How Instagram elevated the coffee machine into a key home design element

In one of his many beautifully shot reels, Instagram influencer Nick Lowry walks into the kitchen of his artfully decorated NYC apartment and switches on his shiny steel coffee machine. This morning, he’s making a cup of Cafe Bombon – “strong coffee served with a bit of condensed milk”, or what we know as Vietnamese coffee.  

In a voiceover, Lowry details the history of the beverage as the video shows him making it: measuring out beans, grinding them with a spritz of water, prepping the portafilter, filling half a clear glass with condensed milk, placing it on the drip tray for its espresso shot, and slowly mixing up a delicious concoction. 

Even as Lowry savours his Cafe Bombon, your eye is drawn to the space within which he’s operating. The machine, a gleaming Rocket Espresso Appartamento, sits on the granite counter in a dedicated corner of his kitchen. The wall above it holds a shelf stacked with boxes of beans, accessories, mugs, next to a framed Matisse poster. 

Lowry’s tiny coffee bar is the product of a pandemic hobby, as he wrote in response to a comment asking if he’d trained as a barista. A cursory glance at Instagram shows that he’s not the only one whose relationship with java has acquired a new depth. There are over 165 million posts on Instagram filed under #coffee; 1.5 million under #coffeebar and 769K under #homebarista.

#coffee

There are recipes and tutorials to save, new gadgets and accessories to be thirsty for, elaborate meticulously-designed to be inspired by and mimic. There are #asmr crossovers which tune you into the sounds of coffee beans clinking in jars, espressos pouring slowly being into glass. There are #restock videos, tying in with a new trend dubbed #pantryporn, pulling you in with their makers’ organisational prowess and aura of abundance.

The pandemic created a new awareness of the spaces that are our homes. As the lines between our exterior and interior lives collapsed, many of us sought to remake the outside world in our private spheres. Our cluttered desktops transformed into islands of productivity, replete with colourful accessories, humidifiers, candles, stationery and art.

We added cushions, throws, rugs to our living rooms to make them cozier. Our home theatres got specced out with the most cutting-edge sound bars and screen. We began to carve out pockets – a corner of the balcony for meditation, a section of the guest room for yoga, a dedicated reading section. When commuting was impossible, we could at least travel within our homes to perform those daily rituals. And few things are as ritualistic as that morning cup of joe.

Two years later, those homes have transformed into the stage on which we orchestrate everyday activities but amplified into something grander with a camera or two watching. This is the Instagram effect: homes, like more social spaces such as restaurants, bars, pubs, cafes, are being designed with an audience in mind. Enter: The home coffee bar.

Personal coffee bar

A DIY coffee bar in homes has been a trending topic in the world of interiors lately. Look at #coffeebar on Instagram: Clearly, where there’s a caff-fiend’s will, there’s a shrine for the go juice. Whether it’s the top of a cabinet in the living room of your matchbox-sized apartment or a column of a wall in the island kitchen of a country farmhouse, there’s a lot of aesthetic appeal in open shelving, a few mismatched mugs, jars for beans or pods, and brewing equipment.

On Instagram, @latte.w.laura posts a coffee how-to every day from her kitchen, a corner of whose marble-top counter is dedicated to coffee – a Nespresso machine, a drawer full of capsules, a tray full of bottles of syrups, creams and sprinkles. Surf through interior designers’ pages – such as @bannerdayinteriors and @marieflanigan – to see the space next to the sink in an island kitchen can be styled to accommodate a coffee bar.