Picture this: you’re shopping for your first home. How exciting! You’ve been picturing waking up in your bed, wrapped in a plain grey comforter with the sunlight shining through your matching grey curtains. You’ll head downstairs, passing your beige walls adorned with the generic word signs and photos you found at Hobby Lobby and end tables with plain, simple lamps. They aren’t quite your taste the way the lampshades with dancing cows were, or the way the bright blue couch was, but the stiff, grey couch that sits in your living room now is much more respectable for when your friends and family come over. You head into your kitchen and reach into your grey cabinet for a simple, white coffee mug. Nothing about this scene seems particularly noticeable, right? And that’s exactly the issue. Every single piece of furniture, decoration, or object color blends together. The greys, the whites, the off-whites — they all blur together to make one completely boring color: beige. And it’s not just your house that looks this way; if you were to head next door, your neighbor’s home would likely be just as boringly beige, and so would their neighbor’s, and so on.
Part of this epidemic of beige has sparked from the increasingly popular idea of minimalism. People have come to believe that less is more, and actually having more is tacky and unsightly. They see the unique patterns in bathroom tiles and the intricately crafted chandeliers as being over the top and, instead, opt for the plain white tiles and simple disk lights.
In theory, ‘to each their own’ is the idea when it comes to home design and decoration. But the idea of “their own” seems to have lost its meaning over the years. Everyone is so focused on how others will view their home, whether it be when family comes over for Thanksgiving or when a homeowner sells their house. In an article from the Washington Post by Rachel Kurzius, it discusses how Home and Garden Television (HGTV) has made homes “boring and sad.”
“’I’m always attracted to these unconventional things or unusual things,’ [Menez Khan, a color psychology specialist and interior designer] says, ‘but my real estate agent ‘would constantly remind me: Resale, resale, resale, resale. It was so stuck in my head. … We then moved into the house. I was so scared to do anything. I never painted anything. I lived in those white walls, and I was always thinking about the next homeowner. Everything was for the next homeowner.’ [Khan] says she wishes she had decided to personalize the home and make it feel more like hers,” Kurzius said.
Instead of choosing that unique paint color or even going for the dazzling patterned wallpaper, egg-shell white paint is slapped on in the name of ‘preserving their home’s value.’ Too often people forsake their own taste for society’s taste, and as the Washington Post Article addresses, this is partially influenced by home renovation shows and magazines.
“If you’ve ever watched a home makeover show on HGTV, you know the key “before” sequence. It’s when the camera critically pans over the house, and the host points out everything that needs to be fixed. The decor? Cluttered. The paint? Cringe. The overall takeaway is that the home is an utter embarrassment and needs a total overhaul before anyone of taste would consider putting a doormat out front,” Kurzius said.
This mindset is exactly how minimalism becomes wasteful. One easily falls into the trap of ignoring individuality and sets out to erase anything most people would find tacky. The next thing they know, they’re ripping out perfectly good cabinets, tossing out rugs in fine condition, and trashing the belongings that match their personality so well. But then one must wonder, how does this all add up? Sure, it starts with just you redoing a single room in your home, but then you decide the next room over has to match, so you redo that one too. Then, your neighbor hears about it and takes inspiration to redo their home, and so does the next neighbor and suddenly, landfills are overflowing with perfectly functional items. Minimalism is not only a concern of individuality in society, but also of environmental crisis. It’s simply not a sustainable style, as the name would suggest.
With over 8 billion people in the world, there are sure to be some discrepancies in opinions on how to decorate a home. Sure, some of those opinions may be all for a general beige tone, but not all of them can be. Individuality and creativity are vital to all and shouldn’t be erased. They’re what gives a home its character. So why has this become the standard? While ‘beige’ and ‘minimalism’ are the current “it trend” right now, it’s time to consider if ripping out that brightly colored kitchen or covering up that so called ‘eyesore’ of a paint color is really the right choice.
