The Youtube Game Show That Judges You by Your Bedroom

"Interior Motives" is among a growing niche of social media-first series that feel like this generation’s answer to "Room Raiders." The premise? "You show us your bed and we guess who’s been in it."

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The 2000s brought us voyeuristic home series like MTV’s Cribs and Room Raiders, so it only makes sense that from the Y2K revival of the 2020s a similar genre has emerged. A growing niche of short-form "shows" are following the familiar format and tone of early-aughts TV series that explored what our homes say about us, but for the social media generation.

Some of them are the brainchildren of creators: Caleb Simpson’s schtick of asking strangers how much they pay for rent made him a TikTok staple with 8.7 million followers (at the time of writing) and a career revolved around video home tours—often now with celebrities—that bridge the gap between glossy Architectural Digest home tours, reality TV candor, and game show investigations. Internet personalities like Seth Hollingsworth form their TikTok and Youtube presences around comedic reactions to celebrity homes and unusual Zillow listings, while others regularly post similar short-form reviews of famous people’s properties and other eye-catching real estate. Production studios are investing in the genre too. "Digital TV studio" Gymnasium launched the man-cave-tour short-form show Boy Room in 2024 and made it into a makeover series in its second season, the result of an Amazon Prime partnership that also led to the 2025 Girl Room spin-off. It also developed Roommate Court, an Instagram and TikTok series in which an in-home comedian-judge settles conflicts between cohabitators.

Ben Mora, the host of Interior Motives, is a rising star in this space. The Youtube game show—which has 140,000 subscribers and more than 6.9 million views on the platform (at the time of writing)—sees Mora and a rotating selection of contestants hop on a remote call to look at photos of three bedrooms submitted by their owners (plus a bonus space, like the inside of a fridge or a workspace) and try to guess each person’s identity down to age, sexuality, gender identity, and location. So far, Mora’s roster of contestants has included celebrity/artist/comedian/internet-personality players like Courtney Love, Margaret Cho, Jeremy O. Harris, Julio Torres, Juliana Huxtable, Jake Cornell, Marley Gotterer, and Kay Poyer. Most of the submissions come from viewers in the U.S., though there is the occasional international edition. It plays like a points-based version of Room Raiders. (The tagline is: "You show us your bed and we guess who’s been in it.")

Ben Mora launched the online game show Interior Motives in summer 2025.

Courtesy Ben Mora / Interior Motives Show

Mora started Interior Motives a year ago as an extension of the Seeking Derangements comedy podcast he cohosts with friends. "It was just a little bonus series I started," he says, continuing that the side project quickly gained traction, pushing him to relaunch it as a separate series. The core premise came to him when he was watching TikToks and saw a video of a person’s room and tried to guess who they were by space alone. "Then, I was looking around my room, laying on a mattress with no bed frame. I was like, ‘This room looks really gay.’"

The show found success in short-form clips on Instagram and TikTok that drove attention to full episodes on YouTube and Patreon, where patrons pay $7 a month to access bonus content and the ability to play live with him. In recent months, its popularity has expanded much beyond its original (largely queer, in comedy, and/or chronically online) audience. We spoke with Mora about why he thinks Interior Motives is having a moment and what drives the enthusiasm for gamified home tour shows. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

On why the show is resonating

It’s the candidness of the show, it’s the concept of the show, but also, in so many ways, interiors are the new fashion, or they’re the new way to display your personality. Post-Covid, with the rise of TikTok, people became very attuned to what are functionally sets for them, even if you have a lower count of followers. What’s in the room? How is that going to portray your personality? The bedroom and interiors have become a new space of performance for people, and with that performance comes judgment. We’re able to play off of internet archetypes like the performative male or the "fake" bi girl [in a way] that isn’t actually about seeing them. It’s about seeing their stuff. The show is speculative as well—it allows us to engage in these stereotypes without actually passing judgment.

