The current advice is when you buy something to already think about the resale value of the item.

So this excludes all colors for everything. Black, white, gray everything.

Call it capitalism, call it competition, call it an optimization process or w/e but this is a common phenomenon. Whenever you have people trying to maximize some value they'll copy the strategy they view as most successful and other factors take a back seat.

Maximizing the resale value of a home involves making it appeal to the largest number of people. Adding character risks lowering demand by appealing to niche markets. So you end up with lots of white and grey.

You see similar things all over the place. Want to maximize your career? Better suppress your individuality in favor of copying how successful people speak, act, and dress.

If you've ever heard the term "TikTok Beat" that's a similar phenomenon where the most popular music on TikTok gets copied like a meme by wannabe famous music producers.

It's a process that ends up with bland results as variety is reduced over time. It's also dehumanizing as humanity is slowly stripped away due to inefficiency.

To piggyback off of this with a call-to-action against the realities you point out, I think it's absolutely valuable and worth it to go after the aesthetic things that you like even for subjective reasons, and even if prevailing trends say otherwise, at the expense of falling outside the confines of conformity for the sake of pseudo-safety.

Safety in numbers is a thing, but when it comes to art & design & aesthetics, it utterly kills courage, and things are done out of fear of rejection or disapproval, which makes the end product feel bland, uninspired, forgettable, and will be dated in a few years. Might as well just explore what is interesting to you and not worry about public reception. But then that's tied into many other things like fear of rejection, fear of sticking out, fear of failure, etc., that may need to be unearthed and explored in oneself – which is utterly worthwhile and necessary to do, and by staving it off you only do yourself and others a massive disservice and continue to operate in fear.

But yeah I'm making blanket statements that needs context, etc.

I don't think this is the only issue.

People have always copied each other throughout history. In the past before the industrial age it was much more difficult though as you had to use local materials and labor. Now we have global corporations and many of them are near monopolies in many industries. Add to this that making a billion of one thing massively drops the costs over something you make a million of, so you're far more apt to see the billion item unit on cost factors alone.

Also we see lots of wildly different looking products when looking back at the past, but this is likely a lot of survivorship bias. Because they were different people kept them and tossed the common thing without regard.

Lastly, I'd add in a question of how things are financed. If you're asking for a huge pile of money to make a product, it's going to be a lot easier to get it when you choose the safe and proven option then one that is riskier.

There is also the question of new mass media.

I would hazard a guess and say if you look at AirBnB throughout major cities in the world, the aesthetic will largely be the same. Trends existed before but were often adapted to local taste, yet now everywhere has the same overpriced coffee shop with rustic wood/metal tables and edison bulbs.

There's also a boiling the frog element.

I see it as an “iphonification” of industrial design and architecture. White cars became trendy in the early 2010s, after the white iPhone 4. Every item that wants to be perceived as a quality one is targeting that minimalistic, uncluttered, quirk-free look.

Beige computer cases with lots of details falling out of the way for black boxes, and then black boxes with LEDs, will always be the bane of my aesthetic existence.

I hate beige but miss it for computers.

On espresso-colored desks, great, but if your office doesn't have the color scheme of a vampire bordello, black cases and monitors are ugly as hell. Aside from SOCs and law offices, it's so conspicuous it's not really a good fit anywhere.

My desks at work and home are both light wood and thanks to all the black boxes and black cables everywhere, even with cable management my desk surface forever looks like two Minecraft squids tentacle-raping each other on the deck of a ship.

I'm not really sure that's the issue... Even by 2000 color car popularity had began its drop with silver and black with the growing market. White did gain a lot of popularity then, but a lot of this was recovery from what it had lost in the early 90s.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/37001/this-graph-shows-how-car...

>You see similar things all over the place.

It's called society. If most people didn't follow other people (or demand it!) we would not have societies at all. We'd be individualistic animals, or at best small tribes.

>It's also dehumanizing

You're completely wrong. People copying and following the path of others is one of the reasons we've dominated earth. Only a very small portion of us are risk takers that make new trends that others follow.

Humans are messy and sub-optimal. Optimization processes will always favor robotic adherence to optimal characteristics which means, unless constrained, our humanity is on the chopping block.

There’s a reason phrases like “worker bee” have become common, it’s because people feel like they’re expected to be drones at work instead of humans.

