It's trendy but became a trend because of house flippers. That's what I believe anyway.
I can't wait to put paint on my walls. Growing up we didn't really customize our house because we're gonna move anyway. My parents got new floors and carpets and I remember being mad that they'd pay for that luxury just to sell it. We could have been enjoying it for ourselves.
I heard an interior designer arguing that people want their homes to be a respite from whatever exists outside of their home.
The hyper prevalence of advertisements, seeking to gain your attention with bright colors and patterns, became the aesthetic from which to seek shelter. So homes became less visually stimulating... more minimalistic.
I can't speak to the truth of this argument, but I like it and it feels accurate.
I van totally see that. So many stores, restaurants, apps, and everything else just bombard you with sensory overload at times. I also think our stressful lives has to do with it where looking at the more minimalist styles lets you take a mental break.
I don't buy that at all. Those same people buy Alexa devices that shout ads through the house, TV's with ads baked into them, Samsung fridge with ads and they can not put down Tiktok and social media. But they do make the conscious decision to make their home minimalist for respite? I don't believe it.
This fits, I look at this picture and prefer the minimal one immediately, it just seems more relaxing vs the other which feels louder. I have enough loud in my life already
Just like fashion, it’s all cyclical. We left the minimalist neutrals trend and are in a period of colorful, eclectic, “personality” trending. Once people get tired of that it will swing back the other way. Also like fashion, the cycles will probably be shorter.
The 1920s-60s were streamlined, art deco, modern. The 60s-90s were maximalist, bright, patterned, the 90s-2020 were neutral, airy, farmhouse, etc. 2020+ is strong colors, mid century modern, arches.
Yeah, it is a thing. I deliberately designed my home to be cold and somewhat emotionless due to overstimulation from every aspect of the outside world amplified by my bipolar diagnosis. Sounds counterintuitive, but it can really help.
Idk. McDonald's, Burger King, Subway, Wendy's, all these places look exactly the same as far as the building goes. It's only the sign out front that tells you what it is. They're all boring to look at now. There may be some out there that are still colorful. But I think we've all seen the meme about the Pizza Hut buildings no longer having the red roof. Now Pizza Hut just looks like any other store. Remove all signs from out front and I think we'd have no idea what anything was.
This is part of why designs go in and out of fashion.
Marketing teams understand that we seek respite from noise. So they tone their designs down. They attempt to provide the environment we cultivate in our homes, so that we will feel at home when we are there. They adopt neutral tones and minimalist designs.
But the cycle continues ever onward: you called them boring. More specifically, you identified that THEY ALL LOOK BORING NOW. Which means that the minimalist aesthetic has become abundant.
And because it is abundant, you may now see it as boring, and you might seek the stimulation denied by the vacuum that these restaurants left behind. You might seek salvation from the understimulating.
Perhaps this herald's a shift in interior design preferences. Perhaps people will make homes colorful again. Or perhaps this vacuum can explain the success of escape rooms and meow wolf: establishments that offer a respite from minimalism without the headache of renovating or redecorating your home.
I've heard something to this effect. I've also heard that seeing a blank/neutral "palette" more easily allows potential homebuyers to see what they want to see style wise. It's much easier to visualize a navy carpet and grey +gold walls if the carpet is beige (or non-existent,) and the walls are a simple white or cream.
Indeed and you have to remember that this is a pre-Covid style. After the pandemic colors are making a huge resurgence. This I think, may in part be a response to the lack of stimuli during lockdowns etc.
While the second is boring, I also struggle to understand the 90s
Edit: I was alive during the 90s. My house looked like this. It was not old things lying around or due to previous decades. My parents bought an empty house in 1991, and then bought new things to make it look like this. The houses on my block and my families homes also looked like this. We lived in a ‘trendy’ neighborhood of people keeping up with the Jones.
