What is it with Grey?

[Carryingon]

I saw a house today which had been modernised but it was so monochrome. Flat grey kitchen, grey carpets, black doors and woodwork, very dark grey radiators. And it was all brand new so I couldn’t justify changing it. Someone will love it but sadly not me.

It just shows - following the wrong people on Instagram doesn’t give you class. Some of the ideas are ok but some are woeful.

The problem with Grey everywhere means that individuality is crushed. Colour is crushed. It’s a theme for people who cannot think for themselves.

If you want colour, try looking at Kit Kemp’s hotels. They ooze class.

Class 🤣. What a snob ☝🏼

Flawsome's house is very UK instagram, a period house painted dark (she seems to have changed her default filter, the grey looks bluer than it did before July last year) and very cluttered with stuff. It's not to my taste but it is very fashionable at the moment.

Flawsome, says fun house...but for me would feel like chaos, without any calm. I suppose 'flawsome' is just a more modern take on the frilly Laura Ashley type chintz of the 90's. I loved that at the time, the colour, the clutter, the ornaments...but oh the dusting...

As a busy professional, dusting loads of stuff just doesn't happen. A busy house for me would end up filthy.😂

A lot of people with fantastic houses use interior designers. The work of great designers can be found in magazines. Yes it’s down to class. The top designers never would use grey to oblivion. The best houses featured in decent magazines don’t either. Getting “influence” from tasteless people leads to, guess what, tasteless interiors lots of us don’t like. So what might be a better source of inspiration? A decent magazine or two or even looking at the work of professional interior designers. There’s someone to suit all tastes and they are true inspiration. Not a random “grey” influencer who never features in any magazines. Thank God.

I think it's a trend that will be on its way out soon. It's nice but so overdone. I did originally like grey with yellow but I've seen it so much now.

An empty house near me went up for sale and the owner had a somebody in the paint the whole house grey including shiny grey carpet. The photos looks absolutely awful.
The new owners moved In and immediately had somebody in to change the carpets and repaint the walls.

Just had a look at Mrs Hinch - it looks like negatives - she DOES have the eyelet curtains and the mirrored furniture. You'd have to be blind not to see it and the sofa ARE velvet.

Like clothing, the way people style their home tells you lots about how they wish the world to view them
They always say that you never notice the best clothing. You say "she is well dressed" not "those are good clothes". It's the same with houses. Except nobody will go on Instagram with a "look at my subtle, understated house that showcases something other than itself", that's not how Instagram works.

@CalmConfident

I love my rainbow ordered books I like the fact it mixes the genres up!

But how do you remember where any of them are? If I’m looking for a book I’m either thinking ‘I fancy reading x type of book’ or ‘where’s that book where I read about y?’ I have hundreds of books and I would never remember what colour spine they all have!

I agree with you Percy and would much rather follow design professionals on Insta and take my inspiration from them. I really like Kate Watson-Smyth (madaboutthehouse) and her podcast with Sophie Robinson. Sophie uses a lot of colour and pattern which may be a bit OTT for me, but is definitely inspiring. During lockdown, spending so long at home, I was getting bored with plain white and am now sitting in a bright green (sage and onion) dining room, and planning an orange (dutch orange) living room. I would never have done this a year ago.
I think you just have do do what makes you happy. If you like a muted grey go with it (I would like a kind of wood pigeon grey). I must say I admire Flowsome's passion for her home project, (apart from those balls!) and it obviously makes her happy.
Can I just say here, how much I dislike the pointy cushions you see on so many insta sofas and beds. They don't look very inviting at all.

I don't think I'd cope with rainbow ordered books (though I love rainbows) as I've got over 1000 books just in the snug. Two of the walls are floor to ceiling bookshelves. I'd never find anything!

If you want colour, try looking at Kit Kemp’s hotels. They ooze class

They certainly do. I was absolutely blown away by Ham Yard, it’s stunning.

I absolutely love this but that’s probably because it embodies the principles I’ve used in our house.

www.madaboutthehouse.com/the-househunter-a-house-for-an-artist/

I love interior design. And I think, done well, it is a kind of art - and a hugely challenging kind of art. You're painting with physical materials. The fact it isn't taken very seriously is down to sexism: big clever men do the architecture; silly women fill the rooms with trinkets and curtains.

BUT I also think, certainly in the UK, our 'taste' can basically just boil down to snobbery, the worst kind. Posters here have described interiors as 'lower class' or 'nouveau riche'. That shows how much of our 'taste' is really just class training. One is taught by one's background to judge class indicators in decoration, to separate those with cultural privilege from those without it. And it is very hard to guard against because it is so ingrained; it is part of how we 'see'. (It's what Pierre Bordieu called cultural capital.)

BUT I also think, certainly in the UK, our 'taste' can basically just boil down to snobbery, the worst kind. Posters here have described interiors as 'lower class' or 'nouveau riche

I’m not sure, I agree there is a snobbery, but not agree it’s about class.

Mrs hinch is elite, she and her husband are not working class. No matter their upbringing, they are multi millionaires. They are not, and their children will not be working class, even if that was what their roots were. They are elite with working class roots.

Plenty of typically middle class fill their homes with dunelm or next at home. Plenty of working class look down on it and make snobby comments, even if they themselves are living in a shit hole. So for me, snobbery, yup, class no, there is too much overlap.

I think having the confidence to decorate your home like thr elle link posted earlier, is not so much about class, but an innate ability to be able to piece Together shapes, textures, colours etc, and create something cohesive and beautiful, it’s an ability mrs hinch lacks.

