Looks to me that it is the camera lens... more like a telephoto wide angle lens. These lens are used to take indoor pictures but in order to get everything in the picture they tend to distort the room.

The camera lens may be responsible for some distortion but that's still a room that I'd never want to spend time in. I think it illustrates the difficulty of decorating and 'filling a space' with that kind of volume.

I agree, the camera is only partially responsible for what's going on here.

The built-in tv unit dwarfs the fireplace and furniture! Yikes!

The photo appears to be taken with a fisheye lens and cropped to remove the perimeter distortion. Its not at all an accurate representation of the space.

If the framed opening on the right is somewhere between 6'-8" and 9', one begins to get a sense of the scale of this space.

Everyone's taste and preferences are personal, but I find this space exceedingly tasteless and unappealing. It looks like a freshman interior design project gone awry! No offense meant, just an opinion.

Really good luck with this!