Jodi Lai, who leads online Vintage Decor Shop Moonlight Vintage, uses your home culture to express and test your personal style.Edward Row
If you have the feeling that home non ones have looked a little alike lately, they are not alone. After years of rooms that were painted gray and decorated in beige, the steamed formula, which has been dominating social media feeds and design magazines for years, has finally reached a saturation point. Today it is de Rigueur to hug the unusual – if not ugly – in residential culture. And these unconventional moments give houses with a unique feeling of personality, storytelling and joy.
This could look like John Demsey's famous Maximalist Upper East Side Townhouse, which was documented in the coffee table book behind the blue door. The colorful space is a joyful expression of a life that is well lived, filled with glamorous memorabilia and works of art from its years as a New York beauty manager. For a more moderate approach, some surprising personal elements, such as a vintage find that feels a little out of place, or an eyebrow wallpaper in a traditional room can cause miracles.
Even the multinational retail giants are on board with this hug the unconventional. In her 2025 editor, which was published in the IKEA 2025 Style Guide & Color of the Year, Abbey Stark encourages to dream of the company's buyers. “This year we will encourage you to make yourself moody. Make yourself brave with your color stories. Take an exciting way out of your comfort zone, such as adding flowers, watercolors or a pattern that you previously avoided. Stay curious!” She writes. And with its “Go Your Own Wayfair” campaign in Great Britain, in which a Roomba robot vacuum cleaner for a colorful suite in the hallway, the furniture-e retail Wayfair in the campaign, which “sucks boring”, could not be explicitly.
The Torontonian Jodi Lai shares the feeling. A long-time thrifter who grew up with her father with her father now leads Moonshine Vintage, an online vintage decoration business and was in the Hamilton Antique Mall. With a touch of surrealism in the direction of dopamine-inducing objects, it describes its approach to the decor, simply funny, sustainable decisions from the thousands of options that are available to consumers today.
“You can choose something from Ikea or Amazon that everyone else has or you can choose something that is a bit more unique and says something about who you are and what your personality is,” she says. “I want to be surrounded by things that make me happy.”
Lai's house is full of funny and colorful pieces that may not match, but remember the same mood.Edward Row
When it comes to starting, Lai recommends enabling her home culture as a low-stakes path to experiment with a personal creative expression.
“I think living culture is a great way to experiment with personality and to express yourself in a private way that does not attract just as a really loud jacket and go public, where you might be afraid of how people would react,” she says.
The multidisciplinary designer Tiffany Pratt, known for her colorful restaurant projects in Toronto like Piano Piano and Lazy Daisys Cafe, says a large part of the sharing of her personal history by Decor is to take into account her unique lifestyle – and to forget what your neighbors do.
“If someone understands how they live and what they love and what they love, whether it is a person or family, they can really design a life for this person by designing the objects in this house,” says Pratt by phone from Florida, where she is busy adding her technicolor touch to new living projects.
She adds that this newly discovered interest in personal expression is based on our understanding of the function of the house that it has developed further than we are only a place where we eat and sleep. “Many people have made a lot more at home since Covid, and that's why they really want to make their home an experience. They really want to make it a place that feels completely,” says Pratt.
As an example, she refers to a friend who decided to replace the formal dining table in her elegant house in Connecticut with a high-end-pong-pong table. “It comes out as a quirky, but I think there is a shame to be just authentic.”