I miss colorful houses

I agree. I hate this white, bland, open concept, kitchen island, stainless steel everywhere, white subway tile, no color anywhere but white, grey, beige or metals/black, farmhouse sink, laminate flooring, barn doors crap.

OP start a revolution. Bring the trend back. Become a prolific home decorator.

It's called 50 Shades of Millenial Gray

Gray is for penitentiaries & tombstones.

We're not going back, OP.

Greyapalooza is already passe. Turns out human beings don't want to live in an Ikea prison cell.

I like yellow for the kitchen, pink in the bathroom, red in the dining room, blue in the bedroom. I also miss wallpaper. Everything is so drab and boring today.

Too bad you missed the 70s OP. Puke Green, Mustard Yellow and Awful Orange.

I'm R5 and was just being silly. I agree, R6 - color is back in a big way and Grey Magnolia Farmhouse Style is out.

I miss colorful cars, too.

There’s more to life than black, white and silver/grey.

R8 My aunt had a 60s house and never updated the bathroom. Avocado green fixtures.

"Grey Magnolia Farmhouse Style is out."

Are Chip and Joanna Gaines on their way out, too?

OP is right. So much griege. And white. It shows a lack of imagination, a lack of boldness. And its SO dull

Modern houses are (mostly) so sterile and underwhelming, and in some cases aggressively ugly

[quote]I wonder if it was the depressing feeling of the Bush years that brought this on.

No. Instead blame those fucking Property Brothers. Since they went on the air in 2009 they have hawked timid, monocromatic color schemes, white on white on white kitchens, and gray, lots of gray. Now they have a zillion hours of programming in 150 countries Five years ago they had 180 hours of 'Property Brothers' in the bag, just that one show of their catalogue of titles. These former magicians are ostensibly a contractor and a real estate agent, but they present themselves as magicians of interiors (they seem never to touch the exterior of a house, or more than a few camera-worthy rooms, but that´s the magic of television.) Their style is insipid and driven purely by corporate sponsors: switching from granite to quartz to marble to syntehtic stone counterops as their chief sponsors hav dictated. They hate color, doling it out only very begrudingly when a 'client' insists. Mostly their color exists in irritatingly small accents and kicthn backsplashes (glass mosaic tile anyone, yeah, the long skinny kind, as seen on TV!)

Big budget, small budget, it all looks the same: middle of the middle of the road and, barring the occasional karate-chopped decorative sofa cushion, remarkably color free. Though they did climb high onto the universal gray wagon, and, a few years behind the times, are still riding high. Of course these two, bland even by Canadian standards, didn´t start any trends except maybe mediocrity, they didn't earn a quarter billion between them selling anything they didn't know would sell to the widest possible market.

Color is an interesting class marker in houses. It never went out of style for the very rich, for old money, for artists and creative people, for interior designers with real nowledge and training (not the ones with one trick and a brash atitude up their sleeves.)

Millenial Grey is love-hated by Gen Z we are told, but there´s more to it than that. Everybody hates it, yet is quick to use it for their own house and think it looks Fucking Battleship Brilliant (Not Too Grey) Grey. I think it has more to do with a not one but a few generations weaned on a complete absence of visual taste, a super-internationalization/homogenizaton of taste so that any reasonably properous digs in Abu Dhabi or London or Paris or Berlin or Chicago or Los Angeles or Copenhagen looks more or less like any Four Seasons Hotel junior suite anywhere.

R6, I just wanted to say I recognize your writing from any number of tasteful friends-related threads and I always love hearing your takes!

Sorry R6 that was meant for R14 - but I agree with your take too!

Millenial Grey, here to stay for a while

I think the reason for this trend cited by R14 is that Chip and Joanna, and the Property Brothers, ad nauseum, think of your home as an asset to be marketed and sold, not as a place to be personalized and lived in and enjoyed by you and your family. And in order for it to appeal to the broadest possible market, you have to make it as depersonalized as possible, even if you have no intention of selling your home immediately.

Remember, the first rule realtors tell you to do when putting your home on the market is depersonalize it by getting rid of all traces of its humanity.

[quote] Too bad you missed the 70s OP. Puke Green, Mustard Yellow and Awful Orange.

