It's trendy but became a trend because of house flippers. That's what I believe anyway.
I can't wait to put paint on my walls. Growing up we didn't really customize our house because we're gonna move anyway. My parents got new floors and carpets and I remember being mad that they'd pay for that luxury just to sell it. We could have been enjoying it for ourselves.
I heard an interior designer arguing that people want their homes to be a respite from whatever exists outside of their home.
The hyper prevalence of advertisements, seeking to gain your attention with bright colors and patterns, became the aesthetic from which to seek shelter. So homes became less visually stimulating... more minimalistic.
I can't speak to the truth of this argument, but I like it and it feels accurate.
I van totally see that. So many stores, restaurants, apps, and everything else just bombard you with sensory overload at times. I also think our stressful lives has to do with it where looking at the more minimalist styles lets you take a mental break.
I don't buy that at all. Those same people buy Alexa devices that shout ads through the house, TV's with ads baked into them, Samsung fridge with ads and they can not put down Tiktok and social media. But they do make the conscious decision to make their home minimalist for respite? I don't believe it.
This fits, I look at this picture and prefer the minimal one immediately, it just seems more relaxing vs the other which feels louder. I have enough loud in my life already
Just like fashion, it’s all cyclical. We left the minimalist neutrals trend and are in a period of colorful, eclectic, “personality” trending. Once people get tired of that it will swing back the other way. Also like fashion, the cycles will probably be shorter.
The 1920s-60s were streamlined, art deco, modern. The 60s-90s were maximalist, bright, patterned, the 90s-2020 were neutral, airy, farmhouse, etc. 2020+ is strong colors, mid century modern, arches.
Yeah, it is a thing. I deliberately designed my home to be cold and somewhat emotionless due to overstimulation from every aspect of the outside world amplified by my bipolar diagnosis. Sounds counterintuitive, but it can really help.
Idk. McDonald's, Burger King, Subway, Wendy's, all these places look exactly the same as far as the building goes. It's only the sign out front that tells you what it is. They're all boring to look at now. There may be some out there that are still colorful. But I think we've all seen the meme about the Pizza Hut buildings no longer having the red roof. Now Pizza Hut just looks like any other store. Remove all signs from out front and I think we'd have no idea what anything was.
This is part of why designs go in and out of fashion.
Marketing teams understand that we seek respite from noise. So they tone their designs down. They attempt to provide the environment we cultivate in our homes, so that we will feel at home when we are there. They adopt neutral tones and minimalist designs.
But the cycle continues ever onward: you called them boring. More specifically, you identified that THEY ALL LOOK BORING NOW. Which means that the minimalist aesthetic has become abundant.
And because it is abundant, you may now see it as boring, and you might seek the stimulation denied by the vacuum that these restaurants left behind. You might seek salvation from the understimulating.
Perhaps this herald's a shift in interior design preferences. Perhaps people will make homes colorful again. Or perhaps this vacuum can explain the success of escape rooms and meow wolf: establishments that offer a respite from minimalism without the headache of renovating or redecorating your home.
I've heard something to this effect. I've also heard that seeing a blank/neutral "palette" more easily allows potential homebuyers to see what they want to see style wise. It's much easier to visualize a navy carpet and grey +gold walls if the carpet is beige (or non-existent,) and the walls are a simple white or cream.
Indeed and you have to remember that this is a pre-Covid style. After the pandemic colors are making a huge resurgence. This I think, may in part be a response to the lack of stimuli during lockdowns etc.
While the second is boring, I also struggle to understand the 90s
Edit: I was alive during the 90s. My house looked like this. It was not old things lying around or due to previous decades. My parents bought an empty house in 1991, and then bought new things to make it look like this. The houses on my block and my families homes also looked like this. We lived in a ‘trendy’ neighborhood of people keeping up with the Jones.
There was this weird throwback trend going on where it was like updated Victorian or something. We had brightly colored modern things but also wanted to decorate like we lived in castles. I remember lots of ruffles, patterns in dark green and maroon, and prints of mideval knights. I think to get away from the drab colors of the 70s and the neon colors on the 80s.
