Home Box Unveils The Hidden Room Collection

Jul. 21, 2022

Research across the Middle East reveals that 94% of homeowners keep one room hidden when taking guests on tours of their home: the room assigned to domestic workers. It is a segment that the home furniture and furnishing category, in general, has always left out.

Expat domestic workers are employed in many homes in the Middle East, often working for years for the same families, living away from their own families. They come from all over the world. But while they work in towering skyscrapers and big villas, their rooms remain very small spaces – typically 7 feet x 10 feet, but sometimes even smaller. These rooms are often furnished with second-hand or third-hand furniture, mismatched, worn out or dingy.

Home Box is a furniture and home furnishings brand in the Middle East, with stores across UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar. While Home Box can’t change the size of living spaces assigned to domestic workers, with its smart living solutions, Home Box can help to transform these spaces so people feel at home in the homes they work in.

Inspired by this insight from Leo Burnett Dubai, "The Hidden Room Collection" was created. It’s a specially curated collection, designed in collaboration with Home Box’s design team, that provides beautifully designed furniture and furnishing items for the small spaces where domestic workers live.

To launch this new business line, a short film has been produced with Liwa in Dubai. The film features real workers, based in the Middle East, each with their own story. Its premise was inspired by another data point: Home Box and Leo Burnett asked 329 domestic workers about their favourite place in the homes they work in, and out of all the places they spoke about, one remained unmentioned – their own ‘hidden’ room. The film, framed intentionally in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, creates the boxed-up feeling that they feel in their constrained and restrictive living space.

The film directs people to a website, www.TheHiddenRoom.me, where people can shop for The Hidden Room Collection, which is also available in-store. The launch coincides with the Eid holiday season when many people shop, with on-ground activations in malls where Home Box stores are located, giving people an experience of what it feels like to live in a typical domestic worker’s room.

Beyond the film, data-driven simulators help homeowners to choose the right furniture for different room types. To drive engagement, influencers are documenting their own shopping stories of purchasing the collection, while Home Box will begin recycling and repurposing old furniture from transformed rooms, donating these items to underprivileged communities in cities across the Middle East.

With demand for the collection growing since its launch on 16 June, Home Box has started documenting room transformations by shoppers who have already purchased from the collection. A mini documentary will be released later this year.