Alex & YuYu Have Opinions on Your Beige Apartment

Alex & YuYu didn't set out to build an audience – they set out to survive 2025. Both trained in creative disciplines (fine arts and architecture, respectively) and both burned out from over a decade in the field, they turned to a shared design blog almost as an act of self-preservation. What began as an outlet has since become a running conversation about taste: what makes something worth looking at, why "timeless" is a fiction, and why they've deliberately kept their own home off the internet even as they built a following on visual inspiration.

In this interview, the duo speaks about navigating the tension between digital creation and traditional design authority, dividing creative labor without losing the relationship, and training an eye to tell the difference between what you like and what you've simply been trained to like.

alex&yuyu, 2026 — Photo: Francisco J. Miala. Post-production: YuLiang Liu. © alex&yuyu

How did you come up with the idea to start your blog? Whose initiative was it, and what inspired you to begin this journey together?

Alex: Design is not new in our life. We have been working in creative fields for over a decade each and we both come from creative backgrounds. 

YuYu: I have a master degree in architecture and Alex has a master degree in Fine Arts. During 2025 we collectively experienced burn out and we needed to find an outlet that we can both enjoy. The initial idea of starting a design-focused blog came from me and we slowly developed it to what became the alex&yuyu account.

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Many traditional art historians and designers remain skeptical of art bloggers and digital creators. Have you ever experienced criticism or snobbery from the professional community? If so, how did you respond?

YuYu: Surprisingly no. While its true professional industries often minimise the impact of digital creators, there has been a significant shift post 2020. Many industries came to the realization that the digital realm is an extension of our lives and not something happening completely independently. There is a way for both traditional professionals and digital creators to coexist and co-benefit from one another. 

Alex: Our approach with our account has always been a reflection of what we admire and what inspires us in the real world. We don’t try to reinvent the wheel but rather share our passion for design and creativity with a curious audience that may not have the chance yet to experience them on their own. Perhaps for that reason, the reception from the industry so far has been great. Many designers, historians, and brands we deeply admire follow our accounts and hopefully that will lead to even more cross-pollination between digital-native audiences and traditional professionals.

alex&yuyu, 2026 — Photo: Francisco J. Miala. Post-production: YuLiang Liu. © alex&yuyu

You work as a creative duo. How do you divide responsibilities, and have you ever disagreed about the direction of your content? How do you usually resolve those differences?

Alex: We fight and scream at each other, hahaha. Just kidding. Even though this initiative is fairly new, we have worked as a creative duo for the past 8 years. We share both our professional and personal lives. Naturally, this type of cooperation comes with its own challenges as you constantly need to find a balance between working and living. 

Responsibilities wise we are fairly straight forward and lean to our strengths. YuYu takes the lead on a lot of generating ideas and brings his technical understanding of architecture and design, while I am more focused on the aesthetic aspect and the overall organisation of both the accounts and the business aspect behind it. We basically allow ourselves to focus on the things we enjoy more and we count on each other to balance what might be missing. 

YuYu: Of course we disagree at times. Navigating the digital world comes with many challenges. Understanding how algorithms operate and constantly change, figuring out what would be beneficial and interesting to our audience, coming up with new ideas, and all that while also managing to maintain work outside content creation, responsibilities, and social life. It's not always easy but communication and experimentation is key. If we can not reach a proper agreement, we just agree to give an idea a shot. If it works great, if it doesn’t we pivot and never look back.

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You often share inspiring interiors and design ideas, but we rarely get a glimpse of your own home. Could you tell us about your interior style? What design aesthetic do you personally gravitate toward, and why?

Alex: Funnily, this has been one of the very first things we discussed when launching. Not showing our home has been a very conscious decision, at least for the time being. While it was important for us to create this visual blog, we were also very thoughtful on how to maintain boundaries and protect our privacy. We didn’t feel it was necessary to put our home out there for the public, especially when knowing how this can create safety issues. 

YuYu: I am not sure if we could find a unique definition for our style and taste in interiors. We definitely gravitate towards certain movements and periods such as modernism and post-modernism, art deco, brutalism, basically anything that has personality and doesn’t fit the mass produced, ai-looking current aesthetics. But we could never just choose one style and go with it. We firmly believe that uniqueness comes from combinations of elements from different styles and eras, while also small personal items that make a home feel like you. Not everything needs to be “instagram worthy”. 

One of our favorite decor is a collection of ugly magnets we started a few years back from cities we’ve visited together. To a random viewer this would look terrible but to us are memories, and it's fun to only get the ugly ones because it makes us smile every time we come across them.

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For someone with little exposure to art and design, what is the best way to develop a strong visual eye? How can people distinguish timeless aesthetics from passing trends?

YuYu: Timeless is a bit of a trap term. I don't really believe in timeless. For sure some things survive the test of time better than others but design, in the same way as fashion, goes through cycles. And each cycle is influenced by what came before it. The search for timeless feels more like a fear of feeling outdated but that is a problematic approach if we are thinking about design. Design and especially interior design should be an extension of the personality of the person living there. It doesn't matter if what you like won't be as popular five ten years down the line, what matters is if you still like it. 

Alex: That brings me to the first part of your question. In a world of constant information and visual noise, it becomes increasingly harder to distinguish between what you really like and what you’ve been “trained” to feel like you like. If you listen to a catchy song one hundred times, even if you don’t really like it, chances are you’ll begin singing it. Will you listen to it again after its popularity fades? Properly not. The same thing happens with art and design. And that creates the problem with passing trends every 3-4 years. 

YuYu: What we always tell our clients and friends is to force themselves to become more conscious of what they consume visually. If you see something and like it, pause. Try to analyse it. Ask yourself what attracts you to this specific design or painting? What does it make you feel? How was it created? It might sound hectic at first, but trying to understand instead of just seeing is the most important element of building a visual eye.
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In your opinion, which recent interior design trend is the most overrated? Are there any classic ideas or approaches you think we should bring back - or perhaps leave behind for good?

Alex: I think not a single person will disagree with me when I say that all-gray and all-beige apartments need to go and NEVER come back. I don’t think we’ve ever had a more soulless interior being so widely adopted. It almost explains why everyone needs therapy these days. 

YuYu: I am not sure I’d like to bring back a specific idea or approach but rather having people be more playful with how they design their spaces. We live in weird times and we need to be able to have fun. What a better place to do that than your home. Bring back decoration, ornamentations, colors, expressive furniture, anything that can create your little haven. We’ve been conditioned to how others perceive us and we have forgotten who we really are.

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On the cover: alex&yuyu, 2026 — Photo: Francisco J. Miala (@fjmiala). Post-production: YuLiang Liu. © alex&yuyu (@alexandyuyu)