Middle-class pursuit of Insta-friendly kitchens a distraction from the real problems with our homes

Pressure to perform prosperity is relentless in this era of waste and inequality

Orla McAndrew: 'Within a generation, we’ve gone from homes built on thrift and hand-me-downs to homes measured in quartz worktops and co-ordinated colour palettes.'

I have a new kitchen. It is bright, functional, photogenic, a joy to work in. As a chef, I needed the upgrade. But I also wanted it to look right. That’s the truth. In doing so, I’ve succumbed, at least partly, to the aesthetic pressure of modern Ireland.

And here’s the other truth: I had to make sacrifices to get here. It wasn’t frivolous spending. It was a calculated decision. Brands expect a certain polish when they partner with chefs or creators. They want recipes filmed against clean light and neutral backdrops. 

To continue working with them, and to secure the kind of contracts that allow me to raise my three girls and keep a roof over our heads, I had to build a kitchen that “performed.” It was an investment, not just in cabinetry but in survival. 

And yet, while I’m proud of the space, I’m uneasy too. Because behind every sleek Irish kitchen lies not just private aspiration, but the public story of who we are becoming.

Orla McAndrew: 'Brands expect a certain polish when they partner with chefs or creators. They want recipes filmed against clean light and neutral backdrops....And yet, while I’m proud of the space, I’m uneasy too.'

Within a generation, we’ve gone from homes built on thrift and hand-me-downs to homes measured in quartz worktops and co-ordinated colour palettes. For much of the last century we lived with scarcity. Furniture was passed on, clothes remade, kitchens doubled as everything from homework station to utility room.

Now, in the wake of new wealth, the pressure to perform prosperity is relentless. During the Celtic Tiger, marble countertops were proof you’d arrived. Social media has since doubled down, turning private interiors into public stages. The curated home is the modern calling card of “success”. 

Waste and distraction 

But aesthetics as politics come at a cost. Ireland generated more than 15 million tonnes of waste in 2023, about 8kg per person per day. Construction and demolition alone account for around nine million tonnes. 

Perfectly good kitchens are ripped out not because they fail, but because they date. Meanwhile, our recycling rate has stagnated at 41%, despite endless promises of circularity.

This obsession with surface distracts from deeper failures. It is politically convenient to measure prosperity in marble islands while ignoring mouldy rentals and overcrowded housing. As long as individuals are busy upgrading their private spaces, the pressure eases on government to upgrade public ones.

While influencers share glossy kitchen tours, over 16,000 people are in emergency accommodation, including 5,000 children. File picture: Andy Gibson

The gap between aesthetic aspiration and lived reality is widening.

While influencers share glossy kitchen tours, over 16,000 people are in emergency accommodation, including 5,000 children. This is a record high. At the same time, Dublin alone has more than 14,000 vacant homes and shops, some left empty for years.

Material deprivation is rising too. In 2022, 16.6% of people reported being unable to afford basic goods, up from 13% the year before. Among lone parents, the rate was 42%. So while one part of Ireland debates which shade of paint best offsets a gold tap, another part is struggling to heat their home.

Aesthetics as status sharpen inequality. They create new lines of exclusion in a country already fractured by housing and cost-of-living crises.

It would be easy to frame all this as individual vanity. But the real story is political. Successive governments have outsourced our sense of progress to the consumer sphere. Rather than build housing, we are nudged to build extensions. Rather than tackle inequality, we are sold aesthetics as consolation.

The “shiny kitchen” becomes a distraction from mould-stained social housing. The glossy showroom conceals the reality that our public spaces, libraries, schools, hospitals, remain underfunded. It is no accident that Ireland’s self-image is polished in quartz while its citizens wait years for a medical card or a school place.

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That’s why my own decision feels complicated. On one hand, my kitchen was a business move, an essential tool to continue working with the brands that help me make a living. On the other, it risks feeding into the very culture of aesthetic competition I critique.

And yet, I know with conviction that the meals enjoyed in this new kitchen are no more nourishing than those shared around the ill-fitting table of our old kitchen, because food is about people, not countertops.

The new kitchen brings joy, yes, but it isn’t the source of my richest memories.

A different measure of success 

If Ireland is to grow into its wealth sustainably, we must resist equating aesthetics with worth. 

We must reclaim public spaces and infrastructure as worthy of beauty and investment: libraries, schools, housing estates.

We need a radical re-definition of beauty, one rooted in connection, durability, and shared memory.

A shiny kitchen will date. The stories told around a battered old table will not.