I think luxury goods, and the privilege of living within your means, is to be able to buy goods and instantly depreciate them.

I buy electronics equipment, computers, furniture, clothes, and cars with the mindset I will be the last owner of them, and they will have no resale value.

“I bought this, and I will assume it’s instantly worthless”

It keeps me from buying the same thing twice and causes me to save up for the thing I really want, and keep it for as long as possible. It also lets me be picky about my preferences and really scope out exactly what I want on a relaxed timeframe.

Perhaps it’s a side effect of growing up with hand me downs, and knowing anything our family owned was one step to junk, but it does keep spending in check now that I am doing okay in my career.

I don’t know about that, gray in houses exudes a feel of cheapness. If I see gray and especially gray vinyl it screams budget build and corner cutting. If one looks at rental housing, like half of them have gray floors and those ones are always cheaply renovated.

I make a show of disrespecting people who follow that advice instead of buying what makes them happy.

My current place have this. I don't care to pay to replace it, but I would much prefer something light wood. Which is somewhat traditional indoors. It would also go with most things.

I blame house flippers honestly. They buy up houses that are in rough shape on the cheap, then renovate strictly to sell, not for personal taste. The incentives at play are to shoot for a very dull, milquetoast instagram-ish aesthetic that anyone can sort of get along with, so you won't lose people for not liking whatever hardwood or paint colors you picked.

Yeah! Watching any episode of (UK) daytime-TV's "Homes Under the Hammer" will reveal any number of properties - some with real character - refurbished with every shade of grey you can imagine. It looks awful to be honest and really, what kind of philistine paints over real wood anyway? What really bugs me is the way the estate agents visit afterwards and say "how tastefully it's been renovated".

But what if you look at it from an auction theory perspective. If there's a set of buyers with a set of bids, you're trying to get a large set of buyers (if you're pulling samples from a distribution, more samples = higher max), but you're also trying to increase the value these buyers are willing to pay (shift the distribution to the right). I wonder if there's some amount of customization, in a healthy housing market (tons of buyers) that you can do that increases the expected max bid despite decreasing number of prospective buyers.

My guess is that most things that would boost selling price while narrowing buyers are not cheap which cancels (or mostly cancels) out the price increase, making it cheaper and more foolproof to go the boring inoffensive route.

Right, for example if I was shopping right now a house elevator would be a huge positive to me as my daughter is a wheelchair user and will be getting more difficult to carry up and down the stairs.

That said as someone who was in a lot of middle class and upper class homes due to a previous job, I saw exactly one elevator in a single family home. I doubt it would even factor into the price because most people would have no interest in even using the elevator beyond a novelty.

HGTV's Home Town goes for a more vernacular look, so is to be applauded. What they do seems more labor intensive though.

I thought this grey decor trend was a British phenomenon - glad it's not just us!

No, you've infected the rest of us as well. Congrats!

Millennials in America apparently actually like the monotone look; it’s not just the resale thing. The process of making the house more bland for resale used to be called ‘beige-ing‘ by realtors (estate agents?) in the US; it’s not new, but it wasn’t always white and gray.

Pretty sure it’s embraced by Millenials. Kids toys and room decorations used to be vivid bright colors, and now they are a sea of beige highlighted with very faint pastal colors if they have color at all.

https://www.crateandbarrel.com/kids/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hot-new-baby-gear-is-sad-beige-...

That second one looks like a sanitarium for babies.

It's called "taste".

What, but that "Wild and Free" banner totally livens everything up. /s

I would be interested in seeing the adult that grew up in that nursery. Like, do their meals have a side of fava beans and a nice chianti?

"Do you like Raffi? I've been a big children's music fan ever since the release of his classic album, "Singable Songs for the Very Young." Before that, I really didn't understand any of the kiddie tunes. Too jingly, too toddler-tastic. It was on "Singable Songs" where Raffi's catchy melodies became more apparent. I think "Baby Beluga" was the artist's undisputed masterpiece. It's an epic lullaby on ocean adventures. At the same time, it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. Teddy, take off your PJs."

I do believe this is the first time I've ever read such an adult critique of a children's performer. I have no idea about anything you just said though, but you clearly feel passionately about ABCs and 123s. Or you're decent at the GPT prompt

It was meant as a parody of one of Patrick Bateman’s monologues in American Psycho.

