It really is up to the keeper. I do prefer a more naturalistic looking environment, and all of the tanks and cages in the living room and such are set up more that way, but caring for multiple animals, and babies, the health and happiness of the animals comes first, and maintaining a natural looking environment isn't actually necessary. The more "naturalistic" look is trully more for the people. Snakes do need hides, but they really don't care much if it is a log, or a plastic log, or an overturned plastic bowl with a hole in the side.
The other thing that people often forget is that with naturalistic cages and substrates, it is harder to clean. In nature, there is a much grander amount of space, and the snake is not forced to sit in a 4' x 2' x 2' area, (or whatever it may be.) When the snake defecates in this area, even if you pick it up, there are various bacterias left, that in nature, would be processed by various other bacterias and organisms. Very similar to the nitrogen cycle in a fish tank, but a bit more complex. In the cage, in a warm, sometimes humid environment, these can grow unchecked. There are "bioactive" cage ideas, but they can be hard to maintain. There was a guy on a board a while ago, who was doing this with a green tree python, and had introduced earthworms and sowbugs/millipedes. The millipedes got out of control, though they seemed to be doing a good job at processing the waste. So he put in a couple centipedes to prey on and control the millipedes. (Some centipedes are not nice critters by the way.) You can see where this is going. He had problems with fruit flies at one point, etc... Then he added an aquarium, 10 gallon I think, and got that cycled. The coolest thing I think is the different behaviors he has gotten out of the animal. It swims! (For those who don't know much about green tree pythons, it seemed rather unusual at the time.
Obviously this is a bit of overkill, but the point being that naturalistic substrates are allot more work to keep the clean and healthy. There are bioactive concepts that work primarily on bacteria, to break down the waste contamination. But they seem to be hard to cycle and keep going, as a single snake only produces so much waste.
I suppose I am just explaining my newspaper. I do prefer to keep adults in larger nicer looking set ups, but I can clean, water and everything else most of my animals in less than 20 minutes, and they are happy, active, and healthy critters
