Home Content
The report traces the growing visibility of domestic space to a change that began before the pandemic and accelerated during it. As more people appeared online from home, bookshelves became part of video-call backgrounds, kitchen islands doubled as work or broadcast spaces, and the wall behind a desk gained a presentational role. The feature describes these as examples of the home taking on public functions alongside its private ones.
For creators, the overlap can be more direct: a residence may also be a studio and portfolio, while renovation can be documented as a sequence of posts or videos. The report says the home has long communicated identity, status and aspiration; what social media changes is the potential size and persistence of its audience. It also describes gallery-like arrangements—art given clear wall space, collectible furniture set apart and everyday items stored out of view—as one visible expression of this overlap.
That framing has limits. The source is a design publication’s reported feature, not a representative survey of households. It supplies expert and creator perspectives but does not quantify how many people alter their homes for social media or how common these arrangements are.
““Aspirational futures””
— Javier Fernández Contreras, architect and academic
How Far Does the Online Gaze Reach?
The feature does not establish how many people change their interiors to make them more shareable, whether social media leads to lasting changes in household choices, or which groups are most affected. It offers no survey data or comparison between people who post their homes and those who do not.
It is also unclear how the tension varies across creators and households. Dima and Guy say their home remains a home first, while Fernández Contreras describes broader risks to domestic ideals. Those perspectives are not necessarily contradictory, but they do not settle how strongly online audiences influence everyday decisions. The follower count cited for The Berlin Chapters is a figure reported at the time of the feature, not a current total.
Questions the Series Will Pursue
Livingetc says “The Meaning of Home” will examine questions about domestic life through essays, interviews and personal stories grounded in design. The opening report sets up further inquiry into what homes communicate and how cultural forces shape the ways people live within them.
The source does not provide a publication schedule or name the next installment. For now, the immediate next step is the series itself: future pieces may add further perspectives, but no additional findings or conclusions are announced in this report.
Key Questions
What is “The Meaning of Home”?
It is a new Livingetc series exploring questions about domestic life through design, essays, interviews and personal stories.
What does the opening report examine?
“The Performed Home” looks at how social media can make a home both a lived-in space and an image presented to an online audience.
Do the interviewed creators say they live in a set?
No. Dima and Guy of The Berlin Chapters say that when they are not making content, they do not feel they are walking around a set and describe the space as their home first.
No. It presents an expert’s argument about online ideals and creators’ experiences, but provides no survey or other data measuring how many people change their homes for social media.
When will the next installment appear?
Livingetc has not given a schedule for the series’ next installment in the source material.
Source: livingetc.com
