In a recent conversation online, 2 acquaintances of mine made the case that it made no sense whatsoever to represent architecture (specifically in drawings and photographs) without people, since architecture is, you know, primarily made for people.
They're absolutely right. Putting people in architectural representations is sensible as it gives a sense of scale, movement and also suggests that the space being depicted is actually in service of its users. Not to mention that we intuitively respond better to our environment when it contains living organisms, as they attract our attention more readily than inert objects.
One of the commenters, suggested that it would make sense to push this idea further and photograph spaces in their natural state, dirty dishes, socks lying around and all. While this logically makes sense, the problem with it is that we don't perceive a space in 3D the same way we do with a 2D depiction of said space and clutter, when reduced to two dimensions, exponentially takes on epic proportions. Small objects in the wrong spot, stray wires and such have the potential to render an image merely average, even if all other aspects of the photograph are spot on.
This is why stylists exists, they can take a blank space and visually turn it into a space that naturally looks lived in, but if you were to walk through the scene, their staging would make no sense to you as it's purely designed to evoke a certain atmosphere from one point of view alone, so from anywhere else, it would look counter-intuitive. That's because as previously mentioned the three-dimensional experience of a space bears no link to its two-dimensional depiction.
Male fashionistas love to chase after the idea of sprezzatura, or studied carelessness, which aims at composing extremely deliberate outfits, near-perfect in every way and then adding some random element to make it look effortlessly elegant, when in reality they've spent hours looking at themselves in the mirror to create this look. It often manifests itself in leaving some button undone, or tying a scarf in a slightly imbalanced way.
This analogy applies to photography of human spaces. If I photographed your kitchen the way you left it untidy this morning, the pictures would look like crap. But if I carefully tried to recompose the essence of that mess, while making it look good from a certain angle, it would look as if I tried to randomly spread your dirty dishes around without rhyme or reason to an outside observer.
So if you have any desire to make your space look lived-in, remember the idea of sprezzatura, making it look good seemingly without effort, all in service of that one image, that will convey a certain ideal that is anything but relating to the reality of how that space is used in real life. And also keep in mind that a stylist or a photographer agonized for hours over the composition of that shot.
We're always walking a fine line between reality and deception, but I'd argue that as long as no false promises are made, all visual trickery is fair game.