The Boundless Banality of Beige
November 13, 2020 12:53 PM Subscribe
Gloria Jaroff is against beige (Common Edge). “I am tired of design magazines and paint companies trying to sell me on dull ‘neutral’ colors. They claim ‘Beige Is Back,’ that there is a historical elegance and calming effect to monochromatic off-whites. I don’t buy it. A minimalistic approach to color in modern buildings and interiors doesn’t relax me—it puts me to sleep.” (via The Browser)
I like paint that reflects a lot of light, but I hate beige.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:06 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:06 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
Societies weathered pandemics through time without feeling the need to kill rainbows. Color trends for every decade since the 1830s show a variety of popular tones, from Harvest Gold to Millennial Pink.
I can't help but think of Mitchell and Webb's Avocado Bathroom sketch.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:06 PM on November 13, 2020 [14 favorites]
I can't help but think of Mitchell and Webb's Avocado Bathroom sketch.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:06 PM on November 13, 2020 [14 favorites]
We just painted our hallway beigeish (Tres Naturale according to the color naming geniuses at Sherwin Williams) and painted each upstairs room a different bolder color. It looks neat. And the hallway color is a nice backgroup for hung photos and paintings.
I like a bathroom with a sunny warm color, I like a study with a calmer soothing color (we went with a rose accent wall), my kids want cheerful blue. Everybody wins.
OTOH my in laws hemmed and hawed about which slightly off white color they were going to paint every wall in their house for like three months. I don't identify with that.
posted by selfnoise at 1:06 PM on November 13, 2020 [2 favorites]
I like a bathroom with a sunny warm color, I like a study with a calmer soothing color (we went with a rose accent wall), my kids want cheerful blue. Everybody wins.
OTOH my in laws hemmed and hawed about which slightly off white color they were going to paint every wall in their house for like three months. I don't identify with that.
posted by selfnoise at 1:06 PM on November 13, 2020 [2 favorites]
Also, beige is way better than the "paint your walls a raspberry color" thing that went around apparently just before we were last house shopping. That was the last accursed color of my hallway before I beiged it. Thankfully high hiding primer exists.
posted by selfnoise at 1:08 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by selfnoise at 1:08 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
Whenever I complain to my wife about our boring white/off-white walls she tells me that if we painted them more colourfully that we'd eventually get bored of them (like the avocado bathroom, or raspberry walls, or any other trend). Which I get, but I'm already bored of the white, if we painted them something else then at least we could get a couple of years of enjoying that colour before we got bored of it.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:15 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:15 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
Far from being the picture of artfulness, Asian white-on-white spaces evoke the image of death’s waiting room.
The author says this like it's a bad thing. That was exactly what I was going for with my home office.
posted by betweenthebars at 1:16 PM on November 13, 2020 [18 favorites]
The author says this like it's a bad thing. That was exactly what I was going for with my home office.
posted by betweenthebars at 1:16 PM on November 13, 2020 [18 favorites]
Almost 50% of the newly (and horrifyingly) gutted and remodeled condo conversions around here are painted this deep, dark, nasty moody grey. The color of the worst parts of Seattle. The color of the twilight at 4 pm in the worst parts of winter. Sometimes with bright white accents. But it's just, like, constantly 9 pm inside your house. Why would anyone want this? Why? We're in urban New England, is life just too damn colorful and stimulating outside?
posted by Hypatia at 1:16 PM on November 13, 2020 [18 favorites]
posted by Hypatia at 1:16 PM on November 13, 2020 [18 favorites]
I get enough impersonal, inoffensive and institutional at work, but thanks.
posted by bonehead at 1:19 PM on November 13, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by bonehead at 1:19 PM on November 13, 2020 [3 favorites]
When we sold our house in 2016, our realtor suggested painting all the walls beige, and putting in new beige carpeting and new beige vinyl flooring. I felt like I was drowning in beige. Our current apartment is decorated much the same way, and feels just as beige-tastic. Like, everything around me is a uniform light brown color, and it feels kind of suffocating.
I honestly preferred the “light gray walls” trend of a few years earlier, even though gray is also kind of a bland neutral. Gray walls feel crisp and modern with white trim and pretty much any floors, including cheap beige carpet. But I guess now gray is dated? Meh.
From TFA: I’m interested in seeing examples of the more translucent neutral paints of the past vs. the flat opaque neutrals of today. Are there photographs anywhere that capture the difference?
posted by snowmentality at 1:23 PM on November 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
I honestly preferred the “light gray walls” trend of a few years earlier, even though gray is also kind of a bland neutral. Gray walls feel crisp and modern with white trim and pretty much any floors, including cheap beige carpet. But I guess now gray is dated? Meh.
