Home and family: practical sites, and the ones that just photograph well

This category splits between sites that help you do something and sites that exist to be looked at. Both are legitimate, but they answer different questions, and a search result will not tell you which you are about to open.

If you want to actually build, repair or install something, the markers of a useful site are specific: a materials list with quantities, tool requirements stated up front, real photographs of the work in progress rather than only the finished result, and some acknowledgement of what can go wrong. Instructions that never mention a failure mode have usually not been followed by their author.

If you want ideas rather than instructions, the interior design and furniture sites are the relevant ones, and the thing to watch is whether images are credited. Uncredited interiors photography usually means the site has scraped it, which also means any product information attached to it is unreliable.

The subcategories cover do it yourself, interior design, furniture, lighting, home automation and consumer information. Home automation moves faster than the rest and dates hardest: a guide written three years ago may reference a platform that no longer exists.