We talk a lot about identity: sexual identity, gender identity…. For a long time these conversations have been a little daunting. It’s a minefield because it can be loaded with moralizing or bigotry, depending which direction you may be coming from. The show manages to package these conversations in a way that unburdens it from the pressure. It feels transgressive, and I think that’s what gets the biggest laugh.

On the influence of early-aughts home shows

It shares DNA with Queer Eye, in that gay people are bursting into your space and critiquing you. Queer Eye, gen one. Gen two? It’s inspired by GeoGuessr too. Part of the idea was, What if you did GeoGuessr for gender? For sexuality?

On viewers playing the game at home

We’re in a culture right now where everyone is so hypercritical, so it makes sense to me that people would want to play along. But I think it’s nice to see that level of actual engagement. It reminds me of American Idol, where you text a phone number: "We want this person to win!" I would like to integrate that somehow in the show, like a live stream where it’s the audience doing a poll. So much of what we watch now can be passive, and certainly my show falls into this as well. I like that people are playing it at home. It makes me really happy.

I want old people to submit their rooms. I want Boomers and Gen X to submit. I haven’t seen a retirement home. I haven’t seen any snowbirds in Florida or Arizona. Since we do international episodes, we’re getting submissions from all over, but I would like to see rooms from the Middle East, parts of South America, and Africa. Rich people too. We do get a lot of upper-income homes, but I do feel like they’re maybe a little bit more hesitant. I would love to see some sprawling mansions.

Artist Ser Serpas and internet personality Jovan Hill appeared in an international edition of Interior Motives.

Courtesy Ben Mora / Interior Motives Show

On recurring aesthetics in user-submitted rooms

A lot of people don’t have seamless aesthetic continuity in their rooms. You see half-attempts at a color-drenching. You see half-attempts at a high-brow tasteslop thing. The thing that surprised me the most is that very few people are actually following through on having the completely aestheticized room. The gallery wall is huge. That’s because that’s easy. There’s plushies everywhere. Gen Z loves fake ivy. Gay men are doing USM and lots of Togo couches. I’m learning these brands from doing the show. You know a design gay when you see it. They are the ones who are really following through on the trends.

On tricks of the guessing game

Trust your gut. It sounds corny, but I’ve been wrong many times and it’s because I start overthinking a certain piece of art or a book. We’re guessing various dimensions of someone’s identity—it actually doesn’t work. I’ve been playing the game for months and I haven’t gotten any better at it.

On the most shocking reveals

The most shocking reveal was in an international episode with Ser Serpas and Jovan Hill. It was a person in Barcelona, and they had plastic covering underneath their mattress on the floor as some sort of protective barrier. All of the books were so indicative of gay male reading habits. It was Giovanni’s Room, Allen Ginsberg, The Sluts, I think even Marquis de Sade. It felt really canon. It was all male clothes. It ended up being a 24-year-old cis girl who was a straight, but just kind of butch. That one really threw me. I just didn’t understand what was going on. I’m obsessed with that girl.

On whether contestants would "correctly" guess his room

You could probably tell it’s a gay guy who’s maybe living some kind of transient lifestyle because it’s just like a suitcase, an LED face mask, and a giant matte black water bottle. Right now there is a beer on my windowsill. There’s Zyn cartridges everywhere and belts and boxers. My suit is there. You could be able to tell. The last permanent place I was living, people would probably guess lesbian because of the big wooden furniture and worldly ceramics and Renaissance art. It reads more like lesbian den.

The show’s tagline is: "You show us your bed and we guess who’s been in it."

Courtesy Ben Mora / Interior Motives Show

See the full story on Dwell.com: The Youtube Game Show That Judges You by Your Bedroom
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A Waterfall Rushes Through This $5.25M Mill Turned Residence in Upstate New York

The converted structure sits on a 12-acre property dating to the 1750s that includes a swimming hole and an art studio with a colorful glass mural.

