Whether you’re renting or buying, we all know how absurd the housing market can be these days. The Unhinged Home Design parody videos tackle this pressing social issue with an equally absurd approach.
This series has overtaken the Internet with bizarre animations, surreal scenarios, and ridiculous home renovation hacks to demonstrate the plight of those who need to make do with tight spaces.
Need your small home to fit your one billion children? Make sure you have some galvanized square steel and eco-friendly wood veneers handy.
What is the Unhinged Home Design meme?
The Unhinged Home Design videos are satirical home renovation animations most prevalent on TikTok. A majority of the Unhinged Home Design meme videos come from three TikTok accounts: Home Design (@homedesign369), designer_bob (@designer_bob), and balla (@dy02449xjp).
@homedesign369 Transform a 0 square meter space into a fully function space #roommakeover #roomdecor #housedesign #bedroom #bedroommakeover #bedroomdesign
♬ original sound - Home Design
These videos aren’t simply about maximizing small spaces with clever designs and appliance placements. They also feature humorous and trippy animations with heads floating through ceilings, people walking through walls, and pet tigers pouncing about.
The Unhinged Home Design videos include many generic characters like nameless wives, siblings, and grandparents. But the primary character in these videos (particularly those by @homedesign369) is Little John, a man in a flamboyant green and pink floral outfit. One of the key storylines involves Little John moving into a tiny ("coffin-sized") apartment after saving enough money to get his own place.
Other plots lean into extra bizarre scenarios, like how to design a room for 1 billion children.
The home remodels are notably impractical (or unhinged), including things like a shower stall with a bed right above it, a wall-mounted toilet in the shower, and an in-unit fishing pond. Often, the renovations involve excessive modular storage systems and bump-out additions that protrude awkwardly.
Another memorable element of this meme is, of course, the sick beat. The videos are typically (but not always) set to the electronic song “Morsmordre” by Crazy Donkey.
What do eco-friendly wood and galvanized steel have to do with it?
To maximize and expand these small spaces, Little John (or some other character) relies on galvanized square steel and eco-friendly wood veneers. While these are indeed real construction materials, they’ve emerged as a running gag in the Unhinged Home Design series. Along with using galvanized square steel and eco-friendly wood veneers, Little John also often borrows screws from an aunt.
Here's more on galvanized square steel as an IRL construction material from educational content creator Francesca Eugénie (@francescapalabrica). Galvanized square steel is basically a steel tube that's been dipped into zinc to prevent corrosion.
And, of course, there has to be a follow-up on eco-friendly wood veneers. Basically, wood veneers are thin wood slices that have been pressed onto manufactured wood to reduce costs. They're "eco-friendly" in that they usually require less natural wood resources than solid wood or come from managed forests.
Unhinged Home Design meme origin
These trippy animated videos first emerged as serious room renovation videos, but they soon took a satirical turn and earned a spot in the Internet memedom. We can trace the meme's more earnest beginnings back to TikTok user designer_bob’s 2022 video on building a room for a brother and sister.
The first mention of galvanized steel comes from a video by TikTok user Home Design in December 2023. The video basically details a mom who “accidentally gave birth to triplets” and needed to maximize her home to accomodate her children.
How does the Unhinged Home Design meme go beyond the animated videos?
As any proper Internet dweller knows, memes are quick to spread beyond their source materials. This meme has certainly found a life of its own outside of the absurdist animated videos that spawned it.
Cheeky TikTok users have already started referencing the Unhinged Home Design meme outside the context of Little John's world. Buildings with extra noticeable cantilevered structures, balconies, and bump-out additions definitely won’t beat the galvanized square steel accusations.
Many have also been eager to detail how they would remodel their own spaces with galvanized steel and eco-friendly wood veneers.
Others have spoofed all the things that could go terribly wrong when you expand your apartment with galvanized steel and eco-friendly wood veneers.
Like your landlord catching you in the act.
Or your boyfriend perishing from the precarious building materials.
Unhinged Home Design meme examples
Now, we'll leave you with a few essential Unhinged Home Design meme videos to get you all caught up on the lore.
@homedesign369 Transform a 0.1m2 space into a function house! #roommakeover #roomdecor #housedesign #bedroom #bedroommakeover #bedroomdesign #creatorsearchinsights
♬ original sound - Home Design
@homedesign369 0m2 house design #roomdecor #housedesign #bedroom #bedroomcheck #bedroomdesign #bedroommakeover #bedroomdecor
♬ original sound - Home Design
@designer_bob a son a daughter a room design#bedroomdesign #kidsroomdesign #roomdesign #designer_bob #foryoupage#fypシ
♬ Up Beat (Married Life) - Kenyi
@dy02449xjp ♬ original sound - balla
@homedesign369 Design a 0.1 square meter apartment! #roommakeover #roomdecor #housedesign #bedroom #bedroommakeover #bedroomdesign #creatorsearchinsights
♬ original sound - Home Design
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