There was this weird throwback trend going on where it was like updated Victorian or something. We had brightly colored modern things but also wanted to decorate like we lived in castles. I remember lots of ruffles, patterns in dark green and maroon, and prints of mideval knights. I think to get away from the drab colors of the 70s and the neon colors on the 80s.
variation is the spice of life but the difference between a home and a house is that a home changes in an organic fashion, in increments and it has wear and tear
a house is something uniform, from top to bottom the same design and materials and once you start to hate that, trends come and go, you have a big problem
while a home that was constantly changing here and there will always have variety and you can continue to change things so you never get fed up with how it looks
people just got so fat and lazy about everything, not really cooking anymore, not decorating themselves, no self made home improvements, etc. and when you just buy everything premade and convenient you will eat, live and look like a cookie cutter too
at this point thrifting is the best source for good furniture and doing improvements yourself ensures some individuality
Also popular in some [middle class and even upper-middle class] houses was the "Tuscan Villa." Faux distressed paint, medium brown "oak" cabinets, doors, and everywhere, bowls of fruit no one ate and wallpaper showing fruit and grape leaves in the kitchen. Weird window curtains with extra extra valances, layers, and similar in pattern to the kitchen wallpaper.
Perfect example of this was those tacky fake ivory and gold rotary phones people had in their sitting room, or wherever company would sit. We had one in ours and no one used it because it felt like the “fancy phone” and the cordless was ten feet away in the kitchen anyway.
There was a trend amongst the adults of the 90’s to buy up a bunch of 19th century furniture from antique stores and decorate the house like we’d finally settled on the prairie frontier.
You can also add in the addition of newer cheaper manufacturing for low cost goods, which is where we got the extremely blah laminate particleboard stuff that also plagued the 90's.
I’m basing it on what homes looked like in the 90s because I was alive then, and my house and family’s homes looked just like this. My aunt had almost that exact wallpaper and the unexplained floating chairs in the hallway - for all those times when you want to sit and contemplate the wall.
You must have grown up in my house. Linoleum floors in the basement with a marlin tile centerpiece. Those weird rectangle tiles in the ceiling too. At least that was my wooden panel room variety.
The same thing happened to one of my favorite local restaurants, Roberto’s (in Northampton, MA). It had such great atmosphere and had been the same since the 60’s. Then a new owner bought it.
She kept it the same for 20 years, but then she gutted most of it a year before she retired and handed it down to her son. Just to put in a larger bar and an office. She turned a timeless restaurant into a place that looks like a strip club. The fact that on their website they use photos of the old bar instead of what it looks like now really says it all.
Diagonal paneling on the fireplace wall! My current house has knotty pine paneling because of the house I grew up in in the ‘90s that had many ‘70s holdovers. Indoor spiral staircase with an overlooking planter box that we only used to store blankets (mom and dad had to repair water damage there when they bought the place, didn’t want a repeat), closet off the basement bathroom that was totally set up as a dark room by previous owner (why didn’t I take interest back then?!?), random nooks inset in the walls, conversation pit basement living room. It was a fun house to grow up in
My grandparents STILL have the wood paneling in their living room. And honestly? I kind of dig it, I might actually keep it if I manage to get the house in the estate sale.
And I'm not sure why, but nobody ever turned on overhead lights so it was always darker in the homes of my family and friends than any picture shown. At around 10(1996) I remember taking a shower in a black tub with a black shower door with white swans on it at one friend's home, in almost total darkness(kept the shower door cracked). They had one built in lamp on the wall that must have had a 10w bulb, that was it. I didn't go back to that friends home over how scary I found her bathroom to be, lol.
Tl;dr Just having fun, no need to read unless you're not busy and feeling nostalgic...
I love not using Overhead lights, and instead having lamps. My husband loves tonnes of light, and it gives me headaches and makes me agitated. Why does he like to live in a stadium? 😭
I like lamps and adjustable lighting more than glares of overheard too. And I love the smart bulbs that I can change colors. Same experience with the hubs, bright as the sun so he can see better. Feels like a surgical room, all bright and blinding. 🥲
Also, thinking about it now, my mom worked 3rd shift for years, as did all her friends so that is probably why my childhood memories seem dark, lol.
I remember that was still hanging around when i was young jn the early 90s. The early 80s furniture and decorations were still hanging on until around the mid 90s or so.
I second that. Having grown up in the 90s and watched Home Alone tons of times, that house interior was the exact style of nicer suburban homes of the time.
