Would this annoy you? Neighbours copying everything you do.

This was my first thought too. 😀

We are the opposite. Next door is making their house look super modern and saying how much they hate the original features. I have no intentions of making mine look like a new build. Ours looks very dated now and will stay that way.

A developer is building four chocolate box cottages in front our houses so it's going to look a right mess across mine very 80's house, next door new build modern and four slate roof stone cottages.

You are trend setter and they like your style. I like my neighbours style but if I wanted a new build, I'd buy one.

Dissing your shutters is rude. Did you ask for their opinion on them? I don't understand dissing them and then getting them for themselves. Odd!

We had a new door fitted some years ago now with an emblem on and one of the neighbours said to me "Oh we wanted that emblem but you got it first and now we can't have it!" Don't know why she thought she had to choose something different because I honestly wouldn't have cared. Or probably not even noticed.

Last I heard, bifold doors were 'out'. Now, that's going to be a bugger.

I don't think you are being unreasonable. People will say "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" but when they are copying everything that would get very annoying.

I had a friend who literally copied everything I did. Hobbies, interests, home decor, clothes. At first I didn't mind but when it went on and on it began to feel like they were stealing my identify and I didn't like it at all (I slowly removed myself from the friendship). Not quite the same as OP, but I totally get how alot of copying can be very annoying.

Haven't you heard "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"?
You can't do anything about it, so you might as well just get over it.

Couldn't help but be reminded of the Wickes advert, where the couple know before they even put the new kitchen in that her sister will copy it.

I think there are good reasons why neighbours will copy. It costs a lot of money to renovate and nobody wants to make an expensive mistake - so if you see that your neighbour has done what you had in mind and theirs has 'worked' - yeah, you're going to use their work as your template to avoid that expensive mistake you fear.

Used to be like that in our old street - not for any malicious reason - it was usually someone spotted someone else getting a job done, liked it, asked for the contact number and booked saying "I want something like you did on number 37".

For example about 5 houses had their roofs renewed by the same company, so using the same tiles and the only variety was whether you went for red or black ridge tiles - semis would have looked a bit daft changing colour halfway so we just went with next door's choices on ours.

Then half the time if someone changed a sofa or similar - someone else in the street would find a home for it - so you'd end up with furniture rotating around the houses being wheeled down the street, or you'd pop in to see what X was doing with their new patio etc etc. I do miss that street. However the houses were incredibly uniform so naturally the same kind of stuff just visually worked well on the houses - whereas where we live now is all old houses that popped up at various points in the early 19th century so all look very different - next door is completely different to ours (think it's about 20 years younger) so I have no urge to copy his retracting sunshade and resin driveway cos it would look shit on our house - but it works well on his.

The mature adult in me would say they can do what they want but if I’m being really honest it would piss me off.
You should say you are doing something totally hideous and see if they jump in first

I'm surprised by how few people find this odd. Obviously when you follow trends you will inevitably have the same stuff as other people but it sounds like OP's neighbours have never had an original thought in their lives.

Yes, lots of people have have similar sky lights or pergolas or block paving or shutters or outdoor lights but it's not a coincidence that the neighbours suddenly have all of those after OP got them. I might be in the minority here but I would find it really bloody weird.

Admittedly, my view might be coloured by the fact that my own mother does this to me. If I book a two week holiday, she'll book a month-long cruise. A few years ago, I bought a car and a week later, she bought the next model up from mine. Some time later, not long after she told me how she would not be replacing that car for years because she loved it so much, I got a new car and she immediately went to view the bigger version

Our previous neighbours were like this and it used to really irritate me. It wasn't so much that they were doing nice things to their home, afterall it made the whole street a lot nicer when people would invest in making their homes look lovely, it was that they had to have exactly the same thing which then took away any individuality from our home. They could've afforded to have had "better" versions of the same things but no, it had to be exact and thats what I found annoying. We now live in a house with no immediate neighbours and its so nice just to do what we want to the house without having a carbon copy of it next door.

I genuinely don't think I'd notice, and if I did, I think what a pair of weirdos with no imagination.

So it’s normal for houses on the opposite side of me to have 2 patios because they are North facing.

And slowly but surely everyone is turning their outbuilding/garage into a home office. Ours was like that when we bought it but my neighbours aren’t copying me, it’s a general lifestyle shift

I live on a road of near identical houses. Very common when someone is thinking of doing their kitchen or side return or loft conversion that people ask on the neighbourhood WhatsApp if they can visit for inspiration. My kitchen layout is copied and adapted from a friend’s down the road. Someone else has copied our attic. We have really strict planners and are conservation area with article/section 4 so it just makes sense and makes things neater. It’s a very pretty road and part of that is the matchy matchy ness of it all. We also share good and bad trades so you often see the electrician or carpenter who helped you, parked up helping someone else.

Start breeding Rottweilers, see if they copy that :)

I’d find it pleasingly symmetrical.

🤣🤣🤣

I would find it flattering and be happy their house looks good too.

Put a whiteboard in the window facing them and put up a new Germaine Greer quote every day.

True

Do they get exactly the same brands of patio furniture, pergolas etc as you? How about things like plants and flowers? Do they have trees and flowerbeds in the same places?

Put a gnome or something similar in your garden. See if they copy that. Alternatively, if a gnome is a step too far, search out a really quirky, unusual ornament that they can in no way replicate. You could have real fun with this.

Same here.

We went on holiday last year and a few weeks later our neighbours did too

We had a Christmas tree and the neighbours copied us.

I had put the washing out and it started to rain and had to bring it in, and blow me if the neighbours didn't do the same.

They even go to the same local supermarket!

I know I should be flattered but I do find it so frustrating.