Home Decor Voyeurs: DesignSponge on Why We Like Looking Into Other Peoples' Houses

By Gendy Alimurung Tue., Jan. 12 2010 at 5:50 AM

Categories: Art, Garden, Interior Decor

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All photos via DesignSponge "Sneak Peeks" gallery. This one is a close up of artist Sophie Blackall's, um, baby doll parts and stuff.

Grace Bonney is the 28-year old Brooklyn-based blogger behind DesignSponge. The "Sneak Peeks" section on her blog is one of the web's most popular places to lurk for a glimpse into peoples' homes.

Alyson Fox's studio

Why do people like to take "sneak peeks" into other peoples houses so much? What is that urge about?

I think the success of the sneak peeks is two fold: people love to learn how to decorate their home through examples, and the peeks give people a chance to indulge in the guilty pleasure of peeking into someone else's personal space and seeing how they live.

Morgan Satterfield

Have you ever shown your own home as a sneak peek?

I saved my home for the relaunch in 2007. When we redesigned the site and moved off of Blogger, the first post we ran was a home tour of our Brooklyn apartment.

Grace Bonney's home

Did you consciously style each room for the photos? Meaning, did you clean up, and arrange the books and accessories in a pleasing way?

Oh man, definitely. I think 99% of the homes we run are styled in some way, whether it's overtly or in a "quick clean up" way. It's tough to put your home out there for 50,000 people to see and not want to put its best foot forward.

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