Master bedroom

[Blackcatsalwaysrock]

I am very pleased with myself - Ive just corrected a valuer (putting house on the market so need valuations) who, walking into our bedroom said “ah, master bedroom”. No, it isn’t, I said ,it’s the principal bedroom!!! I’m surprised this language is still used!

Haven't read all the comments, but I work in property and the 'master' suite is becoming the 'principal' bedroom, nothing to do with male and female and more to do with colonialism. Likewise we don't say 'plantation' shutters anymore, we just say shutters....

Yes it's true. We used to hang the wallpaper horizontally to make the rooms look bigger. We got specially made bedroom furniture to make it look like you could put a double bed and bedside tables in and we used to buy really small coathangers to make the built in wardrobes appear as if you could actually hang clothes in them.

Im.so sorry! I hated that job.

Well that simply would not do; estate agents never manage expectations, do they?

They prefer to wildly exaggerate the virtues of the house in the expectation of bamboozling self-doubting viewers. Presumably it works.

The woman on Dream Home Makeover on Netflix was always talking about principal bedrooms. I want to say it's Debbie MgGee but that would surely be called Dream Home Magic Makeover. I kept wondering why they never had master bedrooms in the houses, until it finally clicked that they were master bedrooms.

I quite like plantation shutters. As a concept and as a name. I can't be bothered to get offended about historical issues.

I expect the chap had good laugh at your expense back at the office.

On Selling Sunset (classy TV only here!) it's 'the primary'. I assumed for reasons relating to slavery, not reasons relating to sex.

I can understand your perspectives op, but surely even if master was substituted then another word still means the same principle ?

There are different kinds of shutters though. Plantation is useful as it describes the style.

I still say master or sometimes main bedroom. I also say maiden name and Christian name, though so I'm probably just failing on all counts.

I noticed the change to 'primary' on selling sunset, although it's always a suite of rooms. Not just the biggest of 3 miniscule bedrooms in a Victorian terrace with a downstairs loo...

Good Lord.
the little coat hangers is the real clincher!

I think master bedroom is outdated. I think main or primary bedroom is fine. I've only got 2 equal sized bedrooms so I'd feel silly saying principal bedroom!

EdithStourton
One of my friends has an ex show home and all the light fittings are lower than you'd expect. We joke that this was done to make the ceilings seem higher.

Do you say 'housewife pillowcase,'?

Oh they're were so many little things like that they used to do, but it's the bedrooms that stick in my mind because i remember thinking how furious the new homebuyers on the whole estate were going to be when they started trying to move their beds in and hanging their clothes up. I was furious on their behalf!

in some of them even with the smaller bed you couldn't actually close the bedroom door so the sales staff would stand in front of the bedroom door so people wouldn't be tempted to try and close it!

😁 it probably was!

Likewise we don't say 'plantation' shutters anymore, we just say shutters....

As HeavenlyDay says, plantation shutters are a specific subset of shutter - very different from the default type I'd picture if someone said 'shutters'.

Our society is becoming very weird.

A perfectly normal word word is used in certain contexts to describe something that is ethically unsavoury, and somehow every usage of the word now acquires these connotations. Like the word is somehow contaminated.

Tell me again we live in a society that isn't superstitious. It's like a kind of ritual contamination.

The term I really regretted losing from my work was "lesbian connector." I found it just such a delightful concept and kind of oddly romantic. Plus, as soon as anyone said it, you knew what they meant, it was really perfectly descriptive.

DH and I looked at new builds in 1986. The "showhouse" at our (cheapest) end of the range didn't have doors fitted, in case people shut them and realised how tiny the rooms were. I believe they were doing the dinky furniture even then. The showhouse at the posh end was lovely though.

My house building days was mid 90s so it definitely seems to have been an 80s 90s thing. I assume they still do the same stuff these days but probably even more sneakily.

The cheap showhouse didn't even have finished skirting boards, I recall mentioning to DH that if that was the showhouse standard what were ordinary buyers going to get? We eventually bought a gorgeous Victorian maindoor terraced flat which I still regret selling.

(I remember so well because I was pregnant with my first, and had never bought before, though I had lived in new builds pretty much all my life. 1964 my family moved into a new build, which we left in 1971 for another new build, where my 90yo mum still lives. Both far superior to modern, imho)

Bloody hell and i thought the ones i worked on were grim. Although one did move in to discover we hadn't installed the plumbing or the sink in the kitchen!On

Old is better if it's been around 50- 100 years it's done all its settling and any major issues should have already revealed themselves. And the ceiling heights and room sizes are better!

The newer the house the worse the construction and the smaller the plot size.

Totally agree 50+ years are a better buy than new build, because of the "snagging" thing if nothing else. What do you mean I have to list all of your fuckups after I move into my brand new dream home? Don't you take pride in your workmanship? (Is that a sexist term? 🤔 ) Gah.

(Sorry, thread utterly derailed!)

Just because the language has a connection to slavery, doesn't make it "racist" to use in a completely different context.

I would say we have a "good reason" not to go along with every language change that some more sensitive people might like.

Do you say 'housewife pillowcase,'?

yes I probably would (if I had any) because it's a description of the size/style.

Don't you take pride in your workmanship? (Is that a sexist term? 🤔 ) Gah

Lets try to bring personmanship into the vernacular?

No wait sorry workpersonship 😂 I can't even manage it when I'm trying!