Netflix Debuts New Home Screen, Its First Redesign in 12 Years

The most powerful home page in entertainment is about to look a lot different.

Beginning next week, Netflix will introduce a new home page design for television screens, the company’s first serious makeover since 2013. The redesign, which features fewer titles but more video and animation, is intended to present a sleeker look and get “people to press play, and stay,” the company said.

The last time Netflix debuted a major home page redesign, the streaming service had just over 30 million subscribers and was only starting to make its own original programs. It now has more than 300 million subscribers, has released thousands of original TV shows and movies and has remade the entire entertainment industry in its streaming image.

It’s a moment that the company is marketing as “the new Netflix.”

The new home page will have a navigation bar across the top of the screen, instead of being tucked away on the left side, as it has been. It will also feature what executives are calling “responsive recommendations,” which will serve titles on the home page based on what the subscriber has been searching for in near-real time. (Looking for horror? Here come a lot more horror recommendations.) And the new TV home page will have the ability to more prominently feature its new content types, like live programming.

“The real goal of this is, how do we make it easier, how do we make it simpler, faster for you to make a great decision?” Greg Peters, a co-chief executive of the company, said in an interview.

The redesign will start rolling out for all subscribers in the coming weeks and months. It will be only for television screens, which is where viewers do most of their Netflix viewing (70 percent, the company said).

The implications for the industry could be significant. Over the past decade, nearly all media companies copied Netflix’s TV home page when designing their own streaming services, with rows upon rows of titles.