Personal theory (being a Millennial that likes it): The walls shouldn't draw attention and this is a great way to do it, giving more focus to what's actually in the room. First image does this well.

But then that second one is just bad. Like product makers don't understand the goal, thinking we actively like the color instead of de-emphasizing the walls, and we're stuck with it.

No, it's forced on Millenials who are told they must like it and are given no choice in the matter.

Which is hilarious because all of the free/cheap real wood furniture on FB Marketplace is stained golden oak or similar.

My entire dining room cost $600. All from FB. All solid wood. Buffet table, china cabinet, dining table, and six chairs. It must have cost $5,000+ when purchased new.

My peers would rather fill a home with monotone colors and disposable cardboard furniture.

So as a millennial all I can say is: Yay! I'll gladly take the stuff they're passing up.

Friend bought an older house and had a designer over. They were looking at one rooms redo and upon hearing the previous owners were younger gen she sighed and said “Oh, that it explains it. We call them The Grays”

Not sure where you're getting this. Zero of my millenial friends like this look -- and we represent a wide range of the millenial years.

I don’t know if it’s millennials per se but subreddits about cozy, nice living spaces are upvoting for whatever reason quite uniformly empty and gray minimalist designs. Like a distopian hospital from the future or something.

Since when are redditors representative of the population?

Just noting the existence of a trend, not making any broader statement about redditors being representative of the population. Hopefully we can at least agree there are millennials on Reddit upvoting the style, or if not there’s always plenty of articles like https://millennialmagazine.com/2019/10/02/why-are-millennial.... Or, if that isn’t compelling either, there are replies from other millennials here indicating they like it.

In any case try not to worry too much about it, there are plenty of people with (arguably) bad taste in every generation.

Well Redditors sure as hell aren't typically Boomers, and the Zoomers can't afford houses.

> Not sure where you're getting this.

No, it is (or was) definitely a trend. Google "millennial gray" -- it's so common it became a meme.

I've observed the trend. I'm unsurprised that it was named after the generation that was putatively buying the most houses at the time. But I haven't observed any people my age actually liking this fact.

Someone I know (Gen X I guess) just built a new house and the design is nice enough and the location great. But the unending gray in every room... would not have been my choice.

I remember all my rental properites in the uk had hideous beige woodchip wallpaper back in the nineties, and cheap carpets everywhere, surely it's an improvement on that.

When selling our previous property, the seller agent recommended we paint it in "agreeable gray," supposedly the current color that is neutral and will not affect anyone negatively.

I have been trained to prefer off-white... So I find that grey or brown somewhat offensive and think off-white is actually better for light and everything... Even when my choice is as non-personal.

Is that like greige ?

https://www.thespruce.com/greige-best-neutral-color-ever-797...

The problem with grey is that it's blue-ish and therefore feels dark and cold.

greige fixes that.

I have a lot of beige in my house. If I didn't want to go that warm, I could definitely see some take on greige as an alternative to colder gray.

What I find really interesting is that women can see shades that men cannot. My wife painted several shades of grey on the wall, including "agreeable gray" and I could not tell the difference, all looked the same. I experienced the same thing when she was looking for a grey / green for the kitchen cabinets. I could not tell the difference and all looked grey. She was also able to see shades of blue where all I saw was grey.

I have asked around and I am not the only male in my acquaintances that experiences this.

I got a perfect score (0) relatively quickly. I do suspect this phenomenon (which i've also experienced regarding fashion) comes from something other than actual visual perception though. Something like a combination of different aesthetic preferences and what one deems important vs what one deems unimportant in interior design

I got close to perfect which is odd as I have a hard time with hues in real life

Like when you look at new builds.

You have builder grey, builder white, builder off white, and builder beige.

Nothing wrong with vinyl, you can get some real good quality vinyl flooring.

Totally, I'm really happy with the functional properties of the vinyl I ended up buying. That said, I truly love how hardwood looks.

I firmly dislike cherrywood, anything that is more red than brown is absolute shit to me. My parents loved it, thought it was the pinnacle of wealth.

Now you might be questioning why I dislike cherrywood. The answer doesn't actually matter though, I dislike it. Most importantly, I am not the only one.

