Above: The studio for Sofia Franklyn’s Sofia With an F podcast, located in Franklyn’s apartment.
Earlier this year, interior designer Ashley Robbins installed pink-painted wood paneling, CB2 furniture, and a Lulu and Georgia grid-patterned rug inside a cozy space in West Hollywood. But these details weren’t for a backyard casita or luxe guest room. Dear Media, a major podcasting studio behind shows from the likes of Lisa Rinna and Khloé Kardashian, tapped Robbins to redesign one of their recording studios.
As podcasts evolve from auditory experiences to visual ones, with top shows often broadcast on YouTube, many online personalities are hiring decorators like Robbins to glamorize their studios. Gone are the egg crate walls and rinky-dink setups that came to define both radio and podcasting’s infancy. Instead, modern-day talk show hosts are swapping sterile studios for snug spaces, often in their homes.
Alex Cooper, the multimillion-dollar queen of podcasting, engaged her home designer, Lindsay Balton, to style a petal-colored Call Her Daddy set adorned with coffee table books and knicknacks on recessed shelves. Rebecca Sananès, a podcast executive behind shows like Meghan Markle’s now-dormant Archetypes, said sets increasingly resemble a “super cozy living room.”
Alex Cooper and Ed Sheeran in Cooper’s Call Her Daddy studio.
It’s all part of hosts’ efforts to maintain the medium’s intimacy through studio decor. “It elevates your podcast,” says Robbins about tapping professional designers to zhuzh up studios. “It’s a way to get your brand across.”
While some podcasters record in commercial studios like Dear Media’s, many prefer commutes only steps from their bedroom. Sofia Franklyn, the former co-host of Call Her Daddy, is one such creator. After Franklyn moved to a two-bedroom apartment in New York City, the 32-year-old, who now hosts a solo show called Sofia With an F, gave up coveted Manhattan square footage for her recording studio.
“We really wanted to create a moody, comfortable setting,” said New York-based interior designer Madison Napier, whom Franklyn hired to decorate the apartment. “It’s a fun podcast, but it does get vulnerable sometimes.”
Napier tried to build the studio according to that ethos. She opted for a creamy white sofa from CB2 and painted the walls a limewashed ashy blue. She also affixed a Joseph Yaeger portrait of a woman’s face above the couch.
Franklyn in her studio.
“For someone to be comfortable and to open up, they have to be physically comfortable,” says Robbins. Traditional podcasting set-ups are hardly hotbeds for surfacing secrets, between rolling office chairs and an engineer staring on through a glass wall. But a cream bouclé swivel chair from CB2’s goop line can make even the most taciturn A-lister spill their guts.
Lexi Hidalgo, a 24-year-old creator with 2.7 million TikTok followers, often records her popular Moments Podcast in her living room and plans on moving the show to a studio she’s building in her newly-acquired Boca Raton, Florida house. Hidalgo is forgoing professional lighting and a multi-camera rig, instead using natural light from the windows and a single camera.
“She likes to keep the video very casual,” said designer Sela Wagner, who is working with Hidalgo to decorate the property. “She wants the viewers to feel like they’re on FaceTime.”
The Dear Media studios.
But there has to be enough styling to make it look more elevated than an office at the DMV. That means the bill for these spaces can often cost around $30,000, according to Robbins.
Many designers also spend on fabrics, which handily double as noise reducers—an unusual consideration for most residential interior decorators. “We did a lot of heavy velvet drapery,” said Atlanta-based decorator Liz Livington, who designed a dusty-hued studio for podcast network TenderfootTV. “I want to always make it feel residential, so draping the walls helps to soften any space.” (Joe Rogan also uses maroon drapes behind his guests).
“We don’t want it to look like television,” says Sananès about the industry’s design choices. “We still want it to feel visually, on some level, like you’re on the inside of somebody’s space.”
Andrew Zucker works at a production company in New York City. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Financial Times, and Air Mail, among other publications.