It was avocado and harvest gold. The orange had a special name, too, but I don't know what.

[quote] I remember sometime around the year 2000, everything changed and the aesthetic became all white. White walls, white carpet, white floors

Hello?

Gays like primary colors and childish things, and tacky stuff too, can you say loud and trashy? Not everything has to be in Drag Queen colors.

[quote] think the reason for this trend cited by [R14] is that Chip and Joanna, and the Property Brothers, ad nauseum, think of your home as an asset to be marketed and sold, not as a place to be personalized and lived in and enjoyed by you and your family

Yep. I had a green kitchen and eggplant bathroom. When I let my flat out to tenants, the agent took one look and said “paint it white”.

I have a real nostalgia for 60s and early 70s interior design. I love green shag carpet and colorful wallpaper - crazy kitchen design, too.

I miss Brady Bunch orange.

IIRC, R19, it was called "burnt orange."

My childhood bedroom was burnt orange. I picked the color.

I never understood the appeal of the house-flipping TV shows. The results were so boring, trendy yet generic, and unduly budget-oriented.

I'd rather see someone make choices regarding their "forever house." That's where you get some personality and creativity. I like to see a splurge in one are of the house and maybe some budget choices in another area.

I feel Iike burnt orange was the autumnal 70s shade that never really went away - at least as an accent color and iespecially in fabrics - especially compared to harvest gold and avacado green.

Maybe because it looks good next to greyed neutrals and stronger earth tones, maybe because it’s a complementary to dark blues (another almost neutral that people feel safe using in interiors)?

The classic Le Creuset (enameled cast iron) dutch oven is "flame," which reminds me of the '70s burnt orange color.

LOL my mother could cook anything in that orange pot. Though none of us cooked and there were so many things of great value, it's the one thing we had a friendly fight over when my mother died. That and her pancake skittle.

Profit-driven TV decorators are just a symptom of a society slowly commoditizing itself. All things must be immediately profitable or else!

The compounding stupidity of the public was clear many years ago on HGTV's "House Hunters" when prospective buyers would tour an empty house with their realtor and ask, one room after the next, "What is this room for?" The room next to the kitchen with the low hanging chandelier over where once had been a dining table: "What is this room for?"

The answer of course is "This room, like the test, is for whatever you want to do with it.". How ridiculous are people who can't figure out they would do with each room of a 7 room house when they are explicitly looking for a 3 or 4 bedroom house?

It's no wonder people live in houses painted in shaded of Oatmeal, with Oatmeal furniture and a sea of Neutrals. They are so timid you might think they were freshly released from the booby-hatch and warned to avoid the least hint if excitement in all forms. In a sea of whites and natural wood and a palette of Porridge, 50 Shades of Gray must seem very bold indeed.

*over which

In the 60s-70s my mother decorated our house according to Bewitched. We even had the same front door. Looking back, color tv was still a novelty and it seemed they packed as much color in the decor as they could. Viewers followed suit.

Gray is a neutral color. The millennials and younger generations find solace in neutrality. Committing to a color indicates a fixed preference which feels self-limiting.

I grew up in the 60s and 70s. Our family room had these colors.

I never understood home makeover shows when they talked about warming up the house with gray. I never saw gray as a warm color.

I miss wall to wall carpet. At one point, carpeting was considered elegant, as hardwood floors were the stuff of tenements and poverty. Somewhere along the way that all changed. Wood flooring should be used sparingly. Cheap ass miniscule floor rugs in bedrooms is not attractive.

And baths? These shitty inch think pieces of glass that are now substitutes for glamorous shower curtains. All i can think about is some poor son of a bitch tripping over themselves and falling through it. Besides, who wants to look at someone's average looking naked body when you walk into a bathroom? There's beauty in mystique.

We're simplifying

Area rugs should cover all but the border of the room.

I soooooo agreeeeeee!!

I loved semi-gloss peony for living room and kitchen with flat blue mint for bedrooms. Peony loved western sun and blue mint glowed at dawn.

R40, wall to wall carpeting was designed to keep sound down. With three shouty kids, you needed a sound barrier on the floor.

[quote] I never saw gray as a warm color.

Art (applied) major here.

Gray can be warm or cool. Bluish-gray is cool. Gray with some brown mixed in is warm.

