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It's an entertaining article, but I feel like a bit of intuition can make the answer obvious: it's hard to sell a home with rooms that are bright, unique colors. Not everyone likes red/green/blue, but everyone can agree with blank-slate colors or colors that mimic raw building materials (beige for wood, gray for stone/metal, white for marble/slate/clay). They're not objectionable, therefore they can attract the largest demographic of interested buyers.
That's the point of the article. (You have to read the whole thing to get to it though.) Instead of decorating our homes the way we want to live, we started decorating it for resale, even if we had no intention of selling. This was caused by the TV telling us, "This is how you decorate your house." But the TV is focusing on flipping the house, not living in it. So now everything is beige, as if all our homes are about to be sold off at any moment, because people don't ask questions when they watch TV. They just do whatever it says to do.
That's why everyone does the repairs and improvements they've needed for years right before they sell.
> it's hard to sell a home with rooms that are bright, unique colors
I hate people that think like this. You are living in this house, correct? It is your home isn't it? Why are you so scared to make it yours.
First thing I did when I moved into my house was paint it. Every room. It didn't matter what the colour was before because I made it mine.
And I can't stand Beige.
The comment didn't state that beige in of itself is a bad colour, but when it comes to selling the house, a neutral colours works best because presumably it gives prospective buyers the idea of starting with a blank slate and not inheriting someone else's design decisions.
But most people don't repaint their house (in my experience, at least). If the paint colors don't offend them, they're OK with it.
It's costing you future money when you paint it a 'non-natural' color in the lost prospective buyers. This is fine if you're loaded with disposable income, but for the vast majority of the US it's not worth it.
The irony is that beige became the painting itself, because of the media-driven trend towards overwhelming interior neutrality, spurred by the idea that it added concrete value to our asset-houses. What's new is that people are looking at their homes as an asset instead of as a place to live. Instead of making it suit their personalities, they're trying to appeal to a (possibly nonexistent) market.
I'd buy the "beige adds resale value" argument if it was normal to flip your house every year or so. But people are living in these houses--for years, yet they leave the walls beige (or more weirdly, repainting them in a slightly different shade of beige).
You can buy a house but you can't buy taste. Most people look to the media to tell them what other people think is tasteful, and they simply ape that. See also: Bland McMansion architecture. See also: most cars are either white, black, gray or red. See also: media-driven definitions of physical beauty.
This (and painting everything beige) has been the advice of real estate agents for many decades, so I'm not sure I buy into the author's assertion that the rise of cable TV created it.
When I was a carpenter's helper in high school (early 90's), every house that was being flipped had to have beige walls, tile and accessories, though the appliances were stainless, so not much has changed.
The author's assertion still applies though. If you talked to an estate agent, they'd tell you "paint it beige". But you wouldn't have that hammered into your brain unless you talked to an estate agent. Her thesis is that the media added a lot of pressure for everybody to conform to advice that applies mostly to prospective sellers
This explains the few houses that are about to be sold. What about the beige houses that are lived in for decades? Do these people all coincidentally like beige?
The fact that people make multiple-hundred-thousand-dollar decisions based on features that can be changed for $40 at Home Depot is some pretty damning evidence that the housing market is wildly irrational.
Rather than just the housing market, I think it's evidence that people are wildly irrational.
Of course, if many people are frequently wildly irrational you have to start either questioning what rationality is or being worried about the general ability of people to make rational decisions...
The OP is Kate Wagner. She also writes the hilarious and informative McMansion Hell tumblr:
Good catch. As long as we're trading catty design sites, I recommend FYNCT:
She needs an editor. I can't even tell what she's trying to say here.
"In order to keep up with the Joneses, grew dramatically during the period between 1973 and 2009."
??
The trend of "keeping up with the Joneses", grew dramatically during the period between 1973 and 2009.
I agree it could use a rework, but it's not that hard to figure out.
Can anyone tell me where the American trend of decorative non-functional shutters came from? It annoys me to put fake shutters on windows because they look fake, which makes them look odd. Especially ones that are too small to actually cover the window. That is soon weird and I can't imagine how you can make that mistake! Why not just real shutters?
Now on topic, I bought a beige couch because it was cheap, wasn't thinking about design. I have now learned beige is the worst color for a couch because it shows the stains from when I inevitable spill something on it.
A lot of houses nowadays are full of fake and/or non-functional features. The faux brick facades slapped over top of cheaper materials (plus the ultra-tacky "faux brick on only the front of the house" trick). Columns that support nothing. Faux-finished surfaces and fake wall treatments to give the illusion of age. Faux sandblasted wood beams. Faux stone panels (even entire fake fireplaces). I've seen fake chandeliers. They all exist so customers can have a "style" without paying for substance.
> (plus the ultra-tacky "faux brick on only the front of the house" trick).
A nightmare. Even worse are the fake cobblestones on one side of the house, and then vinyl. It looks like a giant photo decal.
And the weird thing is, you can immediately tell a "premium" house (e.g. a Passive House) from a mass market one by the simplicity and lack of pretense.
So I was under the impression that most non-functional fireplaces were once functional. But I also am used to older houses, I grew up in a town with a lot of older construction.
I'm guessing the days before window glass, and/or parts of the country (e.g. northeast) where shutters can protect your window glass from the debris of a nasty gale.