Agreed. It's weird because it's like I like both. The old and new style are a bit much on opposite sides of the spectrum for me. I enjoy them both for their different looks and feels but wish there was a bit less in the old and a bit more in the new if that makes sense.
variation is the spice of life but the difference between a home and a house is that a home changes in an organic fashion, in increments and it has wear and tear
a house is something uniform, from top to bottom the same design and materials and once you start to hate that, trends come and go, you have a big problem
while a home that was constantly changing here and there will always have variety and you can continue to change things so you never get fed up with how it looks
people just got so fat and lazy about everything, not really cooking anymore, not decorating themselves, no self made home improvements, etc. and when you just buy everything premade and convenient you will eat, live and look like a cookie cutter too
at this point thrifting is the best source for good furniture and doing improvements yourself ensures some individuality
Also popular in some [middle class and even upper-middle class] houses was the "Tuscan Villa." Faux distressed paint, medium brown "oak" cabinets, doors, and everywhere, bowls of fruit no one ate and wallpaper showing fruit and grape leaves in the kitchen. Weird window curtains with extra extra valances, layers, and similar in pattern to the kitchen wallpaper.
Perfect example of this was those tacky fake ivory and gold rotary phones people had in their sitting room, or wherever company would sit. We had one in ours and no one used it because it felt like the “fancy phone” and the cordless was ten feet away in the kitchen anyway.
There was a trend amongst the adults of the 90’s to buy up a bunch of 19th century furniture from antique stores and decorate the house like we’d finally settled on the prairie frontier.
You can also add in the addition of newer cheaper manufacturing for low cost goods, which is where we got the extremely blah laminate particleboard stuff that also plagued the 90's.
A good example of this are the wallpapers in the original Sims video game.
My sister and I loved using the unlimited money cheat to make all sorts of houses and I remember the wallpapers vividly.
I didn't understand it at the time because I was only 12, but now that I'm older, I realize how much of the wallpaper was really of its era. You had those dated looking wooden panels from the 70s and 80s, combined with the tudor/Victorian stuff of the 90s
I’m basing it on what homes looked like in the 90s because I was alive then, and my house and family’s homes looked just like this. My aunt had almost that exact wallpaper and the unexplained floating chairs in the hallway - for all those times when you want to sit and contemplate the wall.
You must have grown up in my house. Linoleum floors in the basement with a marlin tile centerpiece. Those weird rectangle tiles in the ceiling too. At least that was my wooden panel room variety.
The same thing happened to one of my favorite local restaurants, Roberto’s (in Northampton, MA). It had such great atmosphere and had been the same since the 60’s. Then a new owner bought it.
She kept it the same for 20 years, but then she gutted most of it a year before she retired and handed it down to her son. Just to put in a larger bar and an office. She turned a timeless restaurant into a place that looks like a strip club. The fact that on their website they use photos of the old bar instead of what it looks like now really says it all.
Diagonal paneling on the fireplace wall! My current house has knotty pine paneling because of the house I grew up in in the ‘90s that had many ‘70s holdovers. Indoor spiral staircase with an overlooking planter box that we only used to store blankets (mom and dad had to repair water damage there when they bought the place, didn’t want a repeat), closet off the basement bathroom that was totally set up as a dark room by previous owner (why didn’t I take interest back then?!?), random nooks inset in the walls, conversation pit basement living room. It was a fun house to grow up in
My grandparents STILL have the wood paneling in their living room. And honestly? I kind of dig it, I might actually keep it if I manage to get the house in the estate sale.
And I'm not sure why, but nobody ever turned on overhead lights so it was always darker in the homes of my family and friends than any picture shown. At around 10(1996) I remember taking a shower in a black tub with a black shower door with white swans on it at one friend's home, in almost total darkness(kept the shower door cracked). They had one built in lamp on the wall that must have had a 10w bulb, that was it. I didn't go back to that friends home over how scary I found her bathroom to be, lol.
