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Livingetc’s “The Performed Home” essay examines how social media has given domestic spaces a public life, influencing how people present and judge their homes. The report argues that this pressure can shape ideas of desirable interiors, while creators Dima and Guy say their online audience does not make their home feel like a set when they are not producing content.
Livingetc has published an essay examining how Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and other platforms have made the home both a place to live and a space presented to an audience. The report argues that online interiors can shape people’s expectations of domestic life, even as some creators say their homes remain homes first when the cameras are off.
The essay, titled The Performed Home, is part of Livingetc’s new The Meaning of Home series. It considers how social media changes not only what interiors look like, but what people expect their homes to do. Domestic spaces can function as residences while also serving as backdrops, portfolios and studios, particularly for people who make content about design or daily life.
Architect and academic Javier Fernández Contreras, author of The Interiors of Social Media: Architecture, Space, and Technology in the 21st Century, says platforms can circulate what he calls “aspirational futures.” In his account, online images help shape the standards people use to judge their own surroundings, turning the home increasingly into a “container for visual representation.” The essay links this shift to carefully composed interiors in which furniture, art and objects are presented for visual effect.
The report also describes a counterpoint from Dima and Guy, the creative duo behind The Berlin Chapters, whose interior-focused posts have attracted a large online following. They say they do not consciously design or experience their home for that audience. Content production affects practical choices such as working around light and weather, they say, but outside those moments the space does not feel like a set. The source says the pair started sharing snapshots on Instagram the previous year and had nearly 82,000 followers at the time of the report.
When the Home Becomes Public
The issue matters because the standards promoted in interior images can affect how people evaluate spaces they may not intend to publish. A home can become a measure of taste, success or identity, even for people who are not creators. Fernández Contreras cautions that social media may promote normative models of domesticity, a concern the essay compares with the way online images can reinforce ideals about bodies.
That influence is not automatically negative. The report notes that the overlap between art, craft and furniture has helped produce visually distinctive interiors, and that displaying meaningful objects can be part of personal expression. The tension is between making a home that supports everyday life and shaping it to meet an imagined audience’s expectations. The essay raises that tension without claiming that social media affects every household in the same way.
For readers, the practical question is less whether a home looks like a social media post than whether its arrangements serve the people who live there. A carefully composed room may be enjoyable as well as photogenic. But when visual comparison becomes the main standard, ordinary signs of use—clutter, practical furniture or unfinished projects—can appear like failures rather than normal parts of living.
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From Private Space to Backdrop
The essay argues that homes have long communicated status, identity and aspiration; social media did not invent the use of interiors to express who people are. Its central distinction is that the image of a home can now reach a potentially large and lasting audience. The domestic space has acquired what the report describes as a public life alongside its private one.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the trend, according to the report, as people worked and broadcast from home. A bookshelf could appear behind a professional on a video call, a kitchen island could serve as a recording location, and the wall behind a desk could become a deliberately chosen backdrop. For creators, renovation can also become serial content: demolition, sourcing and a completed-room reveal each offer material to publish.
The essay describes a related gallery-like style: artwork receives clear wall space, collectible furniture is displayed with room around it, lighting is carefully arranged, and everyday objects may be stored out of sight. It does not say this makes a home less authentic by definition. Instead, it considers how domestic objects can be framed and perceived differently when they are composed for an image.
““Aspirational futures””
— Javier Fernández Contreras, architect and academic
How Far the Online Gaze Reaches
The material supplied does not establish how many people change their homes primarily for social media, or whether those changes affect their wellbeing, finances or satisfaction with where they live. It offers a cultural analysis and examples, not a representative survey or quantified measure of the trend. The report also does not establish that the creators’ experience applies to other people who publish interior content.
It remains difficult to separate social media’s influence from longstanding forces such as personal taste, design trends, income and the practical needs of a household. The source does not specify the publication date, and its follower count for The Berlin Chapters reflects the point at which the report was written, not necessarily the account’s current audience.
Questions for the Meaning of Home
The essay is presented as part of Livingetc’s ongoing The Meaning of Home series, which the publication says will explore domestic life through essays, interviews and personal stories connected to design, culture and other subjects. The supplied material does not give dates for further installments or identify a next specific feature.
The questions raised by this report are likely to remain relevant as people continue to share rooms, renovations and everyday life online: who is a home being arranged for, which images shape ideas of a desirable interior, and what compromises—if any—are acceptable to make a space more presentable? The source does not offer a single answer. It presents the contrast between a home’s public image and its private use as an ongoing tension, rather than a problem with a confirmed resolution.
Key Questions
What is “The Performed Home” report about?
It is a Livingetc essay about how social platforms can turn domestic spaces into both lived-in homes and images presented to an audience. It considers the effects on interior design and expectations of what a home should look like.
No. The essay argues that online images may shape ideas about desirable homes, but Dima and Guy of The Berlin Chapters say they do not feel as though they live on a set when they are not creating content.
What does Javier Fernández Contreras mean by “normative models of domesticity”?
He is warning that repeated images of certain kinds of interiors may make them seem like the standard for a proper or desirable home. The supplied report does not quantify how often that happens or how strongly it affects individual viewers.
How did the pandemic figure in the essay?
The report says the pandemic accelerated the use of homes as places for work and broadcasting. Bookshelves, kitchen islands and desk backdrops became more visible in online and professional settings.
Source: livingetc.com
