South Koreans are discovering a taste for Instagrammable interiors

WALKING AROUND Seoul at night, Suzie Son noticed a curious change. The city’s high-rise residential blocks usually emit a harsh white glare from the fluorescent lights fitted in every South Korean flat. But in recent years she has seen an increasing number of soft yellow rectangles appearing in the grids of windows. “My foreign friends always complained about the cold bright light in their homes,” says Ms Son, who runs the lighting division at IKEA Korea and goes on night-time walks as part of her market research. “None of the Koreans ever thought about changing them.”