Engaging rooms

“Hey AD, come on in!” Is there a sentence so mindnumbingly soothing as the one chirpily blurted by Hollywood B-listers on Architectural Digest’s Open Door series? Cue a montage of pristine cloud couches, marble countertops, bowls of citrus fruit and moodily lit bespoke basement bars against a generic beat-heavy track, before the celebrity in question (‘off-duty’ in no-makeup-makeup, distressed jeans and crisp white tee) glides through their home gushing over their hand-painted wallpaper and reclaimed stone floors.

I (and plenty of others, I might add – Wiz Khalifa’s home tour currently boasts 54 million views) are enthralled. We eagerly await the release of each new video, licking our chops before gleefully inhaling every morsel, from the envy-inducing (Sienna Miller’s 16th-century, thatch-roofed cottage), to the downright bizarre (Sheryl Crow’s religious paraphernalia-filled chapel). Why can’t we look away? Is it a sense of schadenfreude in response to the deranged design decisions of the ludicrously rich? Yet another form of escapism in an increasingly fraught world?