Location: Salt Point, New York

Price: $5,250,000

Footprint: 3,424 square feet (5 bed, 4 bath)

Lot Size: 12 acres

From the Agent: "Spanning nearly just over 12 pristine acres, Bloomvale is a preserved waterfall estate. Dating back to the mid-1750s, this National Historic Register treasure is a one-of-a-kind old-world masterpiece. Initially a grist mill, later a cotton factory, and then reinvented and rebuilt as a cidery, the mill fostered the region’s early economic development. In the late 1960s, with incredible attention to detail, a visionary architect and interior designer duo transformed the stone mill into a residential estate. Over decades, its stewards strategically assembled four separate parcels to protect its privacy and integrity, creating a sanctuary of nature, history, and design. A natural, fast-moving stream and cascading waterfalls run directly alongside, and partially through, the lower footprint of the building. The gentle, ambient rush of water is heard from nearly every room. It’s an ideal candidate for a micro-hydroelectric power system, offering the potential for self-sustaining, eco-conscious luxury living."

The main home is a converted cider mill from 1913. 

Photo by Gabriel Zimmer

The property sits on the bed of Wappinger Creek. 

Photo by Gabriel Zimmer

The ruins of a former mill are preserved on the grounds.

Photo by Gabriel Zimmer

See the full story on Dwell.com: A Waterfall Rushes Through This $5.25M Mill Turned Residence in Upstate New York

These Skyline-Inspired Appliances Are Designed to Blur the Boundaries of the Kitchen

Dacor’s Contemporary Collection of luxury appliances helps kitchens blend naturally into open-plan living spaces.

When legacy appliance brand Dacor was in search of inspiration for their Contemporary Collection, they looked to the sky. Not quite in the clouds, but to the steel, glass, rhythm, and symmetry of the urban skyline, which became the main reference for the ultra-sleek collection.

Glass and steel create the bold and distinctive appearance of Dacor’s 36-Inch Dual-Fuel Steam Range. "The LED lighting found in our doors allows the interiors of our oven cavities to be brilliant, much like what it feels when observing the skyline in the evening," says Maddalena Nicolosi, senior kitchen design and innovation manager at Dacor.

Photo: Dacor

"The face of the cooking products combines both steel and glass to mimic the construction of glass buildings," says Maddalena Nicolos, senior kitchen design and innovation manager at Dacor. Like their architectural reference points, steel is a supporting material on the appliance faces, allowing glass to take center stage. "Each knob is wrapped in a knurling finish, providing that tactile surface which can be found in steel flooring grates throughout any urban environment," says Nicolosi. Rich details like these, she shares, "truly make this collection feel like you are in an urban space" and further reinforces the reference material.

With adjustable glass shelves and specialized cooling zones, the 42-Inch Built-In French Door Refrigerator beautifully marries form and function.

Photo: Dacor

Dacor’s Contemporary Collection, in many ways, was designed for designers. In addition to the Dacor Art Hairline finish—a horizontal-grained stainless steel—the collection offers a distinctive Graphite Stainless Steel option. The unique deep gray colorway has a rich undertone that is truly graphite rather than a simple black finish. 

Distinctive and statement-making on their own, many of the appliances are also panel-ready—giving designers (and homeowners) freedom to highlight the sleek appearance overtly or allow them to blend in seamlessly with their surrounding environment. "Panel-ready is a must in today’s industry," adds Nicolosi. "When working with an open-space floor plan, the concept of concealing can be a key feature in creating the overall look." 

Contemporary Collection appliances are available in silver stainless (seen here), graphite stainless, or panel-ready options. The 24-Inch Dishwasher sits flush with the cabinet face—offering seamless integration with minimal clearance requirements.

Photo: Dacor

See the full story on Dwell.com: These Skyline-Inspired Appliances Are Designed to Blur the Boundaries of the Kitchen
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Before & After: With a €512K Reno, a Couple Found Space to Live Separately but Together

Enlisting a little help from their friends, industrial designers Júlia Muñoz and Ferran Lajara created a cozy home in the Catalonian countryside with distinct spaces for their practices.

