How Social Media Changed Restaurant Design and the Places We Photograph
Reported by Mitch Goldstone, Chief Photo Archivist, ScanMyPhotos.comÂ
I was thinking about restaurant design recently and realized something slightly ridiculous. The restaurant isn’t just looking at us anymore. It’s posing for our phones. You know the wall I’m talking about. Maybe it’s covered in flowers. Maybe there’s a neon sentence that sounds vaguely inspirational. Whatever it is, sooner or later somebody stands in front of it while a friend backs up with a phone.
That wall may not be there simply because an interior designer thought the room needed something pretty. It may be waiting for you.
Would That Wall Exist Without Instagram?
This isn’t my imagination. Restaurant designers have talked openly about creating places where customers will want to take pictures. Years ago, PBS reported on restaurants deliberately carving out what designers were already calling “Instagrammable moments.” One Los Angeles restaurant had a 75-foot walkway surrounded by foliage that people naturally stopped to photograph. It was designed with that behavior in mind. It got wonderfully specific elsewhere. One Charlotte restaurant painted lettering backward on a bathroom mural so the words would appear correctly in a mirror selfie. That’s not decorating a bathroom. That’s designing for the photograph that hasn’t been taken yet.
Once you notice this, it’s difficult to stop noticing it. It’s also about the table and food presentation, since many people now photograph everything. Beyond the “I’m here and you’re not” posts.
The interesting part isn’t that people photograph restaurants. We’ve photographed beautiful places forever. Something flipped. Instead of us deciding which parts of the world deserve a photograph, parts of the world are now being built specifically to become one.
Apparently the Bathroom Has a Publicist
Restaurants figured out that customers could become their photographers without being asked. Make something irresistible to photograph, and people voluntarily put your restaurant in front of everyone they know. Suddenly the odd hallway matters. The bathroom mirror matters. Even lighting becomes part of the marketing calculation. Smithsonian was writing about this transformation years ago, noting how restaurants were becoming lighter and more photo-friendly and how design choices were being made with social sharing in mind.
There’s nothing particularly sinister about this. If I owned a restaurant and discovered that people wanted to photograph one wall 500 times a night, I probably wouldn’t tear it down. I might dust it up, make a prominent branded display with the dotcom name to be promoted as people post.
We Used to Photograph the Experience
This is the part I find fascinating. For most of photography’s history, the place came first. The Grand Canyon didn’t need to think about its camera angle. Disneyland certainly understood spectacle, but people photographed it because it was Disneyland. Your neighborhood restaurant didn’t need a designated spot where you could stand beneath a glowing sentence and become part of its advertising campaign. Now the photograph can arrive surprisingly early in the design process.
One restaurant designer told The Independent that the thinking has moved beyond creating a single Instagram corner. Designers know the whole space will be photographed and consider how it will look through someone else’s lens. That’s a remarkable little reversal. We once photographed places because they looked interesting. Now places sometimes look interesting because somebody wants us to photograph them.
Then We Started Building Places That Barely Exist Without the Camera
The logical conclusion may be the so called selfie museum. These aren’t museums in the traditional sense. The attraction is essentially a collection of environments where visitors can put themselves in the picture. That’s an astonishing change when you think about it. The camera used to be something you brought to the attraction.
Now the camera can be the reason the attraction exists. And I don’t necessarily hate that. People are having fun. They’re making pictures they like. Businesses discovered something customers enjoy and built around it. What interests me is how quietly the change happened. Nobody held a meeting and announced that restaurants should start considering the camera as another customer.
They just did.
I Have One Question for the Flower Wall
The next time you see one of those suspiciously perfect “insta ready” backgrounds in a restaurant, hotel lobby or store, look at it for a second before taking the picture. Would somebody have designed this exact thing if smartphones had never existed? Sometimes the answer will obviously be yes. Beautiful design didn’t begin with Instagram. But every once in a while, you’ll look at a wall covered in artificial flowers with a glowing sentence floating in the middle and know perfectly well what’s going on.
That wall isn’t really talking to you. It’s talking to your camera. Businesses knew that long before digital photographs, when analog 35mm SLR cameras were all we had, people rarely carried them around. Much less in everyone’s pocket with unlimited, not 24 or 36 exposures.
Most common FAQs
Why do restaurants design Instagrammable spaces? Restaurants create photogenic spaces because customers may photograph and share them, giving the restaurant visibility beyond the people inside. Designers have openly said they plan restaurant features with social sharing in mind.
Did Instagram really change restaurant design? Yes. Designers have described changing lighting, backgrounds and even entire interiors because they know customers will photograph and share the spaces.
What makes a restaurant Instagrammable? Photogenic lighting, distinctive backgrounds and visually memorable architectural or decorative features can make people more likely to photograph a restaurant. There is no single formula, and some designers now consider how the entire room appears through a camera rather than creating one designated selfie spot.