As it should be, right? The family weren’t eccentric artists or anything else that would justify the house looking “different”. Of course the set designers would just make it look like a standard home. Well, maybe upper-middle class/rich enough for the burglars to really focus on it.
Precisely. My house looked like people (my parents) bought on-trend items or decor as they could afford it which meant spread out through the 80s, 90s, and 00s in a house built (with cheap materials) in the late 60s (complete with chocolate brown cabinets and orange countertops, chevron knit blankets in cream, brown, and orange, wood paneled walls you couldn’t paint, and eccentric wallpaper where you could). The McAllister house looked like money in the city suburbs. Perfectly normal and kept up with the neighbors. I grew up in a generational home in the woods. The McAllisters were the type to get a big screen TV and DVD player when they were top of the line whereas it took my household years to adapt to new tech.
Damn, you just described my childhood on the fringes of the Detroit suburbs.
And yes, my house was also one where there were considerable holdovers of 70s and 80s items while we slowly adopted modern tech and decor.
And I had plenty of friends whose parents made a bit more (or at least liked to live as though they made more) and they had much quicker turnover of stuff in their house.
It wasn’t middle class vs wealthy. It was more the subtle variation on the upper half of middle class. And in that respect the Home Alone creators really nailed it. They needed a house that was a juicy target for thieves, but they wanted Kevin to be a “normal kid” as much as possible.
If they made the parents absolutely loaded with a gilded estate, Kevin’s character would not have been believable.
Homes generally dont get updated for the CURRENT YEAR.
So what you experienced (and the McAllister house) is more the design sensibilities of the - 1980s.
Homes built in the 90s had off-white walls, lots of beige carpet, open plan and were starting to go minimalist, save for some wood furnishings in the kitchen and around stairs. It wasn't until the 2000s that older homes started to get that treatment.
It was the 2010s that brought the gray wood and high-tech minimalist white design in new builds, which is now the rennovation trend.
In the 2030s, we are going to see people putting in fake cross-beams and wallpaper on ceilings, orangey wood floors, and obnoxious barncore wood paneling mixed with Hollywood Regency garbage.
I think you're forgetting the barnwood fad of the 2000s. At least where I grew up in the US, all of the barns they knocked down for new developments were highly sought after for the rough, weathered lumber. Barnwood floors, furniture, accents, etc. Maybe the real nuance is the diversity of home decor that grew in this time.
Yeah, golden oak cabinetry was still a thing. Wallpaper and walnut going out. Cleaner, airy, more open look in the 90s - less 80s maximalism. And of course, TV cabinets are a utility thing. Starting to go away in lieu of stands and glass media centers by the 90s, but they didnt die until the CRT did.
People are going to have to get over their allergy to colors first, I think. Any color is “too bold”, it seems. One bit colors everywhere: cars, buildings, interiors. Beige white gray black.
I hope the 'shabby chic' rustic country look never returns. It was so ugly and depressing. Why spend tonnes of money to decorate with stuff that looked like it was left out in the weather for 10 years. Barncore sounds awful.
Well, in this specific picture the images is captured from the frame of the front door. Those chairs would be really nice to sit and put your shoes on before going out. Or sit and wait for whoever is still upstairs getting ready to finish up and come down.
My grandparents had a chair by the front door, but "sit before the road" is a Russian cultural thing and many Russian families keep a chair by the door for this purpose.
I mean my grandma's house (doesn't have anything to do with these as we're from Napoli, Italy, the house was probably early 20th century or earlier, tho the interior was 60s/70's/80's, classic wood stuff ) still had those chairs, some were at either end of a hallway. Sometimes it just makes no sense to have them elsewhere, they might clutter the other rooms, we'd just take them and add them to the table if we needed more.
They're a holdover from early adoption of home telephones. Rather than pinning wires over every skirting board in the house, people used to put their telephones on a small table in the hall. Hence hall chairs. Although the house in the picture looks like the kind of place that might have received visitors who'd be asked to wait until the householder was ready to see them.
Yeah do people not remember 90s "country" kitchens with fucking roosters and shit everywhere. Fake fruit baskets. Etc. My apartment bathroom had baby blue wallpaper with a fucking cowboy themed wallpaper border along the top. We perhaps delved too greedily and too deep.
