In 2026 we all want an analog room Device-free space where you can pursue your hobbies

Until just a few years ago, domestic progress was measured in inches and connectivity. The bigger the screen, the smarter the home, the more we felt projected into the future. Today, in an era where every surface, from the fridge to the bathroom mirror, seems to demand our attention with notifications and pixels, the true status symbol is becoming the exact opposite: a room where Wi-Fi can’t get in and screens are banned. Welcome to the era of Analog Rooms.

What are analog rooms?

This is not a Luddite movement or a total rejection of technology. On the contrary, the trend is driven precisely by those who work with technology and live alongside it 24/7. The need for an analog room stems from a sensory overload that has turned being always connected from an opportunity into background noise. The desire is not to return to the past, but to reclaim a physical space for activities that the digital realm has made immaterial or fragmented: reading a paper book, listening to a vinyl record without skipping tracks after thirty seconds, playing a board game, or simply having a conversation while looking each other in the eye.

From an interior design perspective, the analog room is not just an empty space. It is an environment designed around non-digital centers of gravity. If in a traditional living room all the furniture is oriented toward the television, in an analog room the layout changes radically. Seating faces each other, tables become large enough to host maps or musical instruments, and lighting moves away from the cold tones of LEDs toward warm, focused, and restful sources. The aesthetic of these spaces often draws on a tactile nostalgia. Solid wood, velvet, shelves filled with physical books, and vintage turntables are not just stylistic choices, but tools of sensory resistance.

Gen Z’s rejection of screens

For Gen Z, raised in a natural symbiosis with the smartphone, the analog room represents the physical validation of JOMO (Joy Of Missing Out). It is the space where it is socially acceptable, even expected, to be unreachable. At a time when our productivity and social lives are constantly monitored and quantified, closing a door behind us to do nothing useful becomes a subversive and regenerative act.

These environments are also redefining the concept of conviviality. In the most forward-thinking American and European homes, basements or former studies are being transformed into playrooms for all ages, where time is not dictated by the length of a TikTok video but by the natural rhythm of a hands-on activity. It is a rediscovery of boredom as a creative space, of deep concentration (deep work or deep play) that screens tend to shatter into a thousand notifications.

The end of the Smart Home?

At the same time, the rise of screen-free rooms does not mark the end of the Smart Home, but rather its maturation. We have learned that an environment is truly intelligent not only when it connects us to the entire world, but also when it knows when to leave us alone. The luxury of 2026 is not owning the latest headset or a disappearing 8K TV; true luxury is owning the space, time, and silence needed to forget, even for just an hour, that the digital world exists. The analog room is our new co-pilot, but this time its function is not to predict our needs through AI, but to protect our most primordial need: to be, quite simply, disconnected.