ohh don’t forget the manufactured marble and quartz blacksplash
I live in a 100 year old building and would kill for those appliances
It’s just missing the thinnest granite countertops you’ve ever seen.
Antebellum
Textured-grey, durable flooring: a life-saver when you have kids.
Really? I had to add flooring like that to match the horrible millennium gray carpets that were installed by the family before me. It is horrible with dirt. Dirt is more brownish than gray and it stands out like crazy.
Surely It’s easier to rip out the carpets than to install new flooring
No way, millennial grey carpets (brand new, mind you) all over the house and clashing vinyl in three bathrooms. The choice was really, replace all the brand new carpets AND the 30 year old vinyl, or just replace the vinyl.
Except most floors are that horrible pressboard rubbish, and you’d have to buy and install 3/4 inch plywood, then some sort of flooring over. It’s not easy nor inexpensive.
Millennial here, I remember hunting for apartments and the staff of one place proudly said let me show you the upgraded unit. I went in and couldn’t hide how I much I disliked the greyscale upgrade. They were then like well we have one unit that hasn’t been upgraded. Showed me that unit and I was like “oh wow this is way better”. At that point they were super angry as if they upgraded their home the same way and I just said they had the ugliest home.
Me as a cabinetmaker 20 years ago when everything went white everywhere. Why would you throw away these nice maple cabinets for this white melamine?
YES!
Our house was built in the 60’s and pretty much untouched since the 80’s (except for motor shutters and security doors put in the 2010’s). Fucking love it.
(Although we did paint (WITH COLOURS) and remove the 50 year old carpet)
and unlike art deco - this kind of luxury is dirt cheap.
That’s the kitchen in the condo I bought. It’s slightly redeemed by oak cupboards. I also painted the walls a minty-green and sewed a matching floral cafe curtain, and redid the counters in slightly glitter white. These all help liven it up.
I am eager for faux wood vinyl planks to go out.
I don’t mind vinyl, but just find the attempt to imitate wood makes it feel obviously like cheaping out.
Polished concrete is way underrated.
Too bad most people pour epoxy over their concrete.
In general, making things look like something it’s not just feels wrong. Unironically painting plaster walls to look like stone or brick comes to mind - you’re ruining the plaster.
TBH, I’m a sucker for the ceramic tiles that have a bit of wood grain. I think it’s because you can easily tell it’s not real wood because it’s cold, but the ceramic gives it a comfy hefty and the wood look gives visual interest and a texture that improves texture.
The plastic fake wood is convenient. It came with my kitchen and is both water resistant and easy to clean. I’m not sure what I’d go with if I redid my floor.
Oh I am fine with the vinyl, I would just prefer some non wood appearance for it . Also would favor tile over plank.
that shit has a layer that is literally printed onto a thin sheet of vinyl.
The better quality stuff has quite a thick ‘wear layer’, with the effect all the way through that layer, so they don’t lose it too quickly.
Wood is not good for longevity, especially in a hot and humid location near the ocean. These full vinyl planks will survive a lot of abuse in addition to the environemnt. Do they have to lool like wood, no, but what should they look like?
I prefer a vaguely stoney look, but again not trying to look too much like specific stone. Further I favor larger tiles over plank form factor.
Or some sort of design untethered from imitating some other material, though I admit I don’t know of any examples of that off hand.
Just something about very specific wood looking with a plastic feel, especially the ones that have a bit of ridges along the grain that actual wood wouldn’t have.
But absolutely agree that a decent thick vinyl plank or tile is a great material.
I guess the plank form factor is because wood has grain which runs lengthwise in a direction and lends itself to planks. I doubt you could ever get planks to line up and look like stone, or tiles to line up and look like wood for that matter. Tiles and stone might work, but there may be some industry thing about avoiding the look of the older asbestos tiles.
When we sold our house in the city 4 years ago, the realtor suggested we paint over our accent wall, and have all the walls in the house painted “reliable gray.” Apparently that’s the color that sells houses to white people.
painted “reliable gray.” Apparently that’s the color that sells houses to white people.
that and “swiss coffee”…
“neutral sells” is an old real estate truism.
