Analog is back – by design | Canada Voices

I used to start off writing my university essays on a notepad – a real one. Somewhere along the way, I would spot my lede buried among crossed-out sentences and arrows, and out of this cursive jumble I’d rearrange my thoughts so they would make sense to the outside world.

The transition to composing on a keyboard came when I was in journalism school. Suddenly, the screen saved me so much time, a gift in a world that increasingly valued speed above all else. I embraced it, and yet I felt wistful for longhand.

It was around this time that I stumbled upon media critic and cultural theorist Neil Postman’s 1992 book, Technopoly. It contains a line that still resonates: “Technology giveth and technology taketh away.”

Today, as tech infuses every aspect of our lives, our homes are no longer safe havens in which to recover from digital overload. Smart home systems, voice-activated everything and the permanent installation of the home office have seen to that. And this boundary-blurring has a cost: chronic anxiety, disrupted sleep, depression.

More than ever, there is a yearning for what analog life – or at least analog moments – can offer us.

Designer Ashley Rumsey, co-founder of Toronto’s Mason Studio, defined an analog moment as “any experience that fully pulls you into the present and reconnects you to your senses, your thoughts or the people around you.”

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Increasingly, that idea is reshaping how homes are designed.

Rumsey was part of the pandemic city exodus. In 2021, wanting more quality time with loved ones, she transformed her Kawartha Lakes, Ont., cabin from a weekend retreat into her family’s primary residence. She keeps a satellite midtown condo for work trips to the city.

The move changed Rumsey’s conception of home, “especially within a hybrid work culture where home now supports both productivity and rest,” she said. For her, the country reinforced the idea that rest is not separate from creativity or performance – it’s what sustains them.

“Biologically, our brains and nervous systems haven’t evolved at the same pace as our technology,” she said. “The irony is that the more effective technology becomes, the more valuable analog experiences become.”

In urban condos and homes, this takes the form of reading nooks, listening rooms, writing desks, craft spaces and layered gardens. It can also mean reducing visual clutter and softening stimulation through acoustic materials such as drapery, which absorbs sound and diffuses light, and rugs, which reduce echo and add warmth underfoot.

“In cities, it’s less about complete escape and more about creating moments of contrast,” Rumsey said. “The home can still provide psychological relief from that intensity.”

Often the most effective features are subtle rather than dramatic. The designer listed as examples “a window seat designed for morning light, a living space without a television, intentional separation between charging zones and sleeping areas.”

For architect Heather Dubbeldam, founder of Dubbeldam Architecture and Design in Toronto, this shift is rewriting the design brief itself.

“The home used to be the place where people escaped and retreated to,” she said. “But in an always-connected culture, that separation has become much harder to maintain. Disconnection no longer happens by default. It increasingly has to be designed in.”

Clients rarely use the word “analog.” What Dubbeldam hears instead is emotional and instinctive: I want the house to feel calmer. I want more natural light. I want to feel present.

“Our role as architects is to listen to those instincts and translate them into spatial and material decisions,” she said. “Architecture affects us emotionally and physically, not just visually.”

For one residential project in midtown Toronto, Skygarden House, Dubbeldam layered nature throughout the home with planted terraces, filtered light and outdoor rooms that shift from social at ground level to contemplative and private at the roof.

“Rather than treating nature as an escape from the city, the goal was to make it inseparable from how the home is experienced day to day,” she said.

Flow House, which the firm designed for a ceramic artist in the Annex, is organized in a U-shape, with the main living area on one side and the primary bedroom and bathroom on the other. The two wings are deliberately isolated from one another, each wrapped in windows that look out on the surrounding woodland. The interior palette is deliberately restrained, with white walls, oak flooring and travertine stone, allowing attention to shift outward beyond the windows, where light, weather and season become a part of daily life.

“It’s less about adding more, and more about thoughtfully taking things away,” said Dubbeldam. “Digital life is largely frictionless and immaterial, whereas architecture can reconnect people to weight, texture, temperature and craft.”

Consumer behaviour seems to be shifting, too. E-commerce platform Etsy’s spring/summer 2026 trend report highlights a rise in tactile activities such as journaling and scrapbooking. Memory journals, handcrafted books designed to preserve personal milestones, reflections and family memories through handwriting and collage, are up 189 per cent in searches on the site as nostalgic pursuits gain favour over passive scrolling.

“Shoppers aren’t just buying products, they’re investing in rituals,” said Etsy trend expert Dayna Isom Johnson. “In a world that asks so much of our attention, there’s something powerful about creating a home that gives a little bit of that time and focus back to you.”

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Vancouver designer Negar Reihani of Space Harmony sees the analog movement as a lasting change in how we live, rather than a trend.

“We’re seeing more people, especially younger couples, seeking a quieter, more grounded lifestyle, whether that means relocating to smaller communities or recreating that feeling within urban homes,” she said.

What was once a design sensibility reserved for secondary residences – features such as layered kitchens, tactile finishes, atmospheric lighting and spaces that encourage lingering – Reihani now sees emerging in primary homes throughout the city.

Across regions, budgets and square footage, what people seem to be moving toward is not a rejection of technology but a recalibration of it. Setting tech-free boundaries and embracing analog pastimes is one way to restore that balance.

Truth be told, I still write longhand to uncover those thoughts that simply don’t surface when I’m staring at my screen for too long. I’m glad the rest of the world is catching on.