Need help with a weird-shaped bathroom. My boyfriend says the pillows don’t match. Coral walls need taming. Is this stucco normal? Attic vibe check. What’s wrong with my living room? Made a bathtub and wife said NO.
Stay with me: These are not the ravings of a design-obsessed neurotic, but posts on the internet’s biggest message board, Reddit. There, every day, more than 100 million people around the world weigh in on everything from sports and music to more niche pursuits, like cataloging cringe self-promoters on LinkedIn.
Naturally, there’s tons of design dialogue too. The r/interiordesign and r/homedecorating subreddits (the platform’s term for specific message boards) boast a million-plus members each, while even narrower areas of interest like r/scandinavianinterior draw hundreds of thousands. In an effort to learn what designers might take away from the platform, I spent a week lurking on design Reddit, quietly cataloging green bathrooms, light-up massage chairs and awkward foyers.
Founded in 2005 by two college friends, Reddit was steeped in the early optimism of the open web, a product of the idea that connecting people around the world is an unequivocally good thing. The original pitch was “the front page of the internet”—a message board where anyone could weigh in on anything.
The culture of the internet has changed wildly since then. Despite those shifts, Reddit has managed to stay more or less the same. The site is still an enormous centralized gathering place where everyone weighs in on everything. Even the mechanics of the site haven’t changed that much: It’s still a network of message boards where anonymous users (“redditors”) share their thoughts, which are then upvoted or downvoted by other users. Debates rage, advice is doled out, jokes are attempted. Reddit has always simultaneously been a lot and a lot of fun.
Reddit particularly matters now because of what’s happening with the rest of the internet. As social media platforms start to feel less social and more like venues for entertainment and self-promotion, everyday people are posting less. Meanwhile, low-quality generated AI content (“AI slop”) is filling up the web at an alarming rate. There are simply fewer and fewer humans talking openly on the internet—except on Reddit, a fact that has helped the site’s traffic shoot up in recent years. A New York profile described it as one of the “last thriving islands of the old web,” and quoted a Gen Z TikToker describing it as “the only place where you know there are real people.”
Realness is very much the watchword when it comes to exploring interior design on Reddit. When you’re in the industry, it can be easy to fall under the illusion that most homes are tasteful, thoughtfully appointed places that get photographed by professionals. Reddit will quickly disabuse you of that notion. A lot of the content on popular design subreddits is an avalanche of requests for help, much of it on dimly lit photos chaotically marked up like a football commentator scribbling on a playback (“If I move this table here and that chair there, then there will be more room for this flat-screen, right?”).
“[Top questions are about] how to lay out a space and what’s a good color,” says Tim, a former interior designer and one of the moderators of the subreddit, who in the spirit of Reddit’s anonymity asked to be referred to only by his first name. Unsurprisingly, he says that a large volume of submitted posts are essentially homeowners looking for free advice.
The endless scroll of cramped living rooms and cries for help is a bracing reminder that many, many people are troubleshooting problems with their homes, and most of those problems are practical in nature. While the language of interior design media can often feel lofty and aesthetic (“mixing old and new,” “orchestrating a symphony of color,” and the like), what consumes users on Reddit are details like where to put the coffee table.
The platform—in all its messy humanity—is also a good reminder of the emotional stakes of design. Lurking just below the surface of many posts is a hint of something more than just a question about a kitchen island. Redditors often frame a design question as helping them to “settle a debate” with a spouse. There’s a lot of “rate my room”–type requests (or, phrased defensively, “roast my room”). Typically, the feedback is more empathetic than you might expect for an online message board.
One of my favorite threads about design is from the r/interiordecorating subreddit, in which a user posted a picture of some blue ombre window treatments under the title “My custom curtains came today & no one cares so I’m posting here.” Who among us can’t relate to that particular flavor of deflation? Reddit came to the rescue: At least 31,000 people upvoted the post.
The paradox is that most users are anonymous, but the average Reddit conversation is surprisingly civil. Much of the credit for that goes to the platform’s army of volunteer moderators, who closely watch the message boards they guard over, making sure posts follow each subreddit’s rules of the road.
Tim says that he and the other r/interiordesign moderators spend a good amount of time trying to keep the conversation productive, and to keep the subreddit focused on the art and science of interior design—as opposed to one-off decorating questions like “Should I buy this lamp?” Another concern is minimizing an extremely common genre of post from homeowners: where to get a cheaper version of an existing product.
“We don’t allow those posts because we understand that’s how designers make their money,” he says. “This could be a homeowner that’s currently working with a designer that’s trying to shop them, so we don’t allow any kind of [question like] that, or identification posts like, ‘Oh, what’s this tile?’”
