Are show homes a new thing for people?

[Dojasayso]

Just musing through Instagram and I realised something.. most people's homes are borderline show home standard.

It's not a put down because my home is the same in terms of cleaning and nice decor with a lot of effort, time and expense.

But I growing up I don't remember the being as standard? I remember fridge magnets, pictures, ornaments etc.
I remember friends houses having carpets that don't match the sofas and a rug that was gifted 10 years ago that doesn't match the home but families kept anyway.

But now I can't think of a single friend or acquaintance with such a mis matched home.

Of course there were home fashions but these weren't the default standard in most homes.

Of course the grey homes with mirrored furniture were a thing (I hated that trend). But even so, people put a lot of money and time into creating that imagine.

I don't remember people putting as much into their home decor years ago.

Now most people I know have gorgeously decorated homes where things match and even family photos are up in black and white with stylish frames.

Is it a new thing to have a show home type house? What do you think has caused it?

I think it may be due to social media?

I don't like the grey trend but I do love a clean and more minimal look.
I agree they homes are so much cleaner and smarter. Remember the old wallpaper boarders and very orange pine.
That said, we buy antiques or old furniture and upcycle. But I try and keep clutter to a minimum. One of my hobbies is watching YouTube house tours

I have two architect friends who are married to one another, and who live in an entirely ordinary, large Victorian house with the sort of belongings you would expect from a family that includes four children and a dog, and a lot of antique furniture.

I find a lot of architects are quite sneery about anything that they deem ‘interior design-y’. I’ve certainly heard things being described as ‘a bit Homes and Garden’, and it wasn’t a compliment.

I have a new build and only my kids bedrooms are decorated and matching, still cba to look at paper for downstairs yet. I have a gothic theme that I am hoping to aim for but it's for my benefit and not to be flashy. The garden and patio resemble a kids area with trampoline, basketball post, footy post and balls,no plants or flowers but solar powered butterfly's and peacocks hung around the fence.

The designer I work with has a beautiful apartment as you might expect but like your architect friends, she has a normal level of objects around.

I wouldn't like to live in a show house.My house is clean but can sometimes be messy!
Since lockdown I have stated to decorate for the Seasons & love it!

I have a very maximalist style and dark colour, lots of books, pictures, mirrors, patterns, plants. Sort of cosy boho I guess. I can’t bear minimalism and matching. Hate grey, white, black and, god forbid, red.

I also have fridge magnets.

It’s probably down to social media and a bit of A- keeping up with Jones’s, B- getting inspiration, C- a bit like clothes, furniture etc can be cheaper these days so it won’t be as expensive to have the house of your dreams etc...

Our house is finally the way we want - but it took until our children were late teens before we could afford it. Before that it was comfortable but we were keeping our head above water so buying what was cheap/letting the kids enjoy the house/having cardboard box houses in the living room etc. I love our house now. Kit Kemp is our style guru so nothing like instagram/grey look houses and definitely not matched.

Another thing is we have a ton of storage space. It is easy to have an uncluttered look if you really great storage. otherwise not.

I love my home and I think I have great taste and it's beautiful. It's not empty though. I love books, I love family photos. I have my grandmothers china and lots of plants. I'm very much a hippy. I am on Instagram but there are many different styles on instagram. People seem to love my style but it's not gray or sparse. It's not at all Mrs.Hinch. I think if you look on Instagram depending on who you follow different types of attractive come up. Ben Pentreath is incredible and far from a show home. I don't have a house like his his style has too much clutter for me, but I prefer it to the empty gray homes.

I'm that type of person, my house is decorated to what I call the hotel look. I'm also a minimalist and don't have lots of stuff so its easier for me to maintain that look everyday. I also put things back where they belong after using them which also helps. So I actually don't spend lots of time tidying up etc.

I will add though I like walking into my rooms looking styled and 'showroomy' so that plays into it abit.

Are you comparing like with like?

I think when a lot of people move into their first place with mismatched furniture and slowly upgrade to the current fashion. Depending on if they have children and how ‘spirited’ those children might be, it may or may not look like a show home.

Then as kids grow up and fashions change, people add or change some furniture and accessories and the home has that lovely, slightly mismatched look.

I have a couple of friends with show home type houses and gardens. They often moan to me about not having enough money! They both don't work so presumably they have lots of time to make their houses look perfect by constantly cleaning, decluttering and updating.

Each room has its own personality and the colours are chosen for each room.

We've finally replaced the make-do furniture aquired when DH bought his first house. Things generally co-ordinate in a room these days, but there is plenty of stuff to make it lived in, practical and reflect us. It takes time to build up things you love. Trendy showhomes can be created in a weekend if all you care about is buying matching fashion accessories.

DM still has furniture items cobbled together decades ago including some pieces from DF's first marriage 55+ years ago!

Something that bothers me is doing a search for "small child's bedroom" on SM like pintrest and these supposedly "small" rooms clearly aren't on a British housing estate because the space clearly rivals that of a typical master bedroom or at least double. No beds overlapping windows because there's no other way to get it in the room if you want to keep the door

SO...someone spent two weeks getting their home just exactly right to take pictures to post on IG or FB, and now EVERYONE has to do it. I've sometimes imagined walking into one of those rooms, opening the door to the coat closet, and having 22,000 items of daily living come pouring out, filling the rooms with their usual clutter!

Walk into my home, and things will be reasonably neat, kinda-sorta put together, but there will be 1/4 inch of dust and cat hair about, as well as two little framed signs...one says, "Dust testing in progress, please do not disturb samples," and the other says, "In this house, cat hair is a condiment." And I mean every word of both of them.