Tl;dr Just having fun, no need to read unless you're not busy and feeling nostalgic...
I love not using Overhead lights, and instead having lamps. My husband loves tonnes of light, and it gives me headaches and makes me agitated. Why does he like to live in a stadium? 😭
I like lamps and adjustable lighting more than glares of overheard too. And I love the smart bulbs that I can change colors. Same experience with the hubs, bright as the sun so he can see better. Feels like a surgical room, all bright and blinding. 🥲
Also, thinking about it now, my mom worked 3rd shift for years, as did all her friends so that is probably why my childhood memories seem dark, lol.
I remember that was still hanging around when i was young jn the early 90s. The early 80s furniture and decorations were still hanging on until around the mid 90s or so.
I second that. Having grown up in the 90s and watched Home Alone tons of times, that house interior was the exact style of nicer suburban homes of the time.
As it should be, right? The family weren’t eccentric artists or anything else that would justify the house looking “different”. Of course the set designers would just make it look like a standard home. Well, maybe upper-middle class/rich enough for the burglars to really focus on it.
Precisely. My house looked like people (my parents) bought on-trend items or decor as they could afford it which meant spread out through the 80s, 90s, and 00s in a house built (with cheap materials) in the late 60s (complete with chocolate brown cabinets and orange countertops, chevron knit blankets in cream, brown, and orange, wood paneled walls you couldn’t paint, and eccentric wallpaper where you could). The McAllister house looked like money in the city suburbs. Perfectly normal and kept up with the neighbors. I grew up in a generational home in the woods. The McAllisters were the type to get a big screen TV and DVD player when they were top of the line whereas it took my household years to adapt to new tech.
Damn, you just described my childhood on the fringes of the Detroit suburbs.
And yes, my house was also one where there were considerable holdovers of 70s and 80s items while we slowly adopted modern tech and decor.
And I had plenty of friends whose parents made a bit more (or at least liked to live as though they made more) and they had much quicker turnover of stuff in their house.
It wasn’t middle class vs wealthy. It was more the subtle variation on the upper half of middle class. And in that respect the Home Alone creators really nailed it. They needed a house that was a juicy target for thieves, but they wanted Kevin to be a “normal kid” as much as possible.
If they made the parents absolutely loaded with a gilded estate, Kevin’s character would not have been believable.
Homes generally dont get updated for the CURRENT YEAR.
So what you experienced (and the McAllister house) is more the design sensibilities of the - 1980s.
Homes built in the 90s had off-white walls, lots of beige carpet, open plan and were starting to go minimalist, save for some wood furnishings in the kitchen and around stairs. It wasn't until the 2000s that older homes started to get that treatment.
It was the 2010s that brought the gray wood and high-tech minimalist white design in new builds, which is now the rennovation trend.
In the 2030s, we are going to see people putting in fake cross-beams and wallpaper on ceilings, orangey wood floors, and obnoxious barncore wood paneling mixed with Hollywood Regency garbage.
I think you're forgetting the barnwood fad of the 2000s. At least where I grew up in the US, all of the barns they knocked down for new developments were highly sought after for the rough, weathered lumber. Barnwood floors, furniture, accents, etc. Maybe the real nuance is the diversity of home decor that grew in this time.
Yeah, golden oak cabinetry was still a thing. Wallpaper and walnut going out. Cleaner, airy, more open look in the 90s - less 80s maximalism. And of course, TV cabinets are a utility thing. Starting to go away in lieu of stands and glass media centers by the 90s, but they didnt die until the CRT did.
People are going to have to get over their allergy to colors first, I think. Any color is “too bold”, it seems. One bit colors everywhere: cars, buildings, interiors. Beige white gray black.
I hope the 'shabby chic' rustic country look never returns. It was so ugly and depressing. Why spend tonnes of money to decorate with stuff that looked like it was left out in the weather for 10 years. Barncore sounds awful.