My local Post Office has one wall that, IMO, is painted the perfect shade of warm gray.

I live in a small-town state capitol where everything is CAREFUL. Cars, houses, yards, hairstyles, clothing. You’ll never get these people to do something everyone they know isn’t doing. Beige everywhere all the time makes them feel safe.

I grew up in the suburbs, but there were no covenants, etc., about what color you could paint your house. You were free to plant whatever kinds of trees you wanted, etc.

There were some pretty crazy colors on the EXTERIOR paint jobs. Lime green, pink, etc.

One of our neighbors was pretty prissy about his house. He complained about another neighbor who "farmed the front yard." (This other neighbor had vegetables growing in the front yard.)

Anyway, our house: beige. It was a hot climate, so it probably made sense.

The house I just bought is stuck in the 70s and I love it. It's got blue carpet everywhere, a yellow kitchen with harvest gold appliances and crazy wallpaper in the dining nook.

Grey is for prisons & tombstones. Appropriate for Trump's Murica.

R18 is spot on. Your house is not primarily a place to live any longer but an asset to grow in value. It's why house prices haven't come down enough in spite of mortgages going up- homeowners have been hypnotized by realtors and investors to overvalue their house and stage it like no one has ever lived there ever.

It's baffling these same people that house supply has skyrocketed while sales are down, it shouldn't be happening but they are the ones who persuaded sellers to think of their house as an ATM and a revenue stream.

R39 thats a really nice interior, not too sparse, dont simplify it too much . Maybe add some more colours

I miss having a house full of coloreds working for you because you decorated their lives with fear and hopelessness.

I want to put patterned carpet like this in my new condo - but I want it to be sage green. I wonder if they still make carpet like this?

Is this colorful enough for you?

I always loved Penny's apartment on the Big Bang Theory.

No wonder the Millennials and Gen Z are depressed...all the white and greige and marble countertops are DEPRESSING.

R57: British Fitted Carpet Syndrome

Same concern, car colors. Looks like white and blue might be on the up.

White walls would be bearable if it was because people had wonderful art to display on them, but of course they don't. The most noticeable thing to me about makeover shows is that nobody ever has any proper paintings (or even prints of good stuff). It's all "art I made myself", art made of driftwood, or "personal touches" such as framed football jumpers or a collage of photos of the kiddies. In other words, all stomach-churning frau rubbish. Same as how the bookcases never have any books, just shells and candles and shit like that.

The all-consuming gray is unbearable no matter what and in no matter what shade. (A charcoal highlight is acceptable, but not when what it's highlighting is just paler gray.) Especially those dreary dark bathrooms. OMG, not classy, not sexy, just dreary.

There is some color coming back into kitchen cabinetry, and maybe now they're outlawing artificial stone benchtops for killing tradies, we might get a return to the wonderful colors offered by the laminate people in the 1990s. But when we'll see any color in bathrooms or on living-room walls is anyone's guess.

Colored toilet paper to match your bathroom! Add a touch of glamour and discriminating taste to wiping your ass.

"Color is an interesting class marker in houses" - Amen to that. And apartments, condos, etc.

I would add pattern is too. Obviously not overboard - and those hause fraus LOVE their plaids. I'm talking interesting patterns.

And I also agree about car colors - holy shit is it formulaic now.

My next car is going to be something other than gray, white, red or black. It's currently a 'dolphin blue' - which can look blue, purple or gray depending on the lighting - and I hate that.

Team DV

There are few things I loathe more than wall to wall carpeting. HATE it.

Many DLers have horrible taste and are stuck in the 70s and 80s. Wall to wall carpet, bold colors, knick knacks on every surface, etc. They hate minimalism and modern design.

And I love wall-to-wall carpet - I think it's elegant. I hate hardwood floors. But I am "stuck" in the 70s, I like the era's look.

Wall to wall carpet is dated and tacky. And it smells, no matter how clean a person is.

Lovely green wall to wall carpet.

Vacuuming is much easier than sweeping.

You vacuum hardwood floors, dear.

[quote]White walls would be bearable if it was because people had wonderful art to display on them, but of course they don't. The most noticeable thing to me about makeover shows is that nobody ever has any proper paintings (or even prints of good stuff). It's all "art I made myself", art made of driftwood, or "personal touches" such as framed football jumpers or a collage of photos of the kiddies. In other words, all stomach-churning frau rubbish. Same as how the bookcases never have any books, just shells and candles and shit like that.

