The Meaning of Home: What Anthropology Can Teach Us About Interior Design

What makes a house feel like home - not just a roof over your head, but a space that holds identity, emotion, and meaning?

Over the summer, I spent my Monday evenings exploring that very question on The Anthropology of Space and Place course at City Lit. It’s been a fascinating detour from my day-to-day work as an interior designer, and one that’s prompted me to think more deeply about how we inhabit and shape the spaces around us.

Interior design is often about aesthetics, function, and flow - but it’s also about stories: the quiet rituals, personal histories, and cultural layers that turn a collection of rooms into something profoundly human. Anthropology, as it turns out, is the perfect lens through which to look at that.

Anthropology is Really Looking Beyond the Walls

The course took us far beyond the familiar boundaries of “home,” exploring how humans across time and place have imbued their environments with meaning.We studied ideas of gendered space, colonised landscapes, and the politics of place - learning how culture, community, and belief systems shape everything from architecture to the arrangement of furniture.

A few moments that stayed with me:

• The Djenne Mosque in Mali, the largest mud building in the world, restored each year through a community ritual that turns architecture into an act of shared belonging.

• The work of Emily Kam Kngwarreye, an Aboriginal artist who began painting at 57 and transformed her understanding of landscape into sweeping visual language - a reminder that creativity is also a way of mapping identity.

• The haunting beauty of Embrace of the Serpent, a film set in the Colombian Amazon, where space becomes a metaphor for loss, discovery, and spiritual connection.

• The Gurunsi homes in Burkina Faso, earthen dwellings painted by women with intricate geometric murals - a vivid celebration of heritage and homemaking as artistic expression.

Each of these examples challenged the Western idea of home as static, private, or purely functional. Instead, they revealed it as something dynamic and living - shaped by culture, care, and connection.

Designing with Depth and Meaning

These lessons have reshaped how I think about design. A home isn’t simply styled; it’s lived into. Every material, colour, and object carries a story, and every space has the power to communicate something about who we are and what we value.

At Kinder Design, our work has always been guided by this idea - that good design is thoughtful, human-centred, and emotionally resonant. Studying anthropology has deepened that philosophy. It’s reminded me that interiors are never neutral: they are cultural artefacts, evolving with the people who inhabit them.

Spaces That Tell Stories

Taking time each week to step away from projects and think critically about why we design, not just how, has been invaluable. I’ve come away from this course inspired by the way humans across centuries have shaped their environments with imagination, resourcefulness, and ritual.

Whether through mud walls, modernist lines, or family heirlooms, the urge to make space our own is universal. And perhaps that’s the true meaning of home: a physical expression of who we are and what we care about.

If you’d like to create a home that feels meaningful, layered with your own stories and identity, we’d love to help you design it.