About Home Beautiful

Home Beautiful

Home Beautiful is an Australian monthly interiors magazine published in Sydney by Are Media. First issued in October 1925 — after launching in 1923 as Australian Home Builder and rebranding as Australian Home Beautiful in 1925 — it is Australia's longest-running interiors brand and, the publisher says, the country's longest-running monthly magazine. In 2025 it celebrated its centenary with the Home Beautiful 100 campaign, marking 100 years of shaping how Australians design, decorate and dream about their homes.

Overview

Home Beautiful's proposition has been consistent for a century: attainable inspiration. Where some interiors titles trade in fantasy, Home Beautiful has built its audience on the idea that beautiful homes are within reach — products and ideas that readers can actually afford and achieve. That positioning, articulated by successive editors, is credited with the brand's extraordinary longevity: only ten editors in its first 90 years.

The magazine covers decorating, renovating and gardening with stylish photography and practical advice: home tours, design trends and tips, renovation planning and budgeting guidance, garden design and plant selection, DIY projects, and expert columns on everything from paint colours to furniture selection. Its centenary campaign in 2025 recast the brand as what Are Media calls an "omnichannel powerhouse" — print, digital, social, video, events and shoppable commerce — reaching more than 2.3 million touchpoints a month across all platforms.

History

The title began in 1923 as Australian Home Builder and was rebranded Australian Home Beautiful in 1925, with the first issue under the new name appearing in October 1925. It has published continuously since, through the Depression, the postwar housing boom, the renovation television era and the digital transformation of media.

The magazine's publishing lineage runs through the great Australian houses: long published by Pacific Magazines (the Southdown Press successor owned by Seven West Media from 2002), it passed to Bauer Media Australia when Bauer agreed to buy Pacific Magazines in October 2019, completing the purchase in May 2020. A month later the Sydney investment firm Mercury Capital bought Bauer Media's Australian and New Zealand assets, and in late September 2020 rebranded the business as Are Media, which has published Home Beautiful since.

At its 90th birthday in 2015, then-editor Wendy Moore told Mediaweek the secret of the magazine's longevity was attainability: a sharp eye on featuring products readers could afford, and the sense of surprise — "not only have I fallen in love with it, but I can actually have it" — that kept readers coming back. Moore said circulation had grown 60 per cent in the preceding ten years, evidence that the brand's relevance had strengthened rather than faded in the digital age.

Ninety years on: the 2015 milestone

The 90th-birthday interview with Wendy Moore — the title's tenth editor in nine decades — captured the brand's philosophy in the editor's own words. "It's not just that Australians love to own their homes, Australians love their homes," Moore told Mediaweek. "Just having a home isn't good enough. Having a home you love is always the aim." On the digital transformation reshaping magazines, she observed: "We've gone very quickly from a point where people are hungry for information to where people are hungry for edited information" — a concise statement of the case for curated print brands in the age of DIY and user-generated content. Moore, who had worked in magazines for more than 25 years, reflected on the rarity of the achievement: "having worked on so many magazines and seen so many magazines in my time that haven't survived, you really get a sense of how amazing it is to achieve that." At ninety, Home Beautiful was, in her words, Australia's "longest-running monthly magazine."

The centenary: Home Beautiful 100

Are Media unveiled the Home Beautiful 100 campaign to mark the brand's centenary in 2025, honouring its heritage while showcasing its influence across print, digital, social, video and commerce. The campaign's centrepiece was the October Centenary Special Issue, on sale in September 2025, featuring 100 of the most beautiful rooms in Home Beautiful's history alongside bespoke brand integrations for commercial partners.

The campaign spanned experiential and content activations: naming-rights partnership of the Sydney Home Beautiful Home Show (10–12 October) — Australia's longest-running home improvement expo, drawing more than 21,000 home enthusiasts — where the brand hosted a live panel with editor Elle Lovelock and drew two $100,000 renovation giveaways; "100 Beautiful Rooms," a three-issue print, online and social series running September to November featuring historic homes, design icons and future trends with landscape and furniture designer Jamie Durie; an expanded short-form social video series; and Australian Tastemakers, a social-first editorial series in which former editors, architects and interior designers shared their view of what makes a home beautiful. Commerce and shoppable content were built into the campaign from the start.

"Home Beautiful has been part of Australians' homes and lives for 100 years and continues to lead the conversation about what makes a house a home," Lovelock said at the launch. Mediaweek described the campaign as aiming to both honour the past and connect with a new generation of style-conscious Australians, spanning experiential activations, premium content, social video and shoppable editorial underpinned by brand integration opportunities for commercial partners. Are Media's director of content, Sally Eagle, put the brand's monthly reach at more than 2.3 million touchpoints across all platforms, calling it "an iconic Australian brand, built for today's consumer."

Content and Features

The magazine's standing formula blends inspiration with instruction. Home tours and room features provide the visual core; around them sit decorating trends and tips, renovation advice (choosing contractors, planning projects, staying on budget), gardening ideas (plant selection, garden design, maintenance), DIY projects, and expert advice columns. The centenary-era brand has added short-form social video, shoppable editorial and commerce integrations to the mix.

Coverage and Audience

Home Beautiful is distributed nationally through newsagents and supermarkets, with print and digital editions sold through Are Media's subscription platforms including the Magshop e-commerce service. The publisher reports more than 2.3 million monthly touchpoints across print, digital, social and events, positioning the brand as an omnichannel property rather than a print title with a website.

The omnichannel brand

Are Media, which describes itself as Australia's omnichannel content company for women, used the centenary to demonstrate how far the brand has travelled from its print origins. The publisher's centenary materials describe an evolution "from a print magazine into a true omnichannel powerhouse" — print, digital, social, video, events and commerce operating as a single proposition. The October Centenary Special Issue, the Home Show partnership, the "100 Beautiful Rooms" series, the Tastemakers social franchise and the shoppable content integrations were presented as one connected campaign rather than separate activations, a model Are Media has applied across its luxury and lifestyle portfolios.

Ownership

Home Beautiful is owned and published by Are Media, the Sydney-based magazine company owned by the investment firm Mercury Capital. Are Media was formed in September 2020 from the rebranded Bauer Media Australia, which had acquired Pacific Magazines, ACP Magazines and Australian Consolidated Press assets during the 2010s. The magazine is based in Sydney, New South Wales; Elle Lovelock is identified as editor.

Digital Presence

The brand's digital home sits within Are Media's Homes to Love network, carrying home tours, decorating ideas and lifestyle content between monthly issues, alongside a searchable archive of articles, a blog and photo galleries. Home Beautiful maintains active social media channels and an expanded short-form video presence, and its centenary campaign integrated shoppable content and commerce across its digital platforms.