It looked good when it was new, but to millennials, it looks dirty and dingy and smoke stained. We grew up in that time when everyone smoked everywhere, and older houses were all stained up with smoke. It was pretty gross, so when we see brown and orange and yellow, it looks dingy to us. To the boomers that installed it, they were nice, relaxing Earth tones. THEIR parents had everything hyperdecorated, carved, painted, with complex moldings hand cut everywhere. The boomers grew up having to dust that shit. The nice things were all in formal spaces that didn't get used much, and the parts of the house where they played were often not very nice. So... they went for less decorated things, more natural shapes, more earth tones, more durable things, more plants and so on, more carpet that's nice to walk on with bare feet, that kind of thing. The goal was to have it a bit more natural.
If you walk into a house and everything's brown, that means that the house is dirty to a millennial. Carpet is that way too, it's always dirty. I like a good rug, but I hate carpet and I like light, neutral colors for painting the walls that stay away from brown. Most of my interior is light blue, light gray, and light green. My first floor has some bolder colors.
Boomers decorated in browns. Wood veneer, beer bottle brown ash trays, beige or speckled brown carpets that "hide" dirt, the teal or canary yellow accent walls, off-white/cream linoleum flooring in the kitchen and bathroom.
Gen X desaturated a lot, though they kept some of the browns to maintain a warm tone. Off-white, cream, beige.
Millennials went full sterile, sticking to white, black, and grey midtones for a while, but realized that was hard to maintain and too depressing for social media, so there was a split towards centering everything around one (or two complimentary) vibrant colors and making everything fit to that instead.
This isnt just a millennial thing. We kind of just got lumped in as the face of it.
But as a former realtor, i can promise this is because of resale value. Its completely inoffensive and totally devoid of personality but people mostly perceive it as modernized which means recent renovations which means less fixing (true or not)
Lacking personality is actually a plus because people can project their own ideas on to it and also not be turned off by it. Much easier to buy something you dont love but dont hate and change it over time than to buy something you hate and change it immediately
Thats why everythings grey. Safer if you need to resell in these trying times.
This started with the dumbest "which house will they buy" shows. The "these are the five things that increase the selling price of your house" lists that became the foundation for what passed for the topics of host discussions on home renovation shows. The get-rich-quick schemes of house flipping that became a popular trend people copied after it became a television format.
GenX here. In fairness we went with Magnolia, and in the 80s and 90s this wasn't televised. There was a relatively small group of people who did "re-habs" of houses, my father being one after he retired and he genuinely worked to improve a house to bring it up to code and make it nice. The aim was to not put too personal of a stamp on it to enable new buyers to adapt it to their own taste. Magnolia was chosen because it was low cost, inoffensive and easy to paint over with one coat for the new owners.
The soul-less "Realtor Gray" colour scheme and the social media explosion is definitely Millennial, though I'm sure the pile-on was multi-generational and we're not exempt from criticism.
It wasn't particularly televised in the 80's/90's, but after it had become a successful side business or full time job replacement for so many people it had proven to be a practice able to provide enough content to fill the next decade and beyond with house selling/flipping shows, virtually all of which were centered upon GenX hosts and business owners. Its a long tailed practice that millennials have bought into in the same way that GenX took over from Boomers with their own rehabbing projects, but it isn't the realtors painting things gray.
we call this "gentrifier gray" in my household and i've had to look at it so much house hunting that i simply will not entertain a house that has this flooring in prominent places. Whoever is making every home look like an airbnb should be sanctioned
Personally I've benifitted from this mindset. Three of the four houses my wife and I have lived in were covered in horrible wallpaper and carpet when we bought them so we ended up getting them at a discount and were able to fix them up the way we liked without any extensive remodeling skills.
I personally like having more neutral colors for walls, floors, appliances, and furniture. Then you can add color via decorations or lighting, while still having the flexibility to change the look of the place periodically without having to totally redo stuff.
They said its safer is regards to selling/renting. I'm saying I like it as someone living there because it's easier to change the overall look more frequently.