We have a cleaner, so the house is clean. But none of the furniture is new - either second hand or inherited. We could affordable new furniture but it feels kinder to the planet to get second hand, and I would rather spend our money on adventures, hobbies, tuition and travel.

There are book cases double filled with books, and children's projects dotted around. It is not remotely "show home"!

Most people I know have similar houses. We are all middle class professional type families I guess. I don't know many people with "show homes".

It’s not just lower middle class or down to money going further on furnishings than it used to. I was window shopping in an affluent town last year, and spotted things for sale in two shops that turned out not to be regular home decor shops at all, but shopfronts for interior design companies. I know interior designers have been around a long time, but I’ve never really noticed them having premises on a town high street before.

I couldn’t care less how people decorate inside their houses, but I don’t like too much mucking about with the layout of old houses. The speed with which fashions change now means that extensions going up now are going to look old hat shortly, and it’s sad to lose old walls and windows for short-lived trends. I’m seeing more and more older houses with interior walls removed, which can’t really be undone. Saw a gorgeous 1920s house for sale near me, which was huge - advertised as being perfect for an extension! Which would mean losing a lovely old dining room window overlooking the garden. Sad that would be a selling point when the house already had bags of space.

This is definitely something I’ve noticed too.

And although my home is sadly far from a show home, both my younger sister and sister in law do have homes that could be described this way. They are both utterly ruthless with decluttering in a way that I would struggle with and OCD about cleaning up perfectly after any activity which I think is one of the secrets! But they would also both get incredibly stressed if the washing up was left for half an hour, they couldn’t function.

I think there are a number of reasons for this, I’m sure social media plays a part as does the increasing trend towards minimalism in millennials (?due to environmental concerns/capitalism and consumerism “peaking”/decision fatigue from busier lives and jobs meaning less energy to have a busy or demanding home background environment visually/a desire for a simpler life), and I would say that there is an element of younger women becoming very perfectionist in this arena as with their personal appearance. I sometimes wonder if this trend towards looking perfect/having the perfect home/doing perfect family activities and documenting it all on social media is part of a backlash to the strides feminism has made (the new “beauty myth”) but I may be overanalysing this!

I think also increasingly we are aware that in the UK out living space comes at a huge premium and we often cannot afford large spaces any more so we learn to be ruthless declitterers and organisers and pore over every inch of space to make it as loveable and pleasing as possible?

I have to say that these days I breathe a huge sigh of relief when I go round to someone’s house and realise that’s it is “normal” in the way I remember everyone’s houses being in the 70s and 80s!

Our bedroom curtains came from a friend at church. Her and her husband bought them about 20 years ago from IKEA and she dyed them green. She didn't have enough dye and they came out all mottled but she put them up anyway with the intention of getting more dye. When they moved they put them up (still not redyed) in their new house. When they moved again they had no need for them so we got them and they're in our bedroom and they still haven't been redyed. I much prefer them to new curtains

Yes,a lot of the younger set, who have moved into my village,,and wanted to live more rural, they all seem to have identical homes, and still lots of grey rooms. Non of them seem to have any individual tastes at all,and seems that they must follow trends,as in from social media stuff etc.
I wouldn't call all these show homes though, these people just have show off homes.bang on trend, and you never hardly see a bookcase full of books in these rooms, just a massive TV on the wall.

We've just bought a house, we owned nothing and so I've joined a few Facebook groups for DIY and decorating. Looking for ideas really.

Majority of people come on, post a bunch of photos of their perfectly done up house and a link to their Instagram. I don't want to see a hall table covered in plants and Dior books with a candle and a mirror. I have kids and I hate dusting Knick knacky crap. They're just trying to get followers, but I also don't get when every man and their dog became an interior designer?!

I want to see real people's houses and I've realised these groups are not the way to do it! I once asked to see people's houses with toddlers because I wanted to see some functional design and I got lots of 'just teach your kids not to touch or break stuff'. Yeah that's great, I'll run out the kitchen every five seconds to stop my toddler handling the vases on coffee table and pulling the leaves off 100 plants.

I know what you mean but also show home can sometimes be perceived/come across as a (veiled) insult. One of my acquaintances said, 'oh, it's like a show home!' When seeing my house for the first time (pre-Covid). She meant it as a compliment (lovely person, early 20s) but I think the connotations are that it's fake, contrived which my home isn't. It's just I like it to be neat - especially when visitors come round and we have spent a lot of effort/time/money working on it.

Maybe it is because houses are such an investment, people tend to prioritise them. I certainly wouldn't post photos on social media but might be because I am not in that generation??

My home is clean and tidy but definitely not a show home.

All our furniture is hand me downs from relatives or from charity shops so none of it matches. And we have lots of bikes that live in the house as we don't have anywhere else to put them so the walls are all scraped.

My parents are very fussy about us touching the walls or eating on the sofa when I was a child and I always swore that when I grew up my house would be a home rather than a museum.

Hmmm, well everything in my house matches because when I buy something new, I buy it to match the room it’s going in.

I recently repainted the living room a completely different colour, but still chose a colour to go with all the existing furniture/carpet/pictures.

I live in an old house and we’ve been doing it up bit by bit over the past 7 years, so I guess it’s quite photogenic now, although not grey Mrs Hinch style. It is clean and immaculate because we don’t have kids and we like living with everything tidied and orderly. We have a small cat that doesn’t shed much. It doesn’t really take a lot of effort to keep it that way. I put things away when I’m done, clean up as I cook and throw the hoover and duster round if it looks like it needs it.

I’ve always lived with everything tidily organised and put away out of sight, even as a penniless student in a scruffy flat share.