Bed Rotting, Adult Bunk Beds, and “Bedcore”: How Sleep Culture Took Over the World

While the nature of being voyeuristic online is nothing new to my generation, the traumatic experience of life in quarantine—a time where your bed felt like the safest place to be—might be a contributing factor to our collective obsession with bedrooms today. Mentally, I am still trapped in the Goodnight Moon room. “Obviously, we all share our lives on social [media],” Lee explains. “Previously, [the bedroom] would’ve been a very private space, but now people are taking photos in their bedroom and of their bed—it’s become this almost public arena.”

Back in April, I observed this idea through a different lens at Marianne Boesky Gallery during Danielle Mckinney’s “Quiet Storm” exhibit. The New Jersey–based artist often captures her protagonists in the privacy of their bedrooms and other intimate settings reserved for leisure. The narrative behind these cinematic portraits is a larger commentary on breaking away from the busy routines that run our lives, a call to surrender to respite and pleasure from the comfort of home. Even her oil paintings, in which women appear naked in bed, aren’t about the actual nudity itself (or the explicit acts that might have taken place there), but the grounded sense of vulnerability we feel while immersed in these dreamy domestic interiors. Given that we are all active participants of a society where sex still sells, Mckinney’s work is the antithesis of voyeurism.

This delicate dance of intimacy is something that deeply resonates with Norgren and Thornefors as well. “When we started Magniberg, we wanted to tell a story out of the bedroom—how it was about more than sleeping,” Thornefors explains. “I often think of the artist Tracey Emin’s installation My Bed, where she refers to her lovers and the bedroom as a messy room full of emotions. It was unexplored territory back then. People didn’t approach bed linens from that point of view. We felt that the market was stereotypical and a bit boring and correct, and wanted to present home textiles in a new context, giving everyday objects a personal and emotional energy.”

Before they wake (2023) by Danielle Mckinney

© Danielle Mckinney. Courtesy of Marianne Boesky Gallery,

Leigh Mckeown, cofounder of ELLISON STUDIOS., believes this ongoing shift is a reaction to the mindfulness moment that serves as a luxury in our 24/7 digital lives. “As a society, we’re now chronically online chasing the next digital endorphin hit,” he says. “We are all realizing the effect that the constant need to check your notifications is having on our health and well-being and are trying to find the ultimate escape offline wherever we can.”