What’s the secret to matrimonial harmony? For Júlia Muñoz and Ferran Lajara, it’s being able to live separately—with their own individual spaces—under one roof.

The couple have been together for five years, and they first lived in an apartment in Barcelona, Spain—but they soon realized the shared-bedroom setup wasn’t working for them. When the Covid pandemic hit and remote work became the norm, the strain only increased. Both are industrial designers, and with work and home suddenly occupying the same space, Júlia decided to rent an apartment a few streets away. The arrangement offered some respite, but it soon became a financial burden. so they began looking beyond the city for more room and a better quality of life.

Before: Exterior

Before: Seeking more room for themselves and their design practices, Júlia Muñoz and Ferran Lajara moved from Barcelona, Spain, to the town of Castellterçol and teamed up with A Space About and Lagranja Design to renovate a three-story town house.

Photo courtesy of Lagranja

After: Exterior

The design team added an extra arched window to both floors to create more symmetry and bring in more daylight. Work on the patio is on hold for the moment, although the owners envision plants that will adapt to the location’s cold winter climate, a pond to attract birds, and a garden that is truly lush—like you are living in nature. 

Photo by Richard Gaston

After an extensive search, they found what they were looking for: a three-story town house in Castellterçol, a picturesque village about an hour’s drive north of Barcelona. Dating to the 1930s, it had all the space they wanted, but it was in poor condition.

The couple turned to Lagranja, the Barcelona design studio where Ferran had previously worked, to help transform it into their dream home. Lagranja, in turn, partnered with A Space About, a young studio founded by two former Lagranja designers. With Ferran and Júlia at the helm, the team embarked on a productive, creative, and often emotional renovation journey that would span two years.

Before: Entry

Before: The woodwork throughout the residence was in poor condition, so little could be saved. The owners also wanted their home to have a sophisticated city feel, unlike a traditional country house. Achieving this balance was one of the main challenges for the two design studios that worked on the project.

Photo courtesy of Lagranja

See the full story on Dwell.com: Before & After: With a €512K Reno, a Couple Found Space to Live Separately but Together

Your Favorite Podcast Wants to Make You Feel at Home

As more money flows into the medium, professionally designed sets that mimic domestic backdrops have become the go-to ingredient for keeping things candid.

I have to imagine I’m not the only person who has said to a friend, "We should start a podcast." I have a clear memory of having this conversation with a former roommate after one of our frequent evening debriefs, sitting on opposite sides of our gray, L-shaped sofa beneath a gallery wall, our legs tucked under blankets and kicked up on the water-stained West Elm storage coffee table sourced from Facebook Marketplace. If we had started a podcast (we didn’t), that table is probably where we would’ve set up microphones to casually record our ramblings. If there were enough people out there who wanted to listen (we’ll never know!), our setup would’ve likely eventually evolved to include at least one video camera. But we might not have felt the need to change our "studio" setting; today, the lived-in backdrop would’ve fit right in with the look of many of the most popular podcasts out there. 

As podcasts have swung from an audio-only medium to a video-centric one, with Youtube becoming the dominant platform for consumption, the lines between video podcasts ("vodcasts") and traditional television talk shows, late night, and cable newscasts have increasingly blurred. Professionally designed recording studios are now the norm; most new talk show podcasts launch with built-out sets, and ones that started before podcasting’s major pivot to video around 2020 have adjusted to meet the moment. At first, that just meant starting a Youtube channel with video recordings of podcast episodes, but since 2023 (upon close study), numerous major podcasters have unveiled full-on recording studio overhauls. And across categories, from pop culture "chat-casts" to expert interview and political commentary shows, those sets overwhelmingly pull from domestic aesthetics, whether they’re filmed in at-home studios or production headquarters. The central notion is that the most interesting, honest, and natural conversations happen between people in the comfort of their homes—and wouldn’t anybody want to be a fly on the wall for those?