Her home is not filled with beautiful wallpapers, blinds, curtains, or unique pieces, but it also is not cheaply done. It’s a shit ton better than the cheap imitations that habe cropped up in the cold greys but it is not a home with beauty in my opinion. It’s an expensively done home, that looks comfortable, but that lacks imagination and is very mass market/high st in its design.

You simply can’t imagine her putting an expensive and unusual wallpaper up. Buying occasional statement furniture pieces, quirky antiques, curtains, blinds, cushions made in luxury fabrics, unique and thought full art work on the walls, it’s all a bit mass market show home

It's just fashion, as was magnolia many years ago.

I quite like grey, especially with a burst of colour.

It's easily accessible. I do believe that everyone has a unique taste but because the current trend is grey, that's what's readily available to buy on the high street and without too much searching/waiting online.

My friend recently had an extension built, she has simple but classic taste and she has re-decorated the whole house in grey. Admittedly she did most of if online during lockdown but I am surprised. She obviously chose convenience and ease.

I had to work really hard to find a non grey ottoman bed recently. The alternative was greige in so many places.

Does anybody follow the FB page for family lockdown tips? Couple of posts asking for home decoration ideas today and the front room photos (hundreds of them) are overwhelmingly grey with splashes of colour (lots of blush pink and yellow) and mirrors and crushed velvet. But acres of grey. It's sold everywhere right now so unsurprising that people buy into it.

The thing that gets me about the Mrs Hinch type of home is that there’s no depth or history or sentiment to it.

In my home I have pieces of furniture, art, random objects etc which I have gathered up, been given, or inherited over the years. Eg, in my bedroom I have a wooden chest of drawers which was in my childhood bedroom and in my living room, flowers in a jug which a friend gave me about 30 years ago.

And before anyone says that not everyone is in the position of inheriting anything - in my kitchen I have a small plastic tray which my granny had on her dressing table and which I now use for keeping pens and odds and ends.

Mrs Hinch and her followers adopt a “job lot” to decorating their homes, which is fine in hotels and pubs where designers are aiming for a particular look. But those are commercial premises. Ironically, their manufactured interiors usually show more personality and character than Mrs H’s.

I just think it’s a bit sad really. There’s no story to any of their interiors, other than a shopping trip.

That's a good point Seeing. I'm working from home (tea break) at my dresser and the dresser belonged to my granny. It's got all sorts in it - a pipe my great grandad brought home from the Boer War, peculiar trinkets, my Grandma's sealed war rations (tea, sugar and marg), Victorian biscuit boxes with antique buttons in them. Above the dresser is a painting we picked up from a local artist on honeymoon, the fruit is in a bowl we watched somebody make at a tiny street market, tablecloth was embroidered by my Mum, old Singer sewing machine table upcycled in the corner, old chair recovered in fabric I found at a vintage sale and on and on. Our house honours our lives in so many ways. I think if you decorate in that way, choosing a modern theme and buying it in probably seems doubly strange.

@Bluntness100 that's why there is a difference between economic capital and cultural capital I think. So in the UK, a person can be born 'working class' and make a lot of money but never be fully accepted as 'upper class' by those who were born upper class. And I think gradually as a society we are progressing past that, class is becoming less and less relevant ... even something we make fun of ... but certain concepts remain stubborn, ingrained, and I think taste is one of those.

Of course, there are plenty of rich people with terrible taste. Plenty of aristocrats who are complete philistines. Just because you're taught Greek at school doesn't mean you have any genuine appreciation for Homer. But you will feel less intimidated when someone else quotes him; and you may even have the confidence to be able to point out they misquoted him.

'beautiful wallpapers, blinds, curtains, or unique pieces': I completely agree that these are beautiful things. But they also remind me of that politician who said (a few decades ago I think) that working class people rent their furniture, middle class people buy their furniture, upper class people inherit their furniture. A room with hand-made wallpaper, threadbare inherited armchair, eclectic mix of antiques ... all this is not value neutral. It is an expression of taste and taste, to a certain extent, comes from cultural background.

I think beautiful interior design takes a tremendous amount of talent and skill. And often the hardest thing to achieve is something that is simple and beautiful. You need to be able to judge the light of a room, the aspect, bring together colours across rooms, pair textiles and materials, etc etc

I'm just saying that upper class people have always paid those with this skill (e.g. the artisans who make hand-made wallpaper) to express their taste (that furniture should be little ragged and hand-me-down, taste a little eclectic, everything appropriately period/antique). And so our taste becomes influenced by these indicators of class e.g. so many interior design magasines featuring kitchens with Agas.

Even choosing something unique and eccentric and personal is easier when one is raised with the cultural confidence of knowing 'you belong', 'how your home looks is how things should look', 'you have nothing to prove', etc. When there is no need to impress by having everything matchy matchy/shiny/new/expensive.

@Seeingadistance and @ShowOfHands - I wrote my post before reading yours and it wasn't at all aimed as a reply/rebuff to you ... I totally agree that expressing personal history is a lovely part of decorating. Really that is what a home is for; a place where we can gather the things that we love; a place we can make uniquely ours.

I like a sliver grey as a base and then use colour.
My living room is grey walls in a plain wall paper with a hint of sparkle. The settee is also neutral but I have used pale blue, navy blue and bright yellow to brighten the room.
My middle room is a the same wall paper but I have used red and lilac as the colours .I have a huge acrylic abstract painting.. I absolutely love it.
All grey and no colour wouldn't suit me.

@cunningplan101, I thought of that politician when I moved my parents’ mid century furniture into our house. My son has some of it too as well as a little pine table that was my granny’s and is now serving its fourth generation. The kids are going to fight over the Errol when I die. We’re not upper class on any measure, though!