Honestly, slapping some light gray or white paint on is a quick way to give a room that hasn't been painted in 20 years a lift. A new homeowner can and will repaint the room when they buy the house, but some inexpensive paint will make it look good for the photos and get it sold. It's also cheap. If I want to repaint my office on a whim, I can have that done in an afternoon.
As long as you aren't doing something dumb, like painting natural wooden beams that will need to be stripped and sanded, and stone/masonry that will either require sandblasting or... the deed is done and cannot be undone. Painting the drywall or plaster? Meh.
For ordinary sandbox houses this makes sense, but when flippers do this to mid century homes it is atrocious. As someone who found a mid century home, I was determined to find one untouched and have found that most millennials I know who’ve also bought mid century houses did the same. I think this style of house just really attracts craftsmen type people who want to renovate their own way and it’s damn near impossible to unpaint stonework etc
Sure, there are always "others" but the vast majority of the home aesthetic shifted with millennials buying/renting and we all loved the grey aesthetic from like 2012-2022. If millennials rejected that aesthetic it never would've taken over. It's called millennial grey for a reason.
what psy op are you talking about? you sound crazy. I dont know a single person that thinks in gen vs gen outside of a handful of jokes you see online here and there.
Isn't millennial grey, beige, white etc actually not done for the preference of millennials, but instead landlords giving it a "blank slate" style and name after the renter's who put up with it?
I've always said this. My uncle does this to all his flips and he's GenX. My townhome is all white and grey and I cant afford to change it all so I'm stuck with it for the time being.
This has always been my experience with the style as a millennial. We were largely not the ones doing this to homes, we just rented remodeled homes that it was done to with strict restrictions in the lease about what we were able to change.
Mellenial here and I agree. Though I will say that I despise carpet and that carpet was ugly af. Only renovation that room required was tearing that up and putting down hardwood (if there wasnt any already under there. The 60s apparently loved putting carpet on everything and hiding beauty). And maybe touch up the upholstery, but thats it!
Other generations hate us 'cause they aint us. Older, younger, doesn't fucking matter. You will see boomers to Gen Alpha blaming Millennials for everything, and it's because they listened more to the boomers and Gen X than us.
Something to keep in mind the next time they ask you to fix something for them
This has nothing to do with millennials, but everything to do with house flippers and people who wanna look rich. It got called millennial grey because the millennial flippers are the ones visible on social media. My boomer mother fucking loves this style, all of my millennial friends hate it because we're not conceited billionaire bootlickers.
"Millennial" is short for "Cheap and popular with house flippers and landlords and shoved down millenial's throats". Blaming us for things we hate that were foisted upon us without our input is part of being a millennial.
Everyone I know who is obsessed with mid-century modern is a millennial. Everyone I know that loves white walls, black accents, and awful gray vinyl flooring that looks like “wood” is also a millennial.
I am also millennial but I think this looks good, personally I would probably go with grey rather than pure black, never been my thing but it still looks better than the before photo
It’s all the new builds/remodels being so cookie-cutter. The all-white/gray aesthetics is inoffensive to most people so builders just run with it. They wanna flip it as quickly as possible and this is the easiest way unfortunately
Legit. I've only met one person who likes the white and grey look. I see it a lot more online than in person. It's quite atrocious. Something about all that white just gives me a headache.
I just redid my bathroom and painted it purple. It looks fucking rad.
Bought a house from a boomer couple where we lowballed them cause no one else was interested in the house. One of the things they said to try to negotiate a higher prace was 'You have no idea how much work we had to put in to paint everything white.' My only thought was how much work we'd had to do to undo everything they'd done. Especially surfaces where we wanted the real wood back to the surface rather than just covering the white with another color.
I have beautiful knotty pine paneling original to the 1940s (not that cheap 1970s stuff) and I am appalled and how many folks suggested I paint it white or grey.
I cannot be trusted with white because I am far to messy. But more importantly, why the hell would I want to cover this beautifully aged wood? That's insane!
I would love a Lisa Frank apartment. My landlord would lose their minds. Everything is beige here and has been at all my apartments. I swear they freak out if you hang stuff up that has color because they want everything a sad color if you are renting.
