A moth sees a lamp and thinks, “I need to get closer to that immediately”. A butterfly sees a flower and lands on it like it has just discovered the most beautiful restaurant in town. And then there’s me, walking past a café with warm lighting, little plants, wooden furniture, and an unnecessarily expensive iced coffee. And I cannot help but think, “Oh my God, I need to go in there.”
Obviously, humans and moths are not exactly the same, but there is something oddly universal about being drawn towards things that look appealing. We like pretty things. We like pretty places. And sometimes, we seem almost incapable of explaining why.
Think about how often you choose somewhere because it looks good. Maybe you have picked a café because you saw it on Instagram, gone to a restaurant because the interiors were gorgeous, or walked into a bookstore because it had those perfect little reading corners that suddenly make you believe you are the kind of person who reads three books a week. The coffee might be average, and the chair might be painfully uncomfortable, but somehow you still leave thinking, “That was a nice experience”.
That’s because we do not just sit in places, we experience the way they make us feel. A cup of coffee is still a cup of coffee, but drinking it in a quiet café with warm lighting and plants feels completely different from drinking it out of a Narsi paper cup while rushing to class. Your bedroom is just a room, but adding fairy lights, posters, and plants can make getting into bed feel like an experience rather than simply collapsing after a long day. Even studying somehow feels more productive when your desk is clean and your stationery matches.
This attraction to beautiful spaces isn’t entirely new. Nature has been doing aesthetics long before Pinterest existed. Flowers, sunsets, seashells, mountains, leaves, water, and scenic views. Take a butterfly’s wings. Their intricate patterns and colours serve practical purposes, from camouflage and protection to communication and attracting mates. The butterfly isn’t thinking about symmetry or whether its wings will photograph well. Yet when we look at it, we see beauty.
And then there are moths, which are somehow the perfect example of how much our perception matters. Butterflies are usually considered beautiful without much debate. Moths, on the other hand, have spent years being treated like the slightly less glamorous cousin who shows up at the family function uninvited. But look closely at one, and you’ll find incredibly intricate patterns, colours and textures.
The moth didn’t change. We just started looking at it differently. Maybe that says something about beauty in general. We respond to patterns, colours, and natural forms. We bring plants into our homes, use wooden furniture, surround ourselves with soft colours, and let sunlight into our rooms. We recreate little pieces of nature around us and then call the result “aesthetic.”
There is also something comforting about a space that feels intentional. Our lives, meanwhile, are rarely that organised. There are unfinished assignments, unread messages, and clothes on the chair that have somehow become permanent furniture. So walking into a space where everything seems to make sense can feel like a tiny break from the chaos.
Then there is Pinterest and Instagram, where aesthetics became something we could collect. We save apartments we cannot afford, bedrooms we will probably never keep clean, and morning routines that require waking up at 5 a.m. But I don’t think we are just saving pictures of rooms. We are saving pictures of what we envision ourselves to be.
That perfect apartment represents the idyllic version of us who wakes up early, drinks coffee by the window, reads before bed, and somehow has their entire life together. That beautiful café represents the version of us who has time to sit alone with a book and romanticise their afternoon. That perfectly organised desk represents the version of us who is productive and definitely did not start the assignment at 1:37 a.m.
Maybe that is why aesthetic spaces feel so good. They allow ordinary life to feel slightly less ordinary. They give us somewhere to escape to, and sometimes, somewhere to imagine becoming a different version of ourselves. The moth is drawn to the light. The butterfly is drawn to the flower. And we are drawn to the places that make us stop for a second and think, This is beautiful. Maybe we aren’t just drawn to beautiful spaces. We’re drawn to the possibility that, for a moment, our lives could feel just as beautiful.