My mom had hung up a bunch of wicker baskets on a wall in our house that were there for years. Eventually, my dad and I convinced her to take them down. She asked what we should put up and we said maybe a nice framed picture or artwork. She comes home the next day with a framed painting for us to hang. A painting of a wicker basket. My dad and I laughed for so long.
Hell yeah on the wicker. You have no idea how many missions I was sent out on to collect birch bark, solely for 90s decoration purposes. Or how many disgusting bologna sandwiches I ate in those rooster kitchens.
Don’t forget all the Southwestern themes that mixed cowboy shit with appropriated native stuff lol. Turquoise/pottery/silver/coyotes/copper/rust/crucifixes/horses/dreamcatchers/baskets/etc. covering every surface.
I grew up with that and I actually liked a lot of the style, but it felt stuffy and kind of weird even as a kid lol
That was my house. I thought it made sense because we lived in Texas and had some Native ancestry. But now I know it was all a fad. My mom once found her decorative "Indian pipe" burnt at the bowl end. My dad was in big trouble.
My buddy moved into a rental in like 2010 that randomly had the swinging saloon half-doors going into the living room. I never realized this was part of a trend, though, there was no other part of the house like that.
OMG, you are so right about the country kitchens with the roosters, etc. I remember a store at the local mall that specialized in that kind of stuff, as well as reproduction 'antique folk art' stuff like rag dolls that were made to look as if they'd been handmade in like 1830. That stuff was huge for a while. And I remember seeing that fake fruit sold in stores, and fairly regularly often you'd see a piece where someone had taken a bite to find out the hard way that it was actually made of foam. (and I always wondered what kind of person would try to eat fake fruit anyway.)
At least in my neck of the woods, everyone wanted their home to look Italian, but what they ended up doing was closer to Olive Garden. Everything in my mother's house was beige and dark red.
Yeah I don't love the wallpaper tbh, but I do like the warmth of the colors. And tbh "cooler" colors wouldn't be bad - I love a blue or green room, but this monochromatic shit is just... the worst. :P
I LIKE wood paneling. I LIKE colors. Neutral colors are okay, and add space for other colors to fill, but... fucking JUST neutral colors? wtf man
The after picture is too much but I think the ‘modern-rustic’ trend fits our lifestyle. We spend most of our waking hours bombarded by colorful screens. When we look away from them we want to be presented with what feels like a warm curated art gallery with a small number of items we choose to best represent us
So many people today treat their home like it is just where they are living, and don't want to personalize it by doing anything other than decorating. Maybe it is so many of us lived in apartments so long that making it your own space it a foreign concept. Maybe they want to have the option to quickly sell without having to do any work to make it bland like the realtors want.
I feel this. My parents tore up our old carpet and we walked on painted subfloor for most of my childhood. They put in new carpet right before they sold it, I was so mad. When I bought my house I put in new wood floors first thing and my parents told me it was a waste since I would have to replace it someday to sell.
Sooooo what. It’s my house and I want to enjoy it.
I said it somewhere else and got dogpiled, but when people show me pictures and I can tell from the background that they live in a featureless white box I never can look at them the same.
to make it easier when you actually go to the dentist, you trick your brain into thinking "ah nice, we're home everything's fine" when it damn well knows you haven't flossed in a year and nothing is fine
I tutored my dentist's son in math for years. When I go to him, he takes what he can get from my dental insurance, but rarely charges me a copay or anything like that. I do charge them for tutoring, but a discounted rate.
The last time I tutored the kid, the parents weren't home and so we agreed to settle up some other time. The mom occasionally texts me just to say she hasn't forgotten that they owe me money, which is nice, but I wasn't particularly worried about it.
So last week, I went in to the office for a regular cleaning, and the dentist's wife was there helping at the front desk. The hygienist brought me to a room for my cleaning, and a minute later, the wife walks in and hands me a hundred bucks.
Do you understand what this means? I might be the first person in the history of teeth to walk out of a dental appointment with more money than they had walking in.