From TFA: I’m interested in seeing examples of the more translucent neutral paints of the past vs. the flat opaque neutrals of today. Are there photographs anywhere that capture the difference?
posted by snowmentality at 1:23 PM on November 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
The issue isn't beige, the issue is the overall decor. Beige can be incredibly luxurious when paired with metallics, mauves, browns, and pinks. Or chic when paired when bright red or black. Or natural and relaxing with green (plants!) and white. The options are endless.
posted by Stoof at 1:28 PM on November 13, 2020 [19 favorites]
posted by Stoof at 1:28 PM on November 13, 2020 [19 favorites]
When we moved into our current house it was ALL BEIGE. At first it was OK. But... it was a flat beige. It positively DEVOURED light. It very quickly looked grim and dingy.
We slowly repainted, a room at a time, accelerating the pace while remodeling the living room. We wrapped up the vast majority of the painting during the early weeks of COVID lockdown because we were stuck at home with computers in the rooms that were still beige. That flat boring paint drinks primer like raw unfinished wood - it takes SO MANY COATS to cover it completely, even with premium paints.
Most of the house is now shades of slate or gray, some areas more silvery. A faded denim blue in the kitchen, a dark clay color in the family room. Our son picked his own colors, poppyseed and deep green and bright blue. We re-used these colors in his play room and study area. A few bright pops of lighter color in some smaller areas (one baby duck-yellow hallway, one pale peach-colored bathroom). All of the paint we used is eggshell finish. It looks and feels so much better and brighter and actually has some personality!
(Two closets remain beige - both are small, both are on my list. The flat ugly beige must be banished.)
posted by caution live frogs at 1:30 PM on November 13, 2020 [5 favorites]
We slowly repainted, a room at a time, accelerating the pace while remodeling the living room. We wrapped up the vast majority of the painting during the early weeks of COVID lockdown because we were stuck at home with computers in the rooms that were still beige. That flat boring paint drinks primer like raw unfinished wood - it takes SO MANY COATS to cover it completely, even with premium paints.
Most of the house is now shades of slate or gray, some areas more silvery. A faded denim blue in the kitchen, a dark clay color in the family room. Our son picked his own colors, poppyseed and deep green and bright blue. We re-used these colors in his play room and study area. A few bright pops of lighter color in some smaller areas (one baby duck-yellow hallway, one pale peach-colored bathroom). All of the paint we used is eggshell finish. It looks and feels so much better and brighter and actually has some personality!
(Two closets remain beige - both are small, both are on my list. The flat ugly beige must be banished.)
posted by caution live frogs at 1:30 PM on November 13, 2020 [5 favorites]
I like beige. It's buff!
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:30 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:30 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
Also the author's recoloured versions of the room are ugly. Especially with that rug.
posted by Stoof at 1:34 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by Stoof at 1:34 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
I just got permission to choose paint colors for my apartment, and you better believe there will not be any beige involved.
I do find that when people finally get the chance to put actual color on their walls, they often go too dark and too saturated and it looks cartoonish. But that's no reason to choose The Color Of Sadness for every single room.
FWIW my mom painted our house growing up beautifully, with each room leading into the next - warm reddish-brown living room, cheery yellow dining room, white and dark blue kitchen. The primaries, but not.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:39 PM on November 13, 2020
I do find that when people finally get the chance to put actual color on their walls, they often go too dark and too saturated and it looks cartoonish. But that's no reason to choose The Color Of Sadness for every single room.
FWIW my mom painted our house growing up beautifully, with each room leading into the next - warm reddish-brown living room, cheery yellow dining room, white and dark blue kitchen. The primaries, but not.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:39 PM on November 13, 2020
Beige is fine, beige everywhere is not.
posted by madajb at 1:48 PM on November 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by madajb at 1:48 PM on November 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
If you say "beige" over and over and keep on doing it, eventually it sounds like there's a car alarm going off in your head.
posted by flabdablet at 1:51 PM on November 13, 2020 [11 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 1:51 PM on November 13, 2020 [11 favorites]
oh dang I think the blue recoloring might have solved my whole rug problem. how does anyone ever buy a damn rug? such commitment.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:59 PM on November 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:59 PM on November 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
Beige is amazing. I have long fantasized about the perfect cashmere beige Porsche 911. If I could get one without an ICE I'd be saving my pennies for it still...
posted by sophrontic at 2:05 PM on November 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by sophrontic at 2:05 PM on November 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
When your walls are some saturated color, everything else in the room gets a perceptual wash or edging of the complementary color because of the fatigue/adaptation built into our visual system.