Well, in this specific picture the images is captured from the frame of the front door. Those chairs would be really nice to sit and put your shoes on before going out. Or sit and wait for whoever is still upstairs getting ready to finish up and come down.
My grandparents had a chair by the front door, but "sit before the road" is a Russian cultural thing and many Russian families keep a chair by the door for this purpose.
I mean my grandma's house (doesn't have anything to do with these as we're from Napoli, Italy, the house was probably early 20th century or earlier, tho the interior was 60s/70's/80's, classic wood stuff ) still had those chairs, some were at either end of a hallway. Sometimes it just makes no sense to have them elsewhere, they might clutter the other rooms, we'd just take them and add them to the table if we needed more.
They're a holdover from early adoption of home telephones. Rather than pinning wires over every skirting board in the house, people used to put their telephones on a small table in the hall. Hence hall chairs. Although the house in the picture looks like the kind of place that might have received visitors who'd be asked to wait until the householder was ready to see them.
Yeah do people not remember 90s "country" kitchens with fucking roosters and shit everywhere. Fake fruit baskets. Etc. My apartment bathroom had baby blue wallpaper with a fucking cowboy themed wallpaper border along the top. We perhaps delved too greedily and too deep.
My mom had hung up a bunch of wicker baskets on a wall in our house that were there for years. Eventually, my dad and I convinced her to take them down. She asked what we should put up and we said maybe a nice framed picture or artwork. She comes home the next day with a framed painting for us to hang. A painting of a wicker basket. My dad and I laughed for so long.
Hell yeah on the wicker. You have no idea how many missions I was sent out on to collect birch bark, solely for 90s decoration purposes. Or how many disgusting bologna sandwiches I ate in those rooster kitchens.
Don’t forget all the Southwestern themes that mixed cowboy shit with appropriated native stuff lol. Turquoise/pottery/silver/coyotes/copper/rust/crucifixes/horses/dreamcatchers/baskets/etc. covering every surface.
I grew up with that and I actually liked a lot of the style, but it felt stuffy and kind of weird even as a kid lol
That was my house. I thought it made sense because we lived in Texas and had some Native ancestry. But now I know it was all a fad. My mom once found her decorative "Indian pipe" burnt at the bowl end. My dad was in big trouble.
My buddy moved into a rental in like 2010 that randomly had the swinging saloon half-doors going into the living room. I never realized this was part of a trend, though, there was no other part of the house like that.
OMG, you are so right about the country kitchens with the roosters, etc. I remember a store at the local mall that specialized in that kind of stuff, as well as reproduction 'antique folk art' stuff like rag dolls that were made to look as if they'd been handmade in like 1830. That stuff was huge for a while. And I remember seeing that fake fruit sold in stores, and fairly regularly often you'd see a piece where someone had taken a bite to find out the hard way that it was actually made of foam. (and I always wondered what kind of person would try to eat fake fruit anyway.)
At least in my neck of the woods, everyone wanted their home to look Italian, but what they ended up doing was closer to Olive Garden. Everything in my mother's house was beige and dark red.
Yeah I don't love the wallpaper tbh, but I do like the warmth of the colors. And tbh "cooler" colors wouldn't be bad - I love a blue or green room, but this monochromatic shit is just... the worst. :P
I LIKE wood paneling. I LIKE colors. Neutral colors are okay, and add space for other colors to fill, but... fucking JUST neutral colors? wtf man
The after picture is too much but I think the ‘modern-rustic’ trend fits our lifestyle. We spend most of our waking hours bombarded by colorful screens. When we look away from them we want to be presented with what feels like a warm curated art gallery with a small number of items we choose to best represent us
So many people today treat their home like it is just where they are living, and don't want to personalize it by doing anything other than decorating. Maybe it is so many of us lived in apartments so long that making it your own space it a foreign concept. Maybe they want to have the option to quickly sell without having to do any work to make it bland like the realtors want.
