Home space

Billy from DIY SOS

Flatpack flatline

DIY giant B&Q is in trouble. Does this mean our love affair with DIY is over? Anjali Bakhru assembles the facts in DIY RIP.

Changing Rooms, Big Strong Boys, Home Front, Real Rooms, DIY SOS… The list of DIY makeover programmes on television grew and grew in the early years of this century. But what was the appeal?

Although often seen as entertainment, rather than educational or instructive, it would seem that these programmes may well be inspirational. There has been a noticeable change in the way that people are spending their money, increasingly willing to spend a greater percentage of their disposable income on household improvements, placing a personal stamp on their homes.

This is more than being house-proud, or ‘keeping up with the neighbours’; this is about an expression of personal image. In the same way that people have concerned themselves with presenting themselves through their choice of clothes, it appears that more and more people are just as concerned with ensuring that their home says something positive and individual about themselves.

And it’s not just a matter of the decor; the home has become the location of many people’s entertainment, particularly for the middle-aged. No longer going out as frequently, perhaps due to responsibilities of young children, the home takes on this added dimension. From inviting friends over for dinner parties to staying in with a film, the home takes on an increasingly important role. Not just a place to live, but also an entertainment Mecca.

The role of technology in providing such entertainment in our homes has persistently increased over the last century. The introduction of the gramophone and the wireless may have started the ball rolling, but for better or worse, the television has perhaps been the single most dominant form.

With the recent explosion of DVDs, large wide-screen televisions and surround-sound systems, the potential to create a cinema-style experience in our own homes has come within reach. And given the rapidly decreasing cost of such technology, it’s quickly becoming more affordable. But that’s not to say that it’s immediately appealing. There’s still the consideration of how its presence in the room will have on the image that it presents, or perhaps reflects, about its owner(s).

Whilst the vast array of speakers that help make up a surround sound system don’t have to dominate an average living room like some audio Stonehenge, it’s probably fair to say that the bigger the screen in a cinema style set-up, the better. Despite falling prices space saving alternatives such as flat plasma screens are still way above the price range of most people, leaving the traditional big, heavy and bulky sets as the only real option for anything approaching a sensible price range.

Given the ridiculous amount of space that, say, a wide-screen 32” television takes up, installing one could easily make it not a focal point of the lounge (as the television has often been over the past few decades) but the dominant one. Whilst some might be prepared to put up with this intrusion, or even embrace it, others balk at the prospect.

Of course to a certain extent this is self-selecting; if people don’t want a cinema in their front room, then they won’t go shopping for one. But if someone wants the facilities offered by the technology but doesn’t want it to dominate the room, or someone wants the kit but their partner refuses to have their lounge taken over, then somehow a balance has to be found.

If this were the case, then would it be possible to ‘read’ a room, such as the lounge, and make judgements about how the occupants relate to technology? Maybe a huge television surrounded by massive speaker stacks and power amplifiers would suggest a young single man wishing to make a strong statement about his love of technology? Perhaps a discrete set of satellite speakers hanging from the walls and surrounding a screen hidden, when not in use, behind the wooden veneer of a ‘fake’ cabinet might indicate a middle-aged couple without a desire to have technology crowding out their living space?

But such vague hand waving is next to useless. Maybe the owners of the massive speaker stacks bought them because they were cheaper, not because they are happy to fill their room with kit? These days it might be more realistic to think that discrete is better- who brags about how big their mobile phone is? Perhaps smaller is better for those most comfortable with technology? But then again, perhaps the owners of the ‘discrete’ set-up are parents of young children who simply wish to keep things away from prying fingers?

It seems quite feasible that people’s sensibilities about technology may play a part in how it sits in their living rooms, but there are so many other factors that could be involved, from finances to style and a myriad of others in-between. This is where the skills of social science are needed. You can’t simply have a look round a few people’s houses to get an idea of how people choose to bring technology into their homes. Carefully considered techniques must be used in order to start to tease apart the variety of factors that influence such decisions. And in order to make any useful comment, social scientists can’t just look at a couple of examples, they need to combine real data from many sources with powerful analytical tools.