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?
Yeah, I’ve seen a few of the modern home improvement shows where the first thing they do is paint bricks in the house with a thick white latex paint. That’s not an improvement. There are other ways to brighten up a place like installing lights…
Honestly if they replaced stuff with higher quality stuff that needs less maintenance and lasts even longer it would be cool, but it’s almost always a net loss of quality over the old stuff.
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)
Also cars. Next time you look at traffic, try to see the amount of white, gray or black cars. It must be at least 80%.
I have a nice blue volvo and it’s beautiful because it has a fucking color. :)
Got my first gray car this autumn, but also my first used car, so I had less of a choice. It does have two shades of gray and black rims, so it breaks up the grayness. Otherwise I have always had blue cars.
Yayyyy Volvo
The best cars, although volvo has been sliding down lately and making bad decisions and having lots of problems with their new models.
Pre War is not good enough for such luxury. What you need is:
antebellum
“Wow, this vinyl flooring. SO Antebellum!”
I live in a 100 year old building and would kill for those appliances
Older buildings are so beautiful but living in them if not maintained is a literal nightmare. My old apartment building was 100+ years old with pipes that banged like crazy against the walls and the waterlines were so badly corroded they shut the hot water off for a week to fix them (which got them a complaint from the health department because they didn’t offer us alternate lodging).
For real my house is falling apart and I’d love just to have a normal functioning house 😔
To dive deeper into the question why everything looks the same and is boring I recommend the videos of Design Theory. Many of these videos are very insightful.
Some time ago I watched a video that also did try to explain thy question of How Did The World Get So Ugly?
and unlike art deco - this kind of luxury is dirt cheap.
It’s just missing the thinnest granite countertops you’ve ever seen.
No heart. No soul. Appliances built to fail.
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.
Antebellum
It’s luxury not because of any element in the house, rather because the return on investment needed to justify building housing over just putting the money in the stock market require it be priced as a luxury unit.
I hate that flooring. Just so you know, don’t place car tires on it because it will burn in the tire tread. (Didn’t want my tires stolen before I put them on)
Good to know, but how exactly would someone accidentally get in a situation where a car is driving in their kitchen on the third floor of an apartment building? Edit: oh you mean even simply placing a disembodied tire onto the surface of grey laminate flooring will burn tire tread right into it? 🤔 How about putting something like a moving blanket onto the floor first, (update: I couldn’t finish writing my thought because my phone keyboard switched to Russian and wouldn’t let me switch back to English so I had to restart my phone. I’m back now. Keyboard back in english now thank goodness.)
I mean I didn’t think brand new tires would have a chemical reaction with the flooring. I actually wonder now if it would have still happened through a blanket.
ohh don’t forget the manufactured marble and quartz blacksplash
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.
It already has a name
Uff, the picture used in the article is from the Epstein Files.
Image source: FBI lol
Convenient because afaik all images produced by the US government are automatically in the public domain.
Lol thats cray
I think that makes perfect sense in an article titled Millennial Gray
The trump files.
Gross
I love how the cover image is from the Epstein files, would’ve never expected it lmao
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
I think you described a few old houses i saw here in Italy lmao
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.
My wife and I call this “sad beige”
at one point it was even in the article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Millennial_grey&diff=prev&oldid=1365776291
U-taupe-ia
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.
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’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
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.