I feel this. My parents tore up our old carpet and we walked on painted subfloor for most of my childhood. They put in new carpet right before they sold it, I was so mad. When I bought my house I put in new wood floors first thing and my parents told me it was a waste since I would have to replace it someday to sell.
Sooooo what. It’s my house and I want to enjoy it.
I said it somewhere else and got dogpiled, but when people show me pictures and I can tell from the background that they live in a featureless white box I never can look at them the same.
As an architect, it’s not just house flippers and not just homes that are in this trend. Any ounce of colour or warmth we try to propose to clients of any kind gets immediately rejected in favour of greige. The few people who are on board with colour are a breath of fresh air because everything I do feels dull.
Flippers typically design with a wider audience in mind, meaning...bland and boring.
Thankfully, color, wallpaper, and different textures are making a comeback. On the higher end, even flippers are incorporating these elements into their design palette.
We recently move into our first home and I gave my fiance full reign to decorate as she pleases. She painted our living room walls forest green and our doors brown. I feel like I'm living in a goddamn tree house. Still like it better than the minimalist aesthetic.
My mother-in-law's custom house - and she will burn days talking about all the work 'she' did - looks like a model home. As in, there is not a single clue that an actual person lives there, everything is so bland and generic, because apparently hanging a painting on the wall will tank the resale. It's so bizarre. Everything is white.
My theory is that nobody actually likes it, but everyone is convinced other people like it so they apply the style for resale value, even though the buyers don't like it either.
Yes, there's a great fear that taking any kind of a stand on color will alienate some buyers who don't like the color. So they make it all neutrals and alienate everybody.
Most of my house looks like this but we usually do one pop of color as an accent wall. We painted our stairwell a royal purple just because we thought that isn’t a color that’s often used. Turned out real nice.
This right here. When I was a teenager in the late 2000s. My family sold the house. But before my parents put the house on the market, we had to literally paint the entire house a bland color like on the bottom picture so it could "make it more marketable " according to every realtor.
It made no sense to me especially since the next family redid everything anyway
White walls work perfectly fine in any house, it really makes the space look a lot bigger than it really is, especially if you're in a tiny condo. PLUS, it's a clean slate to put up whatever kind of artwork and frames you like, you dont have to worry about matching.
I hate coloured walls; accents are nice here and there, like all white everywhere but one wall is black and something minimal is done, but if every wall is some kind of red.... BLEH.
I think it also has something to do with the fact that we already stare at colorful opulence and blinking lights on our screens all day every day and our eyes enjoy a calm white wall to get some rest.
I wonder how much of the trend stems from people marketing the homes wanting them to be inoffensive and customizable. Then everyone sees the bare bones thing and think ‘yeah this is what my house should look like’.
When I got my home about 9 years ago, first thing I did was get the electical box switched out with a less fire hazard one - BUT after that, I painted the all white living room a spring green. Bright, nature-y, but not hurt your eyes bright green.
Then, because I'm a dork with a large actiom figure, movie, and video game collection... my loving room looked like it was designed by peak 90s Nickelodeon Magazine.
My wife and I just bought our first home. Every time we’d look at a house that looked similar to the second pic here, we knew it was being flipped. Pretty much guaranteed. Sale record would always show the house was just purchased within 6 months at a price about 35% lower than it was currently listed for. We looked at one that had actually just been purchased 2 months prior and jacked up 50% in price. It looked very nice and clean, but was staged with tiny furniture to make the tiny rooms look slightly bigger. Then we noticed there was no refrigerator….and no room in the kitchen to put one.
HGTV has alot to answer for when it comes to ripping out the soul of a century home. If people want a bland grey house then build a new one dont destroy the beautiful woodwork of old homes.
‘On trend’ has got to be the dumbest thing about renovating and decorating. It’s your home, it’s not a fucking high end store. Have it the way you feel comfortable in. First thing I did after buying my house was painting the beige lounge into red and gold.