Not all moderators are as conscientious, and of course, there’s plenty of snark on Reddit too. Some of it is cruel, but it can’t be denied that some of it is funny. The most popular post ever on r/interiordecorating is from a user asking if they should use a yellow or white plastic bag as a liner for the trash can in their bathroom. The most upvoted comment? “I suggest a target bag if you have one, adds a little more expensive look.” That’s leaving aside the subreddits that are devoted exclusively to decor cringe, like r/shittydesign or r/homedecoratingcj (the “cj” stands for “circle jerk”). There, redditors delight in pictures of greige nightmares and Taco Bell signs hung next to chandeliers.
Then click a few links and you’re scrolling impeccably curated interior photography (the biggest subreddit there is the dubiously named r/roomporn). In a way, it’s silly to try and summarize what design content is “like” on the platform. The site is so vast and varied that, if a human has an opinion about a room, it will likely end up on Reddit.
There’s clearly humanity (and humans) on Reddit. Is there a business opportunity? It depends on who’s asking. For consumer-facing home brands, the answer is clearly yes. While browsing the popular decor subreddits, I encountered ads for Wayfair, Castlery and—perhaps ominously for the AI-fearful—ChatGPT, with a spot that touted the chatbot’s ability to give design advice. The logic is simple: People are browsing these subreddits for inspiration for their own homes. Brands that sell furniture and decor want to be there too.
What about designers? Though most subreddits generally prohibit self-promotion in their posted rules, designers do land work here and there on the platform, in a variety of ways. On r/interiordesign, there’s a monthly thread dedicated to matchmaking; more often, an organic exchange may evolve into an inquiry about collaboration.
“People might see a helpful comment I made on one of the threads, and they’ll reach out saying, ‘I’m looking for a designer,’” says Florida designer Laurie Hughes. While she has gotten work from Reddit, however, she’s quick to point out that the vast majority of outreach doesn’t go anywhere. “Probably 90 to 95 percent of the people are just window-shopping and want to get ideas. Most of them just disappear.”
It’s difficult to pigeonhole the Reddit demographic, as the site’s user base is so vast, but it skews young and male (one of the most popular design subreddits is the occasionally ironic r/malelivingspace, boasting 2.7 million members). If you had to pinpoint the ideal client for most designers, it’s probably not a 23-year-old man. More than that, Reddit’s anonymity and freewheeling culture simply doesn’t lend itself to connecting designers with clients.
Reddit is probably more useful to designers as a vehicle for education than for lead generation. Tim is also a moderator on the r/interiordesigner subreddit, a board dedicated to chat among professionals. There, designers trade tips on project management software, vent about bad clients and offer career advice to newbies.
As is the case elsewhere on the platform, realness rises to the top. A recent post by a designer stressed about a slowdown in new business led to an interesting conversation about price points and markups. One designer posted about failing part of the NCIDQ exam for the fourth time, leading to a round of commiseration from others in a similar boat. Reddit’s unique mix of anonymity and community leads to an openness that many designers will find useful—if nothing else, it’s a friendly place to vent and put a finger on the pulse of broader design culture.
Another, slightly less obvious educational use designers might have for Reddit: vetting vendors. The site is often a clearinghouse for consumer complaints, and if a large number of customers are having an issue with a brand, a discussion will likely pop up there. The principle works much better with retail brands than small makers and trade vendors, but it does work. Signs of trouble for Interior Define, Burke Decor, Form Kitchens—and most recently Industry West—all showed up on the platform before they made the news. When buying from a new brand, it never hurts to do a quick Google search for “[Company Name] Reddit” first.
But in truth, it feels slightly silly to talk about Reddit in terms of business opportunity or usefulness. In my experience, the users who seem to get the most out of the platform go there for the pleasure of engaging with others on topics they care about—a digital “third place” that can’t be judged on raw metrics alone. Hughes has landed work there, but for her, a more common activity is simply jumping in and offering help wherever possible.
“I’ve been a designer for going on two decades now, and it seems like yesterday I was that scrappy little intern trying to impress somebody, but now I find myself on the other side of that spectrum,” she says. “There are so many people on [Reddit] asking, ‘Is this the right career for me?’ It’s a feel-good thing to be able to share what I already know with other people.”
Reddit will never be as streamlined as the other most-visited sites on the internet, but that’s not the point. If you want inspirational images, go to Pinterest or Instagram. If you want a quick, helpful and slightly generic answer, go to ChatGPT. If you want to go down a rabbit hole, get into a debate, laugh with a stranger, or gawk at the passing digital parade, Reddit is waiting.