Interwoven Studios and creative director Connor Brock designed the set for Jake Shane’s Therapuss podcast before its first season. They updated it for the show’s second season (shown left) and for the third on Netflix. Interwoven and Brock also designed the studio for What We Said (top). The Dear Media podcast launched in 2018, added video in 2024, and debuted the new set at the end of that year. So True With Caleb Hearon started recording from a new, built-out studio when it was picked up by Wave Sports and Entertainment in late 2025 (right).

Left to right: Courtesy Interwoven Studios; Courtesy Dear Media; So True with Caleb Hearon via Youtube

The nostalgic lounge

When you start looking, there are some clear aesthetic categories that emerge. One of the most recognizable examples of a category I’ll call "the blast-from-the-past living room/lounge" is the wood-paneled backdrop of Therapuss, the talk show–style podcast from influencer/comedian Jake Shane that was among a slew of well-established titles licensed by Netflix in early 2026 (when the streamer ignited a race amongst major streaming services to add video podcasts to their platforms). Before the show’s first season in 2024, Shane and his team approached Los Angeles production services company Interwoven Studios and creative director Connor Brock to design the set, and asked for something along the lines of a "midcentury-modern-inspired therapist’s office," Brock says. They built a distinctly of the internet-era vision of a 1960s den—er, shrink’s office—in the guesthouse behind Shane’s L.A. home. In one episode, Shane and Charli XCX kick up their feet on blue velvet lounges, the framed faux certificates behind them reminding of Shane’s position in "the proverbial therapist’s chair," while the TAYLOR SWIFT ERAS TOUR bumper sticker propped on a bookshelf gestures that he, like the audience, is ultimately just a pop culture stan.

Interwoven cofounder Chance Horky says Shane’s team made "a purposeful investment" in the look of the set as Therapuss took off in its second season, though he declined to discuss numbers. In came a stick-on stone accent wall, patterned rug, and Eamesesque wood-and-leather sofas to add visual texture; out went the Eras Tour sticker and the wood-and-brass bar cart. In the third (exclusive-to-Netflix) season, the framed certificates are the main signifiers that we’re not just in the warm-but-spotless living room of a chronically online person who spends a sufficient chunk of their income on taste-signaling home decor. A-list guests like Hailey Bieber and Kylie Jenner lean into the brown velvet couch and talk to Shane like he’s a friend (indeed, he runs in the same circles as many of his superfamous guests). The environment is shiny enough for fully styled and glammed celebrities to not feel totally out of place in (hello, chrome accents!), but still within-reach for the pop culture devotee watching through the screen to project themselves into.

Some living room-like podcast sets lean into similarly stylized nostalgia for past eras that the hosts and audience actually know firsthand. The set where Arizona-born influencers Jaci Marie Smith and Chelsey Jade Curtis film their lifestyle podcast What We Said—also designed by Brock with Interwoven—could easily be the childhood bedroom of a wealthy New Englander whose empty-nester parents took the space and repurposed it as a reading corner, leaving the baby-pink-and-blue wallpaper and the bulletin board with Polaroids and Post-Its but making space for their World Atlas collection. Brock says the duo’s team gave them a mood board to illustrate the aesthetic they wanted, which he describes as "like, Northeastern rich girl from the Nineties." When the podcasters talk through relationship red flags and "unhinged wellness habits" or stories about wedding drama and accidental texts on chintz-style upholstered chairs, we’re supposed to feel like we’re watching two hometown besties-cum-sorority sisters locking in on a gossip session, and lucky you, you got the invite.

