Our everyday domestic lives are subsumed by the digital world, from the moment we wake up, checking global news updates via social media to switching the heating on via a phone app through blurry eyes under the warmth of the duvet. The domestic interior is no longer private but saturated with unseen eyes and ears, where the choreography of our everyday habits is constantly harvested and translated into data. The intruder no longer is required to break in; it has already made itself at home, woven into the digital fabric of daily life.

External security and surveillance measures are outdated in this post-digital world. If the home is to remain a sanctuary, we must understand the data mining of our day-to-day lives. What if the interior design of the home itself became an act of subversion? What if patterns on walls, on furniture, or upon the body could glitch the sensors and confuse the gaze of surveillance systems? In this proposal, the ordinary housecoat becomes a possible tool/form of resistance: a moving glitch within the digital landscape, its shifting camouflage disrupting surveillance and reclaiming space for the body.

This paper re-imagines the interior as a contested terrain where privacy might be actively constructed through design. It proposes the possibility for surfaces and skins that mask, distort, and evade the unwelcome infringement of privacy in our homes. Through these interventions, the domestic interior becomes not just a site of dwelling, but a site of resistance against the unnerving occupation of digital surveillance.

Paper being developed for IDEA Journal Special Issue for publication late 2026.