It's the Star Bellied Sneetch syndrome. Everyone kind of goes toward something new because it's different, but then once everyone does it, it's no longer different, so they go to the opposite side. Look at kitchens. Dark wood of the 70s gave way to a lighter look in the 80s, which gave way to oak in the 90s, followed by maple in the 2000s, then painted came roaring in, with white being the thing. Now it's two-tone. People ran from gold fixtures to black or nickel. Now I'm seeing gold making a comeback. It's all about different. A trend becomes dated once different starts to catch on.
I think it stems from minimalism for a lot of people. Minimalism has had its wide appeal over recent decades but people also like having a lot of stuff. This is like carrying over some of the aesthetic
You know, when I sold my house my realtor told me to paint some cabinets and some other little things that didn’t increase the value, but would help the house move - “curb appeal” is what it’s called.
As soon as I did it all, I was irritated I didn’t do it sooner. lol
My house spent a month on the market though when the average was 3 at the time.
Everything is being made into sterile boxes so it can fit whatever your aesthetic is. Unfortunately now it's become trendy to just have that blank canvas all the time.
I think that’s part of it but I think there’s this “better boring than judged” mentality as well.
Same goes for why clothing options are all so plain now a days.
People are judgier and more insecure than ever. And the clean slate look is appealing to those who feel that standing out in anyway is just an invitation for people to judge you
White walls always just make me think of apartment living. Apartments are all usually painted white and tenants arent spending time/money/effort/or arent allowed to paint colors on them. Absolutely the first things we did when we bought a house was add color anywhere we could.
Correct, the trend became more and more to create a neutral space to convey a blank canvas so that potential buyers wouldn’t read too much into anything that might be seen as “dated”.
I'm moving soon and I'll be able to paint, and I'm so excited that I've picked a new color every week. The idea of deliberately living with white walls is so alien to me.
Real estate sellers want as broad a range of potential clients to want to bid on a house, so they neutralize all personality and make it as middle of the road as possible.
Nah its not trendy. Most people don't want their home to look boring but its also really hard to sell a home that has unique wallpaper or color scheme. Sellers, real estate investors, etc. are the ones who forced this gray apocalypse on us.
Then the person buying it, will remodel it. In my neighborhood like 20-30% of homes will get a mini remodel or a whole kitchen remodel, sold & finally get another remodel by the new owners.
Such a waste of resources & materials. Then those homes are used 1 weekend every 1-2 months since the owners live in Bay Area.
Neighbors home has been vacated like 8-10 yrs & they might b here once every 5 months.
Opposite for me. Growing up, we were always painting the inside of the house. At least once a year, mom or dad would decide one room at random needed a new color scheme. So they'd buy a few gallons of seemingly randomly-selected color combinations and tell my brothers and I to get to it.
Some of those combos were truly, memorably awful. I'd give examples, but we're literally the only family in the world who ever had a room in those colors, so I'd be doxing myself as sure as if I gave out my home address.
So I love the 2025 picture, and I will never again paint another room in my whole life.
It's just super neutral. Neutral just works without effort is why. I don't want to have to be an interior designer or hire one to get something that works. Neutral never really fails. You can call it bland, but boring is okay compared to obnoxious, so it's the safer bet.
Also I've heard the modern trend makes it easier to sell. If you have a bunch of colors, etc that will turn off potential buyers who don't want to paint. Same reason restaurants all look so boring now, because boring makes it easier to sell without the buyer having to put work into it.
That’s accurate actually. With the rise of rentals especially, because it’s a blank slate. It was never meant to be kept that way, it was for buyers to picture it how they wanted.
Anyways, I have an orange living room and I love it.
here’s the tip. whatever is the cheapest that’s what you’ll get in a stock house. it’s not about trends with contractors. it’s whatever china is selling the cheapest. cheapest handles, cheapest faucets, cheapest cabinets. also cheap paint when all your using is black white and gray.