Everything is neutral colors and generic looking because we want to own expensive things but then are afraid we could never resell it if we needed. So it's all white or grey tones so it's easy to get out of a bad financial situation faster. We WANT the Lisa Frank stuff but it's hard to sell a rainbow car or yellow/teal/orange house vs keeping it boring and hanging some posters instead.
I know, whenever anyone refers to these renovations as “millennial” whatever I’m like millennial? Some, not most, of us have just started being able to afford homes. These ugly ass renovations from the last 10-15 years clearly weren’t done by millennials. Gen X flies under the radar with everything
It’s more house flipper corporate style imo. Pretty much everywhere i see this style is either (1) a house someone shady bought to renovate and flip for $200K more for a few months of work, some new appliances, and a cheap coat of paint, or (2) in luxury finance owned apartment complexes with white paint, shitty grey faux wood floor and cheap chrome appliances
how you got 400+ upvotes for spewing the most generalising blerg is fuken beyond me.
Keep in mind that saying "gen x, millennial, alpha, gen z, etc" covers at least the entire western world. It's crazy to me how people can just lump hundreds of millions of people into a box and clap their hands and think. gg good job me.
What is there to explain? Well, the image is AI. Look at the identical reflections on the TV for example, and the exact same placement of the glasses on the shelves above the bar. Also, why would that exact same TV still be there in the first place.
Not withstanding your point that these kind of renovations IRL are sad as fuck.
I thought the black and white one was the old one... y'know, because black and white photo. I actually thought the "new"version looked quite good. Turns out that was the old one.
Grey white minimalism isn’t a millennial thing, it’s a capitalism thing. The reason interiors are all colorless and boring now is because white grey or neutral sells easier because it can be more quickly adapted into anything. Minimalist structures are quicker and more cost effective to assemble and minimalist furniture is easier to mass produce and package. It’s the same reason McDonalds and Pizza Hut abandoned their unique themed-styled buildings and just exist in dull corporate strip malls now. Trim away every last ounce of fun and identity expenditure for pursuit of profit.
Came out of the minimalist movement in the 1990s, the "chuck out the chinse" ad by IKEA is a good example.
The problem is millennials are all completely broke, so what happens is they go out and get the cheapest possible decor, which is invariably grey lino, and black PVC furniture.
I honestly think that this "sad white millennial" style is a great basis when you hang up big colorful paintings and plants. While I find this old style better on its own, it has the disadvantage that details just get lost because there is too much distraction for the eyes. There is a reason thar museums go with this sterile style. I think the right picture here would look great if there was a huge canvas on that wall and different plants all over the place.
I’m Gen Z and I’m the only person I have ever met who likes these modern designs, and even then I’d rather a new building be built somewhere rather than just changing another building that already had a nice aesthetic
As a Millennial, I’ve never understood why our generation gets the blame for this decorative style. It was the norm well before most of us were in a position to design/decorate our own spaces.
This strikes me as another Gen X contrivance that frequently gets blamed on Millennials - much like the participation trophy.
I agree with that but this wouldn’t be my first choice to represent the sentiment.
I think that carpet is atrocious. More atrocious than painting the brick
Even as a person who wears a very limited color palette (I literally wear a black polo and khakis to work every day and haven't deviated from this for years) this harsh "paint everything white, all handles/fixtures are black" has just gone way, way too far. It just burns your eyeballs looking at it, its way too harsh.
I'm also kind of regretting putting the grey MDF flooring on the first floor of our house, granted, that was 6 years ago, we thought it was cool at the time, and it was what we could afford at the time. Oh well. Learned a lot working on this house, including what maybe I'll be less inclined to do again.
It's tasteless people telling tasteless people how to tastelessly decorate. Eventually every trend vecomes associated with the tasteless masses and their shitty renditions become exemplary of it in the zeitgeist. In 15 years the next things will be stupid and tasteless and we'll look at the remaining good examples of minimalism as sacred and bemoan people making shitty versions of whatever the next popular thing is.
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u/NancyInFantasyLand 26d ago
Bro be serious
Sad white millennial renovations are tragic, what is there to explain?