.
I have either rented or lived in family homes for my entire life.
Ever since my dad gave me a fake option of room colour, I wanted nothing more than to own my own fucking house so I could be in my black room.
I got rejected for a mortgage a few years ago, and the lack of being able to paint the walls in my environment is STILL something that depresess me.
i call that ‘zillow gray’
“Landlord Greige”
It presents possibilities. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen people shut down a listing based on the current color… Changing it from puke green to… Anything else is apparently more work than changing from gray to anything.
I’m obviously washing over needing to reprime the walls depending on the color and quality of paint but it’s not just white people. White is too sterile but gray strikes the right balance. Same with staging furniture. Sets too many expectations for people sometimes.
I think the idea is that a light colour tends to make the room look bigger and “fresher” than a dark one. It’s also definitely a lot easier to paint over than a “Teal Ripple” feature wall. Neutral colours and basic but nice looking furniture also means a potential buyer isn’t put off by the current occupier’s decorative tastes.
Even RVs and campers are like this, its cancer. Mine was built in the early 90s and has such a awesome vibe.
I grew up using a 1975 fifth wheel trailer as a cottage and it was cozy as shit. The new ones are really uncomfortably reminiscent of the “studio” condos they’re building all over the country. Why do people think anyone wants to camp in that atmosphere?!
Old RVs have such good vibes if they’ve been at least half taken care of. Regardless of style, at least people had some back then. But yeah, idk why you would want to buy (a literal) grey pod to have in the woods. There’s a really popular youtuber who builds a bunch of different vehicles and trailers and every one is the same grey, white, and stainless pod. Its so depressing but he’s super popular. I forget his name.
Fuck me that’s literally the exact vinyl plank flooring in my apartment right now
Huge upgrade over the carpet I had originally though… Fuck carpet
I love carpet, just the ones that you can pull up and give a thorough clean to occasionally tho. Built-in carpets are nuts.
Yeah carpet is nuts.
Why would you not want to cover your floor in something to trap all the dust and soak up any liquid which is impossible to clean.
Warmer and absorbs sound. Obviously not in the kitchen or bathroom but we have carpet everywhere else.
City apartment dweller here. My lease requires having carpet or rugs over a certain percentage of the floor area. It’s a basic necessity to avoid aggravating one’s neighbors on the floor below.
You could also just take off your wooden clogs and go barefoot.
Oh come on now, I don’t wear wooden clogs! They are entirely inappropriate footwear for the finish on my home bowling alley!
Bare feet would make the rest of my suit of armor look silly.
sound/echo dampening.
One might wonder why this is not a problem pretty much everywhere that’s not North America.
WDYM sticks and paper are not appropriate building materials ?
I mean it is a problem, people just aren’t aware of it, or just live with it. It used to be much more common to have carpet in Scandinavia but for some reason fell out of vogue. Everyone’s living room is now horribly echoey and I have no idea how they put up with it.
A living room is only echoey if there’s nothing in it.
Do Danish people have empty living rooms?
Yeah a lot do actually. A lot of Danish people have combined open plan dining and living rooms with only two rugs in the vicinity of the couch and the dining table. There is then often a lot of unused space and hard surface around. The acoustics of my ex-girlfriend’s parents house was always horrible to me, you can tell when it was built in the 1970s it was fully intended to be carpeted.
There are better ways of doing that
Like textured ceilings, but people seem to hate those too 🤷
Again, impossible to clean.
Helps retain heat. The solution is a throw rug in the winter that you hose off in the spring though.
at one point we had carpet in our bathroom
Are you guys really such a stranger to vacuuming? I want lavishly plush carpeting in my house. Especially the bedroom.
You must not have allergies/pets. Vacuuming does not get your carpets clean enough, and steam cleaning your carpets often enough is a big hassle and time consuming.
I have a cat and I don’t really see what the problem is, my carpets are fine. Yeah there is some cat fur when using the hoover, so what?
