The One With Home Styling in the Age of Social Media

I think it’s interesting when looking back at movies and tv-shows and compare with what you see in people’s homes today. Today, most people’s homes have very strong similarities, from the trendy lamp hanging above the mass produced dinner table from Ikea to couches, flower arrangements and even bathroom furnitures. It does feel a bit like home styling have lost a bit of personality in the last few decades.

The home styling of the Friend’s appartments

Bold color choices

If we take a look at the tv-show Friends, which was one of the first really big shows on tv, there are some stark contrasts from today in the design choices. The apartment of Monica and Rachel’s is vibrant in colors, especially in accent pieces and furniture. Monica’s bedroom features purple walls, a color choice hardly made today in home design. Head into the living room and the colors are all over the place, from a deep green Ottoman to other contrasting deep colors like blue and red.

Vintage, old, and odd

The apartments featured a combination of vintage pieces, contemporary designs, and unique accessories. This mishmash of styles gave the spaces a distinct and individualistic feel. They were filled with quirky and unique accessories that added character to the spaces. For instance, the iconic purple door in Monica's apartment, the huge white dog in Chandler and Joey’s appartment, and the various decorative items showcased the characters' interests and added a lot of personality. The apartments felt lived-in, with personal touches and a comfortable ambiance. This helped viewers connect with the characters and feel a sense of familiarity.

The Layout

The appartments were also designed for social interactions! This is something that is a mostly forgotten skill in today’s homes. Sofas on a row, all turned towards the television. With an open layout as in Friends, conversations was easy! This could, of course, just be a feature of it being a television set, but we should also remember it was recorder in a time with (almost) no cellphones, a lot less tv, and no video games.

The Cost of Personality in Modern Home Styling

First of all, a LOT of stuff was mass produced in the era of Friends as well. This is not me completely forgetting this basic fact ;)

Cheap Stuff

Where do you get cheap stuff today?

Most would probably instinctively say Ikea or any similar store of mass produced furniture. If you asked someone 50 years ago where to get cheap stuff, most would probably answer the flea market or second hand stores. These are valid options today as well, but the issue is that the price difference is much less than it used to be. Flea market- and second hand stuff you could get for almost nothing while new furniture was considerably more expensive.

Today, the finished furniture is barely even the cost of the raw materials.

The era of digitalisation the last 50 years have made it possible to manufacture every imaginable little thing to the cost of almost nothing and ship to wherever the customer is located within 24 hours.

Availability of New Stuff

Cars were common already 50 years ago, but are today even more common. This gives people the possibility to go further and further away to get new stuff. Add to cars the internet, cheap labour in third world countries, hand held phones from which you can order pretty much whatever you want whenever, and a constant bombardment of advertising for new stuff.

The Advertising

We all know advertisements is the thing driving a lot of the revenue online. We should also remember that the advertiser’s role is not to provide the customer with what he or she actually wants, but to convince the customer it needs the very product that this particular company provides.

What this means as advertisers are getting better and better at selling stuff, is that more and more people fall for the ads and purchase the product provided. As more and more people purchase the product, the company is able to pour more and more money into advertisements. Thus, more and more people are buying the product for their home.

It is all touted as a way to personify the home (within the frames of the products that the company provides, that is).

It has made new products more accessible to a broader audience, while simultaneously reducing the visibility and availability of local second-hand and vintage stores.

The dreaded "Apothecary Table" from Pottery Barn featured in an episode of Friends. Rachel and Ross felt the need to lie to Phoebe about the table being bought at Pottery Barn and not a flea market. To be fair, Ross did manage to score some sheets from the flea market ;)

The Future of Home Styling

So, what is the future holding in store for us and our homes?

Unless something very radical happens, we’re unlikely to return to previous times like in Friends tv-show. It will, however, change toward more personalisation, I believe. If the economic trend will continue upwards for the foreseeable future there will be more and more possibilities to personify your spaces.

The era of mass production will not go away unless we have a civilisation threatening catastrophy. It will, however, change and adapt to the new tools at our disposal. 3D printed furniture will become a thing in the future, where you go online and describe the furniture you want and get a 3D image back. Then use your smartphone to place the new furniture in the space you want it and snap a few pictures. This technology is already here, but the production part of it is still slightly too slow and not entirely ready for mass use.

There will still be the local artisans who create handmade items, but these items will likely become more and more expensive relative to the mass produced items with time.