Solo life isn’t the problem – we just haven’t designed for it

More people are navigating life outside a relationship, but the products, services and stories around them still assume partnership is the default. New research from The Research Agency (TRA) reveals a significant audience hiding in plain sight, and an opportunity for brands to rethink who they are designing for.

Culture can shift without us fully noticing it. People are marrying later, marriage itself is declining, we are living longer, and younger generations are spending more of their lives outside marriage and parenthood. Across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand today, around one in three people are single, yet much of the world around us still operates on a familiar assumption: that adulthood happens in pairs.

It’s embedded in the homes we build, holidays we package, mortgages we advertise, food we sell, subscriptions we price, and stories brands tell. TRA’s new study, SOLO: Independence, by design, combines cultural analysis, expert perspectives, qualitative research and a nationally representative survey of 2,006 people to understand what happens when the reality of people’s lives moves faster than the systems built around them.

Why being single isn't always a temporary stage

One of the most persistent ideas about being single is that it is temporary. Single people are often assumed to be between relationships, searching for somebody or waiting for the next stage of life to begin. As one participant described it, “Being Solo is always seen as a train station, but it can be an island.”

The data challenges this narrative. Only 6% of Solos are actively looking for a partner, while just over a third choose to be single and would like to keep it that way. Compared with people in relationships, Solos are more likely to associate being single with freedom, independence and flexibility. For many, the autonomy to decide how they spend their money, organise their time and build their lives is something they actively value.

There is, however, a gap between the reality of Solo life and the cultural story surrounding it. While 38% of Solos associate being single with loneliness, 61% believe society sees Solo life this way. Yet 44% of partnered people associate being single with loneliness. This suggests that Solos expect other people to view their lives more negatively than partnered people actually do.

Why products and services aren’t designed for single people

Solo life can bring freedom and autonomy, but it also comes with friction. Our research found lower satisfaction among Solos across areas including finances, social life, work-life balance, mental wellbeing and connection. It would be easy to conclude that being Solo itself is the problem, but many of the structures people navigate every day simply weren’t designed around one person.

Housing is one example. While around one in three people are Solo, 20% of Solos live with their parents and 12% with flatmates, and Solos are less satisfied with their living arrangements than people in relationships. The same mismatch appears elsewhere: family-sized food packs, subscriptions designed to be shared, accommodation priced around two people, or carrying the full cost and workload of a household alone.

These moments can look small individually, but together they create a world in which Solo people often participate on terms designed for somebody else. As one participant put it, it is “all the individual things of life as a single person that just add up to burnout.”

How advertising and marketing overlook single people

The disconnect is also visible in the stories brands tell. Think about who we routinely see buying their first home, planning a holiday, choosing furniture, buying a car or celebrating a milestone. The couple remains powerful marketing shorthand, while the nuclear family continues to represent a familiar picture of aspiration and success.

When single people do appear, their relationship status can become the storyline itself: dating, loneliness, looking for love or eventually becoming partnered. For the Solos we spoke to, that absence was noticeable. One participant told us, “I can’t think of any advertisement that portrays singles well.”

This doesn’t mean replacing every family dinner with someone happily eating alone. It means widening the picture of what a full life looks like. Solo people buy homes, raise children, travel, build careers, care for others, invest and celebrate milestones. They can appear naturally in those moments without singlehood needing to be the point.

Not all Solo people have the same needs

Recognising the scale of the Solo audience is only the beginning, because Solo is not a demographic. It includes people who have never had a serious relationship, people who have separated or divorced, people who have been widowed, parents without partners and people who have actively chosen singlehood.

Among 18–34-year-old Solos, 46% have never been in a serious relationship and 40% live with their parents. Among those aged 35 to 54, more than half have previously been in a relationship and are no longer in one, while 22% live with a child but no partner. Among Solos aged 55+, 78% live alone and 59% choose to be single and would like to remain that way.

Their circumstances and needs can be very different. Treating them as one homogenous “single consumer” misses much of what matters. Across those different experiences, however, three needs repeatedly emerge: connection, freedom and progress.

Designing for connection, freedom and progress

Connection: creating opportunities beyond romantic relationships

Connection matters, but it should not automatically be interpreted as a desire for romantic partnership. Friendships, family, communities and shared experiences play significant roles in Solo lives, yet many of the spaces designed to help adults meet other people remain centred on dating. There is an opportunity to create experiences where participating alone feels natural and connection can form without romance being the objective.

Freedom: making independence easier

Freedom is equally important. Independence and autonomy are among the strongest benefits Solos associate with being single, but products, services and pricing models designed around couples and families can make that independence harder. Right-sized products, flexible subscriptions, experiences that work as well for one person as two, and financial services that recognise a single income can remove friction without requiring a separate “Solo” proposition.

Progress: rethinking traditional life milestones

Progress may require the biggest rethink. Partnership, marriage, home ownership and children have long been treated as markers that life is moving forward. For a Solo person, progress might instead mean buying a first home independently, building financial security, raising a child, changing career, travelling or rebuilding after a relationship has ended. Brands have an opportunity to reflect a broader picture of what moving forward looks like today.

What brands can do to better serve Solo customers

The opportunity is not to create a separate world for Solo people, but to look at where assumptions about partnership have become embedded in the existing one. That means understanding who Solo customers are within a category, where existing experiences create friction and whether products, pricing, services and communications still assume two people where there may only be one.

Around one in three people across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand are Solo, and for many this is not a gap between one stage of life and the next. It is a meaningful part of the life they are building. Designing for greater independence is not about creating a special category for single people. It is about designing for the way people are already living.

Download SOLO: Independence, by design to explore the research and what changing relationship structures mean for brands and organisations across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.