Your Next Source of Home Design Inspiration
If you are planning a renovation, building a new home—or simply dreaming about what your home could become—your next design inspiration might already be sitting on your Netflix home screen. Netflix has introduced The Culture Edit, a new destination bringing together short-form content from some of the world’s most influential names in design, interiors, food, travel, fashion and culture. And for anyone with an interest in homes, it offers a particularly tempting collection of inspiration. Rather than watching another renovation competition, The Culture Edit gives us the opportunity to step inside remarkable homes, explore architectural ideas and see how designers and creatives actually live.
Open the door to design inspiration
One of the highlights for interiors lovers is Architectural Digest’s Open Door, alongside a collection of other design-focused series including Behind the Design, Blueprints, Unique Spaces, Small Spaces, On the Market and Designers in the Wild. These aren’t simply home tours. They are an opportunity to look at a home differently. Notice how rooms connect. Look at the relationship between architecture and furniture. Pay attention to natural light, materials, colour, artwork and the way personal objects are incorporated into a space. For anyone renovating, this can be far more valuable than simply saving another image to Pinterest.
Inspiration before you make the big decisions
Renovating a home can involve hundreds of decisions—from the layout and kitchen configuration to flooring, lighting, joinery, paint colours and bathroom finishes. The danger is becoming focused on individual products rather than the overall feeling you want your home to have. This is where watching beautifully designed homes can help. Instead of asking “What colour kitchen should I choose?”, you might start asking:
How do I want my home to feel?
Warm and layered?
Minimal and architectural?
Classic with contemporary details?
Relaxed and connected to the outdoors?
Bold, colourful and highly individual?
Seeing how designers approach complete spaces can help you develop a much stronger design direction before you start making expensive decisions.
Look beyond the trend
One of the most valuable things about The Culture Edit is the opportunity to see a broad range of interiors rather than one prescribed idea of what a fashionable home should look like. That matters when you’re creating a home that you want to enjoy for years.Use these tours as a way to identify what genuinely appeals to you. Perhaps it is a particular timber, an unexpected combination of materials, the proportions of a room, a beautifully designed staircase or the way a home frames its garden. You don’t need to recreate someone else’s house. Take the idea, not the house.
For those building a new home
If you’re at the beginning of a new-build project, watching architectural and interiors content can be particularly useful. Look at the things that are difficult to change later: ceiling heights, window placement, orientation, circulation, indoor-outdoor connections, built-in storage and the relationship between rooms. A beautiful piece of furniture can always be changed. A poorly considered floor plan is considerably harder to fix. The Culture Edit’s architectural content can therefore be a useful prompt to think beyond finishes and consider the bones of your home first.
It’s the details that give a home its personality
Some of the most inspiring ideas may not come from an entire room, but from the details within it—a beautifully curved wall, a perfectly framed view, a sculptural statement light or open shelving filled with collected pieces. It could be a dramatic stone benchtop, an unexpected splash of colour inside a cupboard or the contrast of a vintage find alongside contemporary furniture. These considered touches are what can transform a beautifully styled house into a home that feels personal, layered and uniquely yours.
Don’t forget the kitchen
The Culture Edit also extends into food and entertaining, with content from publishers including Bon Appétit, Eater, Epicurious, Food & Wine and Tastemade. For homeowners, this is another unexpected source of design inspiration. Watch how people cook, entertain and use their kitchens. These observations can be surprisingly helpful when planning your own space. After all, a beautiful kitchen isn’t just about how it looks—it is about how you live in it.
Do they gather around an island?
Is the kitchen open to the living space?
How much storage do they need?
Is the dining area formal or relaxed?
How does the kitchen connect with outdoor entertaining?
Turn Inspiration Into a Design Plan
The next time you watch a home tour, don’t just admire the spaces—use them as inspiration for your own. Create a renovation folder and start noting the ideas that catch your eye. Consider what you love and would like to incorporate, what you might adapt to suit your home, and what looks beautiful but simply isn’t right for your lifestyle. You can also keep a list of ideas to explore, from materials and layouts to lighting, colours and architectural details. Over time, these observations become more than a collection of beautiful images—they begin to form a personal design brief for your home.
Your Home Doesn’t Have to Look Like Anyone Else’s
Perhaps the greatest value of The Culture Edit is the opportunity to discover homes, designers, architecture and interiors from around the world—ideas we might never otherwise encounter. For New Zealand homeowners, this global perspective can be particularly inspiring, but inspiration doesn’t mean imitation. The best renovation takes the ideas you love and translates them into a home that works for your site, architecture, climate, lifestyle and personality. So rather than simply searching for another beautiful image, use The Culture Edit to look at homes differently and discover what could inspire your own.
Watch, Save & Start Imagining
Now available on Netflix in New Zealand, The Culture Edit brings together a curated collection of short-form series exploring architecture, interiors, gardens, kitchens, food and the way people live. For anyone planning a renovation or building a new home, it’s an easy way to discover ideas, save inspiration and start imagining what your own space could become. And you never know—the home you fall in love with on screen might just spark the idea that transforms your own.