By contrast, comedian Caleb Hearon’s So True got a new set last year that could be a believable pop-up for an Urban Outfitters collab with the children’s book classic, Goodnight Moon. The aesthetics—a green-tiled fireplace with colorful camp pennant flags, and a wall-mounted cord landline—help suggest the tone: We’re in a space that might remind millennials of ones they played and learned in as children, so expect conversations that bounce between silly, intellectual, and earnest.

In Your Dreams With Owen Thiele launched in 2024 under Alex Cooper’s Unwell Network with a Y2K-inspired bedroom set where he films the podcast from his home (left). Influencer Becca Moore also started her For the Girls podcast in 2024 and by the end of that year started recording episodes from a professionally designed at-home studio (right).

Left to right: In Your Dreams With Owen Thiele via Youtube; For the Girls with Becca Moore via Youtube

The Y2K bedroom

Unsurprising to anyone who’s had even one eye open to what the kids have been into over the past few years, the Y2K bedroom is a more specific subset of the nostalgic podcast set that’s a go-to backdrop for a certain type of zillennial chat-cast. In Owen Thiele’s In Your Dreams, the influencer/comedian curls up on an unmade bed dense with fuzzy pillows and plushies with Gen Z favorites like Emma Chamberlain, who lean against a wall plastered with cutouts from their own magazine spreads alongside Taylor Swift album covers (clearly a quick signifier of 21st-century fan culture) and flyers for canons of early-aughts media like Lizzie McGuire. The hyperstylized slumber party aesthetic begets a manufactured atmosphere of familiarity where Thiele can ask Kendall Jenner, for example, to address internet rumors about her sexuality in a way that Jimmy Fallon could never in a more late-night talk show setting. Remember, this is a sleepover where personal lore is shared—not a traditional media interview.

The set of influencer Becca Moore’s For the Girls (a double entendre for the intended demographic of her podcast, and also her romantic interests) also borrows from the decorative hallmarks of the era. Moore talks directly to the camera about her own dating stories and interviews other queer influencers on a pink Togo-style sofa with a cheetah print blanket and throw pillows. Behind her, there’s a bulletin board with butterfly clips, a Clamshell Macbook, a bedazzled desk chair, and baby-pink walls strewn with cutouts of 2000s pop girl icons like Britney Spears, and queer canon media moments like the iconic Megan Fox lighter shot in Jennifer’s Body.

If the Y2K bedroom podcast studio looks more believably lived-in than "the blast-from-the-past living room/lounge," that’s on purpose. "It’s always towing the line that you see just enough of my mess to feel like we’re hanging out, but also I’m a content creator," explains Christine Tran, an assistant professor at Alberta University of the Arts whose research covers digital culture, domesticity, and the creator economy. "There’s still that professional sheen."

As far as domestic spaces go, the bedroom is the one that most reliably signals intimacy, but Tran argues that it also carries a particularly gendered undertone. "Bedrooms have historically afforded women spaces of safety and networking," she says. "Scholars have looked at the bedroom as a rehearsal room for the type of femininities and social-emotional labor that girls are expected to perform outside the home." Youth culture theorists Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber introduced the concept of "bedroom culture" in a late ’70s essay highlighting how teen girls of the time participated in subcultures in their private domestic spaces, and researchers have pointed to girls’ bedrooms as "sites of cultural production" since the ’90s and 2000s especially: of zines, of blogs, of fanfic, of mixtapes, of dances, and, eventually, of Youtube and TikTok vlogs and GRWMs. The Y2K bedroom set expresses an unabashed embrace of culture typically deemed feminine (and usually also vapid, for that reason); millennial viewers can recognize it from their own upbringings, and younger generations from depictions on-screen. The background mosaic says something about who the host is, and also who their followers are likely, too. But, Tran says: "It’s important to note that these backgrounds default to suburban, middle-class, white-coded, American-coded settings. And very idealized ones. I think these nostalgic responses, these middle-class fantasies are a way of harmonizing those class differences."

Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper tapped the designer behind her L.A. mansion renovation to redo her podcast studio twice since 2023 (top). Khloé Kardashian launched her Dear Media podcast Khloé in Wonder Land in 2025; it records from a Calabasas studio (left). The at-home set where influencers (and friends to the Kardashians) Victoria Villarroel and Stas Karanikolaou record their Better Half podcast splits the difference between Cooper’s hyperfeminine backdrop and Kardashian’s luxe but minimal one (right).

Left to right: Khloé in Wonder Land via Youtube; Call Her Daddy via Youtube; Better Half with Stas & Vic via Youtube

See the full story on Dwell.com: Your Favorite Podcast Wants to Make You Feel at Home

Do Plywood Interiors Hold Up?

The material can discolor and is hard to patch. We spoke with architects who used it in projects covered by Dwell to find out how they’re looking now.

Plywood has been a staple of modernist design since the 1940s, when American architects began transforming it into Dri-Bilt homes. Today, it lines houses around the world from ceiling to floor, as architects take full advantage of its ease of manufacturing, flexible structure, and distinctive grain. And while its aesthetic appeal has lasted almost a century, it’s not the first material that comes to mind when considering durability. But, as we found out, those who’ve worked with the materials themselves beg to differ.

For a ground-up, net-zero house in the L.A. neighborhood of Highland Park, Project Room principal Isaac Resnikoff and his in-laws at Louis Wasserman & Associates made a complete family home from plywood—floors, ceilings, custom furniture, walls, the lot. For those wondering if the material can stand up to the rigors of daily life with young children, good news: "We moved in about August 2019," Resnikoff says, "and over the seven years, it’s held up very well: durable and beautiful." In constructing their two-bedroom, two-bathroom "Unfinished House" in Tiny, Ontario, Workshop Architects relied on raw plywood almost exclusively. "The plywood on walls, ceiling and mezzanine floors was sanded and finished with two coats of Osmo Natural Oil Woodstain in 701 Clear Matte," says principal Helena Grdadolnik. "They typically say to refinish it every three to five years in areas that aren’t high use, but it has been almost five years and it doesn’t look like it needs it." Though, of course, the fact that the vacation house being unoccupied for part of the year doesn’t hurt with the wear and tear.

The color of the plywood in Atelier—Heyman Hamilton’s cabin aged between 2023 (left) and 2025 (right).

Left to right: Photo by Andy Liffner; Photo by Andrew van Leeuwen

What worked in the dry climate of northeast Los Angeles and the woodsy bays of Ontario was equally right in southeast Sweden, where Atelier—Heyman Hamilton renovated a 1970s cabin with pine plywood for use as a weekend home. Three years of Nordic weather later, "No repairs have been made, and no sheets have been replaced," reports co-founder James Hamilton. "The key is specifying the right quality of plywood. In Sweden, BB/X pine plywood is a few steps below furniture grade, has no knots or defects on one side, and is cost-effective."

The material lasts. Its original hue may not. "We knew it would darken and age unevenly over time, with areas exposed to direct sunlight changing faster than those in the shade," says Hamilton. "This uneven aging process was a specific quality we were interested in exploring." Resnikoff anticipated a shift, too. "We wanted wood that would not yellow with time, and of course that’s kind of impossible," he says. A lacquer with a bit of white pigment helps mitigate that. "There’s definitely a little bit of yellowing, but it’s not that dramatic! And it’s a satin finish, which feels really nice."

Of course running your hands across the satin plywood has an effect, over time, never mind the more constant wear and tear of family life. Resnikoff has noticed the floors take it the hardest. "It’s a softer floor than you might normally have, so it’s going to get dinged. We have two stools by the kitchen island, and their feet dig the floor a little bit. I think it has almost a hammered patina. When we did it, we thought in ten years we’d probably have to replace it. We don’t feel like that’s inevitable, at this point." Hamilton has also been impressed with the appearance of aging. "Because the cabin is a weekend home, surface wear could even be left intentionally unattended to allow for an uneven, character-rich aging process where areas with rubbed-off finish darken faster."

