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A Livingetc essay examines how Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and other platforms have made homes both lived-in spaces and public images. It argues that this shift can shape domestic expectations, while creators Dima and Guy of The Berlin Chapters say their home remains a home first, not a set.
Livingetc has published an essay examining how social media turns the home into both a private living space and a public image, raising questions about whether the pressure to present an Instagram-worthy interior changes how people use their rooms. The report draws on architect and academic Javier Fernández Contreras and content creators Dima and Guy of The Berlin Chapters, whose experience suggests that online visibility does not necessarily mean a home feels like a set to the people living in it.
The essay, part of Livingetc’s new The Meaning of Home series, describes a change in how domestic space is presented. Homes have long reflected identity, status and aspiration, it says, but social platforms give those images a potentially lasting and far-reaching audience. A room may now be designed and photographed as a backdrop, portfolio or gallery as well as a place to live.
Fernández Contreras, author of The Interiors of Social Media: Architecture, Space, and Technology in the 21st Century, argues that platforms including Instagram, TikTok, Twitch and Pinterest do more than distribute interior images. In his account, they circulate “aspirational futures” that can affect how people evaluate their own spaces and recast the home as a “container for visual representation.” Those are his interpretations of the platforms’ influence, not evidence in the source of a measured effect across all users.
The essay says the pandemic accelerated the home’s role as a setting for public and professional activity: bookshelves appeared in work calls, kitchens became broadcast spaces, and walls behind desks served as backdrops. For creators, the report adds, renovation can itself become a sequence of content, from demolition through sourcing to a finished-room reveal. It also describes a parallel gallery-like aesthetic, with artworks, furniture and objects arranged to draw attention, while everyday items may be put away.
When Domestic Space Becomes Public
The report’s central concern is not simply that people share pictures of their homes. It is that repeated exposure to highly composed interiors may influence what viewers regard as a desirable or acceptable home. Fernández Contreras says that, as social platforms have helped consolidate certain bodily ideals, they can also promote “normative models of domesticity” that merit scrutiny. The essay presents this as a cultural argument; it does not quantify how often viewers change their homes or establish that social media alone causes those changes.
That distinction matters to readers deciding how much attention to give online design standards. A carefully framed room can make a home appear to be a visual project, yet the people who live there may experience it differently. The story asks readers to notice the gap between an image made for an audience and everyday domestic life, without treating either approach to interiors as inherently wrong.
The shift may also affect the boundary between work and home. When rooms function as offices, studios or content backdrops, their appearance can carry professional as well as personal meaning. Livingetc’s report describes that overlap but does not claim that every household faces the same pressures, or that people must sacrifice comfort to achieve a polished look.
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From Private Rooms to Online Backdrops
Livingetc introduces the article as part of The Meaning of Home, a series exploring how domestic spaces relate to culture, psychology, history, politics, storytelling and economics. Its starting point is that homes have never been entirely private in meaning: objects and interiors have long helped people communicate identity and aspiration. The development discussed here is the expanded audience enabled by social media, not the invention of self-expression through interior design.
The source describes the pandemic as an accelerant. As people spent more time working and communicating from home, domestic features became visible in professional settings and online broadcasts. The essay does not supply survey figures, a timeline of platform changes or data showing how many people redesign spaces specifically for online presentation. Its conclusions rely on cultural analysis and the experiences and views it quotes.
Dima and Guy, the creative duo behind The Berlin Chapters, began sharing snapshots of their life and design style on Instagram the year before the Livingetc report, according to the article. It says their account had nearly 82,000 followers at the time of publication. Their example offers a personal perspective on living with a sizeable online audience, rather than a representative study of creators or social media users.
““Aspirational futures””
— Javier Fernández Contreras, architect and academic
The source is an essay, not a survey or controlled study. It does not establish how many people change their interiors to meet online expectations, how large the effect is, or whether platform exposure leads directly to dissatisfaction with one’s home. It also offers no comparison between people who regularly view interior content and those who do not.
It remains unclear how widely the creators’ experience applies. Dima and Guy say they do not feel they are walking around a set when they are not making content; that account does not settle how other creators manage privacy, practical needs or pressure to produce images. The article’s nearly 82,000-follower figure is reported as a snapshot and should not be read as a current count.
The source also does not identify specific sacrifices that people commonly make for an online-ready home, or document financial, emotional or practical costs. Its title poses that trade-off as a question; the report does not provide a measured answer.
Questions for Home and Platform Culture
Livingetc presents the essay as one contribution to an ongoing series, but the supplied report gives no schedule for later installments or announced research. It does not report a policy change, platform announcement or formal next milestone. The immediate next step for readers is to weigh the essay’s cultural argument against their own experience: whether interior images serve as useful inspiration, create comparison, or do both.
Further evidence would be needed to establish how online interior content changes household choices over time. Useful follow-up reporting could include data on renovation decisions, interviews with a wider range of creators and viewers, and evidence about whether people feel pressure to make lived-in spaces look consistently camera-ready. Until then, the article’s key distinction remains: a home can be represented online without necessarily being experienced as a performance by those who live there.
Key Questions
What is the “performed home” conundrum?
It is the tension between a home as a place to live and a home presented as an image for other people to see. Livingetc’s essay asks whether online expectations change how people arrange or judge their domestic spaces.
Who does the Livingetc report quote?
The essay includes views from architect and academic Javier Fernández Contreras and from Dima and Guy, the creative duo behind The Berlin Chapters, who share images of their home online.
Do the creators say their home feels like a set?
No. Dima and Guy say that when they are not creating content, they do not feel as though they are walking around a set and describe it as their home first.
No. It presents a cultural argument and individual perspectives, but provides no survey or causal data measuring how social media affects home design decisions.
Source: livingetc.com