I like vinyl, because I spent a few weeks of my life (probably at most a few hours total actual wall clock hours on it) replacing flooring in a couple of rooms through a few houses. The beginning, and the rest of my answer here though, also does not matter. It only matters that I like it and will pay money for it over wood. I am also, not the only one.

Gray is used for many reasons in new builds, its a neutral color, and because many builders build a house/apartment, THEN sell to customers. Very few customers buy a plot of land, contract an architect, make customizations, and then build the building. It comes with the realization that people will substitute out the things they want on their own, not requiring someone else figure out everything they like and being creative all on their behalf for $0.

No idea why you're downvoted for this, but I guess pointing out the obvious on HN makes some people mad.

You do not understand why people are pressing the "this is correct" button even while you recognize that the comment is stating the obvious?

Perhaps you don't understand why anyone would take time out their day to press any button that doesn't do anything? I suppose that's fair. One of life's mysteries.

Had you started your post with i like vinyl, i would have stopped reading sooner.

I think my comment above is of equal quality to this article, do you not agree?

>Gray is used for many reasons in new builds, its a neutral color, and because many builders build a house/apartment, THEN sell to customers. Very few customers buy a plot of land, contract an architect, make customizations, and then build the building. It comes with the realization that people will substitute out the things they want on their own, not requiring someone else figure out everything they like and being creative all on their behalf for $0.

Interesting. Here in Poland when you buy an apartment from developer, you generally get it unfinished, like this: https://www.domoweklimaty.pl/app/uploads/2018/10/co-dokladni...

It's up to you to find contractors to finish it the way you want it - maybe together with interior architect if you want one.

Forget flooring, why are carpets and rugs with a grey and washed out faded look so popular? If you want a muted look, just don't buy one! Their whole purpose is to add color and style to a room and yet so much of what's available looks terrible.

The AirBnB/house flip aesthetic is truly quite lowest common denominator.

No, one big purpose of a rug is to keep your place warmer and give you a softer and warmer place to walk or put your feet. So in front of your sofa, for instance, where your feet are usually on the floor, is better covered with a rug, so your feet don't get cold from the floor.

They also help reduce the noise caused by walking around, so your neighbors don't complain.

After a flood, I bought pine? colored Luxury Vinyl Plank at my wife's insistence. Previously we had dark engineered bamboo which looked good but it constantly scratched (chairs and dogs) which really bothered her and I was always worried about water getting on it. I was against the vinyl just because it was vinyl. I was wrong. This stuff is awesome. Looks great, close to water proof short of a flood and pretty much no scratches in a year plus of being down. It was not that much cheaper though vs engineered wood but a good deal less expensive than hardwood.

That’s surprising. From the interior design content I watch, the white and grey aesthetic is very much considered outdated and a mistake. Warm wood tones are much higher regarded.

When my parents were selling their house, their realtor told them they needed to paint a bunch of stuff grey because "that's what Millennials want."

Now we mock everything grey as "Millennial grey."

Same when we sold our house. We had some pretty muted pastel colors in our rooms, nothing flamboyant like bright pink or whatever, and the first thing our realtor said was "we need to repaint everything light gray." We also offered to leave some of our furniture around in order to make the home appealing and show better. Again, nothing wacky, just a few sofas, tables and generic non-family pictures on the walls. Realtor said "nope, you need to stage it for 30-40 year olds" (with the most generic, bland, airbnb-like non-furniture I've ever seen). I can't argue with the results--she successfully sold the house in the recent toughest house market we've seen in 10 years. But, wow, that's the aesthetic now??

Well now all of a sudden "clutter" is supposed to be in.

This is symptomatic of declining taste across the board... which actually means the trend of celebrating shitty taste, which has always existed in plentitude.

Hey, pretty things are hard. Why isn’t half of HN looking their best at least once a week?

It costs money and time. I work with people in shirts that are only befitting for elementary school kids.

You can have the niceties, just have to pay for them.

But I think this is about where the market is going. People (with the money for homes) don’t care, so that’s how they’re catered to.

Maybe not a in a typical house, but I can see a minimalist architecture with white walls, cement pillars, grey wood floors, and a single tree branch sculpture.

One of the carpet companies I was recommended exclusively makes browns and greyscale. No. NO!

And getting my car, the only options were grey and white. :(

I hate the greypocalypse that has happened. So depressing.