The coronavirus shutdown has forced news commentators to broadcast from their homes, allowing us to get a peek at their decorating choices. And to nobody’s great surprise, some TV personalities have better taste than others. That’s the premise behind the Twitter account Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom), which has racked up 120,000 followers in just a few weeks simply by tweeting TV-news images of people at home and assigning a rating to whatever decor is visible, based on anything from plants to art to lighting to bookshelves.
Meryl Streep drinking straight from a scotch bottle was meme-worthy, but Room Rater gave her 3/10 for empty shelves. Jamie Raskin got called out for needing a haircut. Big names such as Hillary Clinton, Jake Tapper, and Al Roker have retweeted their own ratings.
Thank you! I’ll keep striving for that highest, hardest glass ceiling, the elusive 10/10.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 29, 2020
So who’s behind the account? Turns out it’s DC-area provocateur Claude Taylor and his girlfriend, Jessie Bahrey. No ugly painting or misplaced tchotchke is safe from their armchair critiques. “I thought people might get a chuckle out of it,” says Taylor. “I had no idea that it would grow that rapidly.”
It would appear that @neal_katyal has been abducted. By Martians. 0/10 pic.twitter.com/0gVc2cc9LZ
— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) April 27, 2020
At first, the subjects were mostly politicos and TV news talking heads, but Taylor has expanded to judge some big virtual events, including the NFL Draft, Met Gala, and Sondheim’s 90th birthday concert. At this point, Taylor and Bahrey are rating 30-50 rooms a day.
Worth revisiting a fan favourite. This is sophisticated, sleek and colourful. 👏👏 9/10. @KimberlyEAtkins pic.twitter.com/yDnxUaX883
— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) April 25, 2020
Taylor and Bahrey’s process is pretty simple: take a photo of their TV screen, tweet out the image, and provide a score out of ten with a bit of commentary. Taylor says he’s gotten some complaints about image quality, since he’s working with a five-year-old iPhone and an even older TV. (“I’m basically a luddite,” he says.) There isn’t any method behind the score, really. “We’re looking for aesthetics,” Taylor says. “Most of my top-scoring rooms are where you can see back through a room; it’s not just shot against a wall or shot against a bookcase.” Anything in the image is fair game, and points are often deducted for bad lighting, empty walls, and awkward camera angles.
Hostage video with bad art. Some sort of CIA torture thing. 4/10 #JeremyBash pic.twitter.com/cx5JZnamjD
— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) April 28, 2020
The scoring has led to some pushback, as with Axios’s Jonathan Swan, whose first rating was 3/10 (“This is kind of sad. I hope there’s a rug,” Room Rater opined). For a later TV appearance, Swan turned on a lamp on in the very same room…and earned an eight for “upping his game,” which Swan then noted in a tweet of his own.
How do other Room Rater subjects feel about being judged? We reached out to a few to find out. New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker first heard about his rating from his wife, New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser, who told him she agreed with the dismal 2/10 score. Baker had removed two framed New York Times front pages that were hanging in his office because they marked Obama’s and Trump’s inaugurations and he wanted to avoid any potential misunderstandings. “The hook gave me away,” says Baker. “So Room Rater caught it and said it looked pretty grim.”
For god’s sake man-hang something on that picture hook-it’s been days. 2/10 @peterbakernyt pic.twitter.com/dBywnZtuEt
— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) April 15, 2020
“I didn’t put this office together so that people could look at it—this is an office just for me,” says Baker. “But now suddenly because people are all home doing these [TV appearances], you have to think about what message you might be sending, whether it’s intentional or not.” After his poor rating, Baker tried walking around his house to find a better backdrop. “It was a ridiculous-but-amusing waste of time for a day,” he says. In the end, he decided to hang two new framed images on the empty hooks: a photograph of the White House and a New Yorker cover with an illustration of the White House. It only helped a bit.
The room still sucks but we’ll increase the rating to 6/10. @peterbakernyt https://t.co/PhvZ0pDi7x pic.twitter.com/DLu9JOJvY0
— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) April 15, 2020
“I got up from two to six when I put the pictures up and I thought that was not too bad. You know, six isn’t great, but that’s a pretty good bump,” says Baker. “But then he reconsidered it and bumped me back down to a five because of the big closet-door scandal.” Apparently, hanging art on a door is a no-no. Overall, though, Baker thinks his scoring has been fair, even generous.
Politico senior Washington correspondent Anna Palmer, meanwhile, got a low score because she had—gasp—sorted her books by color. “Not only are we focused on what we’re saying and who we are interviewing, we also have to make sure the lighting, camera angle, and backdrop aren’t distracting…not to mention how we organize our books,” writes Palmer in an email, adding that “in these times of hyper-connectivity, feedback is always appreciated, but five points off seems a bit steep!”
Beautiful wall color, fixture, inlaid bookcase. 3 point deduction for color coded books. 5/10 @apalmerdc pic.twitter.com/lpZbDaI7K5
— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) April 27, 2020
Washington Post White House reporter Ashley Parker, who recently got an 8/10, says that Room Rater is “one of the only positive things to come out of the quarantine. Voyeuristically I really like it, but as someone who is rated I feel a little hemmed in because I don’t really have much room for improvement.” Parker explains that she lives in a Capitol Hill rowhouse with her husband and kids, so there are few other places where she can set up a TV shot. Her first score was reduced for “product placement” because of an iMac, but she has since improved after moving her spider plant to a more prominent perch.
Room Rater is pleased to report that @AshleyRParker’s plant is growing and has moved locations. Still an 8/10 but an encouraging sign. pic.twitter.com/ZmFKXfl9N9
— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) April 27, 2020
There’s one floor-to-ceiling bookshelf spot that Parker considered using, but, like Palmer, she has those highly controversial color-coded shelves. “No journalists like color-coded bookshelves,” says Parker. “Ours looks really cool but everyone thinks we’re morons.” (She admits that it’s not the most practical organizing tool: It once took hours to find her copy of Jon Meacham‘s biography of George H.W. Bush, and “the whole family was involved.”)
In general, Taylor suggests that people can improve their scores with some light touches. “If you are going to do a bookcase, as many people do, just liven it up a little bit,” he says. “Maybe add some art to the walls, add a plant, add a lamp, play with it a little bit.”
Baker, for one, promises to give it a shot. “If you talk to Room Rater,” he said when we reached him, “tell him I’ll keep trying.”
Rosa is a senior editor at Bitch Magazine. She’s written for Washingtonian and Smithsonian magazine.