I couldn't agree more, R61.

White on white on white rooms seem purpose built for art, good art. Yet there almost never is any, even in rooms far beyond the humble stuff that finds it's way to the makeover TV shows. There are ghastly expensive and vast white rooms that are sometimes excellent architecturally, but it's as if the owners spent all their money on architects and finishes and prime location and forget to hang anything on the walls, or bring in a sculpture or a mobile or something to make the space not look like an Arrivals Terminal.

Or, as you say, there are a few embarrassingly feeble attempts that may or.may not arrive above the level of the college dorm poster of the bloody-toed ballet slippers.

Bad art is usually worse than no art. Because most people sense this, they often avoid the problem by refusing to put a nail into the wall. (Or give into temptation and drink and buy some atrocity at sea at an afternoon auction on a cruise ship.)

The other group of owners are afraid of interrupting their white on white on white world with anything that may distract - mistakenly of the belief that their personalities are expansive enough to fill those those big white spaces that look like the modern wing of an art museum.

Art connoisseurship isn't exactly at a high point where it has filtered down to all with a few coins to spend. People have very aggressive opinions on cars and fashion labels and favorite hotels, but when it comes to art and architecture, even the educated rarely have a fucking clue. (Or, when in doubt, they insert the word 'Bauhaus!')

And bookcases. Why do most people even bother? For photos of themselves and their families? For $400 candles? For those horrible memory collages assembled on the home makeover showers? For a $350 book about $40,000 handbags? For snowglobes? For a few leftover college textbooks?

R44 you actual live in the capitol building?

You live in a state capital.

R74 - I'm having bookcases built in to my new house, I actually have books!

And they were all made out of ticky tacky, OP.

I love the wallpaper.

I owned a retail store in the 80s and 90s, and 'Laura Ashley' was my neighbor a few doors down. One space was the clothing store, the other space was 'the home store'. You would not believe the women who came into my store with LA shopping bags, filled with rolls of their floral wallpaper, bed linens, picture frames, lampshades, area rugs. etc. That 'French Country / Little House on the Prairie' look was HUGE in the 80s.

In the late 80s / early 90s, I remember people were slowly moving away from LA floral paper designs, and everyone was into 'cherubs' and 'angels' all over their walls. They were going for a more 'Victorian' look in their homes.

Laura Ashley was peak 80s Frau.

I had a living room similar to this one, growing up.

For anyone who didn't want the drab Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams in the 2000s, there was the colorful most popular paisley prints of Vera Bradley in wall papers, bedding, lampshades, curtains, etc. I sold her hand bags and accessories in my store, and offered the room decor through their catalog (so if anyone wanted wallpaper, etc. they could order / buy it through me).

NO ONE wanted it - too overpriced for what you got (and it was all contracted out to manufacturers). A friend of mine about two hours away from me also carried VB and tried to sell the home decor - she got the same feedback. Needless to say, VB started marking down this crap after a couple of years to discontinue it - and still couldn't get rid of it.

I want to put in wallpaper like this in my new house. I wonder where I could find it?

I’m a millennial who grew up with neutral colors and I absolutely hated it. Now that I have my own place, everything is decorated in a 1960s/70s style with green, orange and pink. It’s probably tacky but I love it.

R83. Look online for "treillage wallpaper" as an image search and/or a product search. It´s a type of pattern that has been produced for 170 years or so. Pierre Frey comes to mind, or Cole & Son (respectively a little pricey, and very pricey), but you'll find lots of variety.

R85 - thanks, those are some great ideas!

Only in DL, would you get an answer like R85's.

Haha, R87, it was an easy question, and more than a few people who don't know much else can trot out 'treillage' at the appropriate moment. If anyone cared, he could spend part of an afternoon and make himself all but an expert on the small subject.

Some pics of the three-dimensional (not wallpaper) form from somebody's dead blog at link.

There are a couple contributors on DL who seem to know all about furniture and all aspects of home decor. I love when they impart their knowledge to the rest of us.

I like wall-to-wall carpeting in the bedroom.