
How Beige Took Over American Homes - prismatic
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-beige-took-over-american-homes
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acconrad
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.

~~~
mhurron
> 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.

~~~
hueving
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.

~~~
stephencanon
This is false (or at least, is not universally true, and is false pretty
frequently). It's costing you some of the future buyer pool, but making it
more desireable to another portion of the buyer pool: those who have similar
taste to you. Because these are exactly the people who are most likely to like
other (non-paint-color) aspects of a house that you also like, this is a
positive trade off (unless you anticipate needing to sell on short notice, in
which case, yes, be as generic as possible).

Make the house you want to live in. There are enough people that someone else
will want to live in it, too, and in the meantime you'll be happier.

~~~
hueving
No, if people like to have funky colors, they would be expecting to paint a
house when they buy it anyway.

>There are enough people that someone else will want to live in it,

Sure, but not nearly as many as would want to live in it if it didn't have a
purple shag carpet and black walls.

Anything you do to reduce your buyer pool costs you money. You either accept a
shallow pool of offers or repaint it to undo whatever it was you did to start
with when you're ready to sell, which also costs money.

~~~
stephencanon
> No, if people like to have funky colors, they would be expecting to paint a
> house when they buy it anyway.

This argument applies equally to people who like beige, if they even exist.
Some people are good at imagining what a house will look like after painting.
Most are not. Of the latter group, some like bold colors. None of this should
be controversial at all.

~~~
hueving
>Some people are good at imagining what a house will look like after painting.
Most are not.

Baseless conjecture. If what you were saying was true, we wouldn't be in the
situation of having so many "blank slate" colors as the housing standard.

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matthewmcg
The OP is Kate Wagner. She also writes the hilarious and informative McMansion
Hell tumblr:

[http://www.mcmansionhell.com/](http://www.mcmansionhell.com/)

~~~
honkhonkpants
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."

??

~~~
qbrass
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.

------
nommm-nommm
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.

~~~
ryandrake
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.

~~~
hx87
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.

~~~
internaut
Yes, the same thing is true of the real traditional buildings. They are not
overdone, they just are.

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icameron
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!

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bitwize
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.

~~~
amyjess
> 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.

~~~
bitwize
As I recall it, beige was the standard PC color -- even for Apple kit -- until
well into the 1990s. I remember rows of brand new beige Dells running NT4 one
place I worked in 1997.

Colorful iMacs hail from a time when Apple was a computer company. These days,
PCs are a secondary concern for them.

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astrodust
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.

~~~
hx87
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.

~~~
astrodust
There was a lot of carry-over from the psychadelic 1960s where green and
yellow were still in play, though oppressive levels of dark woodgrain and
heavy use of brown were creeping in.

You wouldn't go all-in on that palette though, you'd have a colorful lamp,
couch, or artwork to offset it.

Of course, those that played it very conservatively would go all-in. It just
seems that more people are using a very restrained palette today for no other
reason than bizarre conformity.

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basseq
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.

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niccaluim
I can't help but notice that this very website on which we are writing
comments is beige. ;)

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sp332
An earlier article that looks at beige walls in YouTube videos:
[https://medium.com/message/the-american-
room-3fce9b2b98c5](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."

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mwfunk
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.

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Vampires123432
FYI, a very subtle grey is the new beige.

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squozzer
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?

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mixmastamyk
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.

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searine
My favorite term for this style is BeigeHaus, as coined by McMansionHell.

Edit: Who apparently is also the author of this article. Fitting.

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gopi
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.

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teddyh
“ _Beige. Now there’s a committment to colour._ ”

— Alf, Season 2, episode 24, “ _Tequila_ ” (1988).

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hx87
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.

~~~
douche
Some New England towns, almost every single house is that white clapboard with
green shutters and trim pattern.

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Zikes
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.

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tmnvix
Same reason we have a proliferation of white, grey, and black cars. The resale
value is less likely to be adversely affected.