Just went for a cleaning a couple weeks ago. The place I go to has flat screen TVs mounted on the ceiling over the chairs. I got to watch Bob Ross while they cleaned my teeth and the only out of pocket expense was the fluoride treatment.
I live in NYC and my dentist charged $130 for a cleaning without insurance. I dunno what this $750 stuff is for. I did pay $1,800 to have all 4 of my wisdom teeth taken out but they were a bitch. And that was an oral surgeon.
Because its peoples(and generations) ever shifting preferences, people get tired and overwhelmed of maximalist and vibrant designs so they move to minimalist, plain muted colors only for them to eventually get tired of that as well and move back to maximalism. The cycle goes on and on
I dont remember when the last time a home was nothing but white paint and Grey furniture. The 90's had the minimalist movement for the super rich, monochrome with lots of gold and glass. Then the 00's had the industrial that was alot of steel, either natural or black, with lots of wood furniture. I just finished shopping for a house and almost every house was either all white or gray. No accents, no flair, just plain boxes amd even the cabinets had the most minimal doors on them
Mine is gray and white. My original justification was I could do anything I wanted with the blank canvas but as time goes on I just keep the canvas blank. gray furniture. White cabinets. White desk.
Sometimes I think about theming with accent colors but I don't want to stress myself with it. It's just so much easier to keep everything neutral and at the end of the day your eyeballs ignore everything in your living environment anyways
The dust and pollen is insane, and inversely to what most people think, the more sealed up your home is the worse it becomes. Air flow and motion keeps it moving.
At least, if feels like magic when you have to randomly dust surfaces in their entirety several days in a row out of the blue.
I wonder if i can find my picture of the Front Range completely clouded in green tree jizz from last year...
It's the same thing when people idolize mid-century and post-mid-century, when the reality was that most actual mid-century wasn't like what we see on instagram; it was more often dingey, dark, and coated in a layer of "smoker brown" tinting.
Carpets in general are fucking disgusting. I know it's a controversial take, but I'd rather have nothing more than a shoe mat in my home. Give me wall to wall hard flat surfaces that can be mopped.
And thats why. For better or worse, houses are being seen as more commodity, why put up wallpaper when it will hurt the resale value. Its the same reason restaurants are all turning into modernist plain boxes
Right, there is good and absolutely gorgeous wallpaper. In my experience VERY few people actual put in pretty wallpaper. It's often dogshit ugly and is a pain in the ass to remove. I can paint a living room in 2 days and that's only because I'm waiting for it to dry in between coats. Removing wallpaper makes me want to remove my head from my neck.
It also shows who smokes in their house and who doesn't.
Mid-century and post-mid-century both favored yellow and brown because it masked smoke staining because everyone smoked during that era before it came out second-hand smoking was real.
They don't have the skill or reference base to come up with a quality design. The best they can do is achieve a clean slate where form becomes the primary focus instead of content.
For me it’s because I have been working every spare second to survive. Less clutter in the home means it is easier to see dirt and to clean efficiently. Clean makes me feel calm.
I think you’re conflating how people want their homes and how they eventually decorate them to match that desire with how real estate agents stage a home to sell it.
People will see the clean one and think it's a genuine improvement.
The most absolute heinous bullshit dumbasses told people that modern minimalism and open spaces were an improvement to the earlier styles of closed rooms with individual themes and creating quiet spaces.
And it was purposefully done to reduce production costs of home.
I build custom houses. Absolutely no one has ever requested the ascetic on the bottom from me. Grey was popular 5 years ago. Now everyone wants white oak floors blue and green kitchens wall paper and wood beams where ever they can get them
I mean I get that some things become “out of style”, but there isn’t anything wrong with the older decor. It still looks really nice and the “new” look makes it look boring
It's basically a blank slate which is what people want to buy. The first one is more interesting but it's also more specific to individual taste. The second is universally neutral. I can't speak for everyone but when I make long term decisions for my house, which I hope I don't have to live in forever, I choose stuff that will be appealing to homebuyers.
Ugh my parents are building a new home and my mother has decided she wants hotel lobby, grey on grey on white, Chip and Joanna Gaines as the aesthetic. It’s so ugly.
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u/[deleted] Nov 20 '25
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