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?
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!”
No heart. No soul. Appliances built to fail.
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 😔
It’s just missing the thinnest granite countertops you’ve ever seen.
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…
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)
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.)
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.
Antebellum
and unlike art deco - this kind of luxury is dirt cheap.
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.
you mean concrete paint?
or clear sealant?
ok for garages, I suppose. Inside the house, maybe not so much unless you are into that look.
I was thinking more this…
Oh, no. I’m not most people. I guess it could have been interpreted that way though.
Terrazzo is one of my favorite textures, and polishing it, is simply peak.
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.
planks make installation easier too. big squares would be awkward. small squares would be more tedious. other shapes would not interlock like a straight line. Also, seems can be nearly invisible in a quality locking material.
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.
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”
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.
.
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.
ohh don’t forget the manufactured marble and quartz blacksplash
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
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.
Carpet has a lot going for it. It’s relatively cheap, easy to install, forgiving of subflooring issues, pleasant to walk on, and dampens sound. That’s not to say it has its downsides - mostly keeping it clean and that it shows wear, but I can see why its popular.
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.
Unless you’re a smoker, what needs to be cleaned with them?
Everything?
Anyone who’s ever removed carpet can attest to how much fine dust gets trapped. Its gross.
I mean, if you just stipple the ceiling it looks ugly. Like stalactites in a cave. But it can be nice with a bit of intentionality and design effort
Helps retain heat. The solution is a throw rug in the winter that you hose off in the spring though.
Warmer and absorbs sound. Obviously not in the kitchen or bathroom but we have carpet everywhere else.
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.
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
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.
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 those are ok.
https://www.lung.org/clean-air/indoor-air/indoor-air-pollutants/carpets