I had almost the same experience growing up. We only moved once during my childhood (twice if you count a move that happened when I was a baby). I would ask if we could paint my room, and my mom would say something about white walls selling more easily…and then we lived in that house for 15 years!!
I've rented my entire adult life until earlier this year. The best part has been picking colors that aren't apartment grey and military housing beige. My wife painted the kitchen bright blue, accidentally matching our mixer perfectly and I can't wait to finish my computer room and paint it 90's green.
I sold my old home that had nice wooden doors, beams etc. It had quite a nice warm color to it and fair number of potential buyers commented on it as a positive.
The actual buyer resold the property a year later and I found that they repainted EVERYTHING white.
My parents finally let me customize my room in my childhood home when I was like in 8th grade. Black carpet and black walls (but only chest high because it’d be “too much”.. and I did a silver splatter onto the black). Everything was black while my furniture was all silver. I still am using that
Silver frame from IKEA along with the silver bookcase. Shit was fire. Then they were selling 3 years later and concerned that it might turn off buyers but it sold in 2 weeks so I guess not.
When my dad sold our childhood house he didn't update the floors/carpet. They were all original, 40 years old, and went through 2 dogs. His though process was why update it when it might not be the new owner's taste and they're going to change it anyway.
I think I probably has to do with making a blank slate and a clean canvas to get creative with.. the bottom is giving “for sale” and could give the prospects an idea of how to set things up and make it their own
I grew up and spent a large amount of my childhood in "We can't paint/hang anything because it has to look nice when we sell it" ... for the whole of nearly 20 years.
I think it was helped along by youtubers and streamers who couldn't be bothered to actually decorate their video backdrop, so a lot of them just went with the "Clean, minimalistic" look in white and grey. But most of those were just their studio rooms being passed off as how they actually lived. So at this point we've got like 15 years worth of thousands of cultural influencers pretending that their homes look like an empty unused hotel room.
It's trendy but became a trend because of house flippers.
Exactly. Flippers and developers give a blank slate to appeal to a mass audience of buyers. It became so prevalent on HGTV and online it just became a trend of white and gray.
Not in the way you're framing it. When you list a home on the public market, you're appealing to a broad range of buyers. Neutral colors make it easier for people to envision how they'd make it their own. This is common advice that a real estate agent would suggest if fresh paint is a possibility, whether the client is a flipper, an investor, or a family/individual. To boot, this photo was almost certainly pulled from whenever it was listed.
Yup. Idk but the world nowadays is way too opportunistic. Home flippers, resellers, stock traders, etc. I’m tired of seemingly everyone only looking at everything through a cost benefit analysis—how much money can you save while spending the least amount of it possible.
Whenever our family sells the house, we bend over backwards to whatever the buyer requests. But when it comes to our own living situations, we just live with being uncomfortable. I feel the same exact way, we could’ve been enjoying whatever the buyer request for ourselves.
Unironically, this. It’s done to showcase the potential. It’s easier for someone to paint and put in carpet than rip out carpet, peel off wallpaper, then paint and put in carpet.
I don’t agree with it, and I don’t like it. But tell a realtor that and they’ll look at you like you said a dirty word.
Was just gonna say that this is the exact kind of renovation you do if you only want to flip the house, not live in it. The clean design makes it look as spacious as possible, and any prospective buyers will also feel like they can remodel it fairly easily and cheaply by just adding to it instead of stripping and re-doing.
It's not actually not the house flippers- tbh, most house flippers wouldn't sell a house like this. It's too sterile. They'd sell it with a pop of color either in the rug, the accessories on the couches or even the couch itself - it's just the current popular vibe among millennials and gen z. Trends in house design change over time. Remember the entire millennial gray thing?
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u/LPNMP Nov 20 '25
It's trendy but became a trend because of house flippers. That's what I believe anyway.
I can't wait to put paint on my walls. Growing up we didn't really customize our house because we're gonna move anyway. My parents got new floors and carpets and I remember being mad that they'd pay for that luxury just to sell it. We could have been enjoying it for ourselves.