You’ve never replaced carpet have you? The amount of dirt and dust in it is insane. No matter how often, how good or how deep you clean, carpet is disgusting even after a couple of years.
Most were replaced when we moved into this house.
Vacuuming doesn’t achieve much.
no like bathroom
where the toilet is, as in it used to be carpet when you get out of the bath tub, and also carpet when you take a piss/shit
Oh no. Yeah, a piss soaked carpet is no good.
Are you a stranger to rugs that can be cleaned or replaced easily?
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carpets in themselves are not the problem. even vacuumming wont get rid of all the dirt and possibly stains. thats why you have separate carpets on the floor you can take out and actually wash without having to rip out the entire floor
This was the answer to all beige/“off white” of the preceding decades.
When you sell a house, it needs to be as generic as possible, to appeal to as many people as possible. The staging furniture is suppose to take up the style slack. Except we made all the furniture gray, too. And, cars, for some reason.
Fucking gray cars, WTH?
Gray is the color you get when you mix all colors together. It’s literally the average of all colors. The least interesting, exact center of blandness. It’s the definition of “normal”. But, it also doesn’t distract from your phone. So, that’s a plus… for people trying to sell you crap.
All the colour in the ink cartridge was used up in the 70s and 80s, now it’s just black ink left, and not much of it.
It already has a name
I love how the cover image is from the Epstein files, would’ve never expected it lmao
I’ve been calling it 21st Century Blah. Is there a name for the architecture that goes with it? They rebuilt the Taco Bell down the road and looks likes this inside and outside.
I remember the yuts raking millennials for their passion for grey.
I think the decades of stagflation makes everyone think they can resell whatever and it must be neutral to facilitate this eventual sale and escape from poverty.
I have served in the industry. This is exactly the rationale. I heard this one all the time: “But this isn’t our forever home. We’re only going to be in this house 20, maybe 25 more years. What if the new buyers don’t like it??? We have to make the safe choice.”
No statement. Only grey. Never mind that all four of those craptastic Frigidaire appliances in the picture will be scrap within six years anyway, if not less.
Also, people in niver neighborhoods than me have seemingly forgotten that stainless preceded the avocado and yellow appliances. Fashion is a flat cycle.
give me earth tones, stained hardwoods, shag carpets, swag lamps, and bead curtains on doorways (and real drapes over windows) over this millennial shit… and yes, those glorious avocado green appliances!
Bead curtains sound terrible for holding heat. I like my thick solid wood doors. Keep the living room nice and warm in winter. Agree to carpets/rugs though.
those don’t go on “all” doorways, obviously. the house we had when i was a little kid had several of them but not as doors to bedrooms or bathrooms. that house had hot water radiator heat, so heat in any room was absolutely not a problem.
We also have hot water radiators but it would be wasteful to heat the hallway when we don’t need to
Same thing with cars.
They used to be really colorful and fun. Now I’m surprised when I see a red car.
…I painted my car grey. Although to be fair I did it with Monstaliner, in their “quartz grey.” That was because the thing used to be silver, and I was too lazy to pick a color materially different from original for all the twiddly little bits in the doorjambs, etc.
I do, however, laugh at rock chips. Laugh, I tell you.
The house I bought three years ago has those fake wood gray planks in the living room. I deliberately left the floor uncovered during renovation on the assumption that it would be destroyed and I’d have to replace it with something I actually like. Unfortunately, that shit is indestructible.
My wife and I call this “sad beige”
U-taupe-ia
at one point it was even in the article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Millennial_grey&diff=prev&oldid=1365776291
I’m a millennial and it does appeal to me. It looks clean. Though I prefer the Nordic look.
there are dozens of us! haha I’m just glad I’m not the only one.
though the criticisms of the aesthetic are valid. I just like my surroundings to be as non-distracting as possible and that overlaps with largely unimaginative design lol
Our house at first looked like this, mostly because we couldn’t agree on colors. The bedroom area is still quite desaturated, but the living area and kitchen are much more colorful now.
Nah, this is war alright