Many parts of design are inherited from since-abandoned functionality. We have a notion of "how a house is supposed to look", and we were taught that shutters are part of that.
I feel like I'm having a stroke when I see those shutters. You're not the only one.
There is a paint recycling service around my town (Portland) that filters and mixes old paints of different colors. It is very affordable, less than 1/2 the price, but as you would guess most of the batches turned out to be a bland beige-like color. Its performs as well as new paint and many people I knew who flipped houses would use it. These houses ended up mostly beige, such as in this article. It was a practical decision for them, not based on trends on TV or anything just trying to save cost and make more profit!
Beige is a neutral color, harmless, inoffensive -- but less harsh than white and more distinct than gray. It's a default we settle into when we want to convey some sort of utilitarian appeal that's bound to find purchase with the masses. It's not just homes or furniture: consider PC cases before about 1998 when the iMac came out. Consider the background of this very web site.
> It's not just homes or furniture: consider PC cases before about 1998 when the iMac came out.
Beige PCs were more of an '80s thing. In the early '90s, most manufacturers shifted to gray.
Honestly, though, I miss the colorful iMacs of the late '90s. Now they're all this boring white. I like seeing computers that come in a variety of color options. It's actually influenced my purchasing decisions for phones: my current phone is an ice blue Nexus 5X, and my last one was a bright red Nexus 5.
The same thing is true of home electronics: you can have any color you want, so long as it's black.
At least this site has an orange top bar, which is more color than the average house has anywhere.
Makes you yearn for the aesthetic of the 1950s where items of furniture or appliances would add a splash of color. I'd even take the 1960s when things got a bit nuts, or the 1970s when people were willing to take chances.
The stuff they sell these days is designed to be as inoffensive as possible and yet seems so utterly sterile and devoid of personality and life.
Yeah, I saw a bit of that 1970s look. We were house hunting, and we looked at this place. The living room walls were vertical stripes, alternating between bright green carpet (on the walls, remember) and mirrors.
It was an interesting look... for maybe five minutes. To live in for a decade? Not so much. We passed.
I might be wrong, but I thought that 1970s house design was pretty similar to today, except with orange and brown everywhere instead of beige. There are few McMansion features as tacky as popcorn ceilings and dark brown fake vertical floor-to-ceiling wood paneling.
Eh, not hard to paint your walls the colors you like and I see plenty of crazy furniture colors at IKEA. The "white blank walls and wood floor" is a choice people make and like—there are plenty of colorful houses.
I like beige and neutrals. Minus a soft teal accent wall, my whole house is various shades of blue-grey and beige. (Excluding the yellow guest bedroom and faux-painted basement I haven't gotten around to painting.)
I think some of this is current "modern" aesthetics: in the same way we don't have avocado refrigerators and brutalist architecture. I think TV reflects those trends rather than the other way around.
And sure, resale has something to do with it. I'm going to budget $5k to have my next house repainted, because that's what it costs. But I'd make the same aesthetic choices no matter what.
I can't help but notice that this very website on which we are writing comments is beige. ;)
An earlier article that looks at beige walls in YouTube videos: https://medium.com/message/the-american-room-3fce9b2b98c5 "The curtains are drawn. Some light comes through, casting a small glow on the top left of the air conditioner. It’s daytime. The wall is an undecorated slab of beige. That is the American room."
Is this any different from the '80s and '90s? I'm no fan of beige-everything in houses but it sure doesn't seem like a phenomenon of the 2000s to me (which the article claims it is). US apartments and homes have defaulted to being oppressively beige for pretty much my entire life.
FYI, a very subtle grey is the new beige.
You should also watch the commercials on HGTV. The ones for paint never show anyone painting a wall beige. It's always something more vivid.
Personally, I prefer beige over white, which probably still dominates as a wall color for homes undergoing sales prep.
So to a certain degree, HGTV has doubled the palette for us casual decorators.
PS -- I haven't watched HGTV for a couple of years - cut the cord. Are they still pushing granite counters / stainless steel appliances?
Beige is warm, cozy, and has a natural feel, simple as that. Perhaps its been overdone for sales purposes, but you are free to customize as you see fit upon purchase.
My favorite term for this style is BeigeHaus, as coined by McMansionHell.
Edit: Who apparently is also the author of this article. Fitting.
Seems every decision people take in regards to their Homes is based on a perceived resale value. Thats the reason average homes have useless features like formal dining room or large fireplaces. Most people seldom use those and those spaces can be repurposed for better use.
“Beige. Now there’s a committment to colour.”
— Alf, Season 2, episode 24, “Tequila” (1988).
Here in New England, there are a lot of 100-200 year old houses with beautiful green/red and green/blue color schemes. Much prettier (and better resale value) than beige, IMO.
Some New England towns, almost every single house is that white clapboard with green shutters and trim pattern.
I bought a cookie-cutter house that came in beige, and after a few years I picked a dark red and repainted my living room. Everyone said I was crazy when I told them what I was doing, but after it was finished and I invited them over to have a look they inevitably said "that looks a lot better than I was expecting." Most of them even said it was a marked improvement.
Beige is boring. I'm no interior designer, but just about anything is better than beige. Pick a color, give it a shot. I picked out a couple of shades of red and painted a few large patches on the walls just to see how they'd turn out, then used that to narrow down which one I would prefer.
Same reason we have a proliferation of white, grey, and black cars. The resale value is less likely to be adversely affected.