Differences in the "Unfinished House" are minimal between 2024 (left) and a recent photo (right). The wood hasn’t required refinishing in the nearly five years since it was installed.

Left to right: Photo by Scott Norsworthy; Photo courtesy Helena Grdadolnik

There’s patina, however, and then there’s punctures. In the "Unfinished House" Grdadolnik had to relocate the thermostat from the main floor to the warmer mezzanine. "That left a small hole in the wall where the wires attached," she says. That was an easy fix, but it taught her to be careful. "Plywood is less forgiving than drywall, it can’t be patched or replaced without being noticeable," she says. "So plan any lighting, wall switches, and equipment in advance, and think twice before cutting holes in the wall."

That’s assuming you’re seeking a book-matched effect. If so, designers recommend purchasing extra panels and lacquering them alongside the pieces that’ll be used for construction, so that they’ll age together. "We selected a spruce plywood finish with a very strong pattern that came as a bunk from a mill, so the patterns match. If in the future we would need to replace a sheet on a wall or in the ceiling, it would be hard to match and the difference could be noticeable," Grdadolnik says. "You see other interiors using clear birch plywood, which has less personality, but would be easier to replace with a similar look."

Time has given Isaac Resnikoff’s home a slight yellowing, as seen in photos from 2021 (left) and 2024 (right).

Left to right: Photo by José Mandojana; Photo by Emanuel Hahn

See the full story on Dwell.com: Do Plywood Interiors Hold Up?
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Budget Breakdown: A Tiny Red Addition Adds a Radical Amount of Utility for a Family of Four

South of Prague, the 210-square-foot extension creates one open, fluid living space that’s flush with built-in seating and storage.

In 2017, Zuzana Fuhrmannova and her partner, Tomas Binder, began renting a small house in Nečín, a village in the Czech Republic’s Central Bohemian region about 25 miles south of Prague. Zuzana, a property manager who works from home about once a week, had been looking for a suitable place to raise her then two young sons from a previous marriage. She found out about the rental, an approximately 1,146-square foot weekend cabin, through an acquaintance and reached out to the owner. They settled on an unusual agreement: instead of paying rent, they would partially renovate the house.

"We cleared it out, converted the attic into living space, put in a kitchen, and made other minor improvements," says Tomas, who works mostly from home in online marketing. "The renovation was done on a very tight budget, with only the absolute essentials so that the four of us could somehow live there."

Zuzana Fuhrmannova and Tomas Binder bought a cabin they had been renting and expanded it with a red addition, designed and constructed by Facha Architekti.

Photo by Peter Fabo

A few years later, the couple decided to make an offer on the home. It took a year to convince the owner to sell—"he had an emotional attachment to the house," Tomas says—but they closed in 2020. As it was now the family of four's permanent home, they called on Prague studio Facha Architekti for another round of improvements. "They wanted to create a home that would support everyday family living and working from home, while keeping operating costs as low as possible," says Matej Nepustil, one of the four architects who make up Facha. "They also wanted the house to be a welcoming place to host gatherings with family and friends."

Facha enlarged the main living space, relocated the entrance, and enhanced the connection to the garden, all of which was achieved by adding a bold, red extension to the west side of the house. "We liked the original volume of the house and did not want to redefine it," says Nepustil. "The extension was conceived as a clearly legible addition, deliberately distinguishable from the older building."

Clad in corrugated metal, it expands the home by more than 200 square feet with a new entrance and living space, and connects with the yard via wide steps and a deck. A floor-to-ceiling slider was one of the more expensive elements of the project.

Photo by Peter Fabo

A red awning reaches down to the deck to provide complete shade to the interiors.

Photo by Peter Fabo

See the full story on Dwell.com: Budget Breakdown: A Tiny Red Addition Adds a Radical Amount of Utility for a Family of Four