Meaningful interior design?

I have been reading Veranda today, the latest issue. 

The houses look like nobody lives in them.  The photos and interior designs are just so you can fill the photo with your own presence, I guess.  But they look so impersonal, in many cases like everything was bought and not gathered through a life. Even the antiques are mostly bought stuff. 

I feel like real families have a mish-mash of things that means something to them, but in these houses, do the pieces mean something or do they just look good together?  Because some of it looks fantastic, sure.  But does it have deeper meaning and emotional value on personal level? Or are these photos of these rooms like still-life paintings. 

I like houses that are charming, where the people have left their mark with the selection of things and furniture.  A kind of assemblage of personal experiences and interests that only living life and being curious about it can bring, not something you buy in a store.  Some of my favorite houses are very different from each other, but they are all alive, you can feel the presence of the owner.  I often feel like that is missing from these articles in these types of magazines.  It is too clinically clean, too perfect, too impersonal.  But my question is, do the photo designers do this on person so you can put yourself in the room in the picture?  So you can dream about YOU having that place, that it is available and unoccupied by someone else?  I don't know, what do you think?