But at the same time, the wavelengths of light which would normally cause you to see that complementary color are removed from the light which is reflected from those walls.
The only color which is its own complement is gray, so maybe that plays a role in preference for gray walls.
posted by jamjam at 2:07 PM on November 13, 2020 [2 favorites]
But at the same time, the wavelengths of light which would normally cause you to see that complementary color are removed from the light which is reflected from those walls.
The only color which is its own complement is gray, so maybe that plays a role in preference for gray walls.
posted by jamjam at 2:07 PM on November 13, 2020 [2 favorites]
Societies weathered pandemics through time without feeling the need to kill rainbows. Color trends for every decade since the 1830s show a variety of popular tones, from Harvest Gold to Millennial Pink.
Swedish interiors stuck with walls and furniture painted light neutral colours from the late 1700 through to the 20th century. You can find super colourful stuff there as well but the Gustavian look supposedly made the most of the weak natural light in northern latitudes.
posted by bonobothegreat at 2:08 PM on November 13, 2020 [9 favorites]
Swedish interiors stuck with walls and furniture painted light neutral colours from the late 1700 through to the 20th century. You can find super colourful stuff there as well but the Gustavian look supposedly made the most of the weak natural light in northern latitudes.
posted by bonobothegreat at 2:08 PM on November 13, 2020 [9 favorites]
They claim ‘Beige Is Back,
Simple mistake, should be "Beige is the new black".
posted by sammyo at 2:16 PM on November 13, 2020
Simple mistake, should be "Beige is the new black".
posted by sammyo at 2:16 PM on November 13, 2020
Just wait, post covid none of the hoi paloi will be caught in anything but a "little beige dress".
posted by sammyo at 2:18 PM on November 13, 2020
posted by sammyo at 2:18 PM on November 13, 2020
Metafilter: The color of the worst parts of Seattle
posted by sammyo at 2:22 PM on November 13, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by sammyo at 2:22 PM on November 13, 2020 [2 favorites]
What makes a man turn neutral?
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:25 PM on November 13, 2020 [7 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:25 PM on November 13, 2020 [7 favorites]
What makes a man turn neutral?
The Tyranny of Taupe?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:26 PM on November 13, 2020 [2 favorites]
The Tyranny of Taupe?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:26 PM on November 13, 2020 [2 favorites]
Preach.
(I am an unrepentant maximalist who bought a just prior to COVID and it is still mostly beige--thought I have lots of colorful art and furniture. I've managed to get the dining room to a saturated blue green, somewhere "18th century sitting room teal" and "Metafilter blue" with a shade of peacock for good measure. The downstairs bathroom will soon be Cayenne, and not a moment too soon. )
posted by thivaia at 2:40 PM on November 13, 2020 [6 favorites]
(I am an unrepentant maximalist who bought a just prior to COVID and it is still mostly beige--thought I have lots of colorful art and furniture. I've managed to get the dining room to a saturated blue green, somewhere "18th century sitting room teal" and "Metafilter blue" with a shade of peacock for good measure. The downstairs bathroom will soon be Cayenne, and not a moment too soon. )
posted by thivaia at 2:40 PM on November 13, 2020 [6 favorites]
Everyone talking about beige and nobody mentions ecru, the best color to paint walls. Even Wikipedia seems to insist it isn't a beige.
posted by Dmenet at 2:43 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by Dmenet at 2:43 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
I'm wearing beige shorts right now, so I don't even need to read the article.
posted by clawsoon at 2:53 PM on November 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by clawsoon at 2:53 PM on November 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
I have no strong feelings one way or the other.
(If I don't survive, tell my wife "Hello".)
posted by Huffy Puffy at 2:54 PM on November 13, 2020 [7 favorites]
(If I don't survive, tell my wife "Hello".)
posted by Huffy Puffy at 2:54 PM on November 13, 2020 [7 favorites]
Neutrals are fine in moderation. Emphasis on moderation.
posted by SansPoint at 2:59 PM on November 13, 2020
posted by SansPoint at 2:59 PM on November 13, 2020
Is this something I would have to own a wall to understand?
posted by srboisvert at 3:01 PM on November 13, 2020 [12 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 3:01 PM on November 13, 2020 [12 favorites]
This was really interesting! We bought a Levitt ranch-style knockoff from the 50s last year (great timing, it turned out) that had really been rode hard and put away wet over the years, and probably the least (but ugliest) of the abuses was that someone had gone through the whole place somewhere around 2010, as far as I can figure, and painted every single wall in the entire place flat beige. It looked AWFUL, it was dingy and scuffed and oil stained and just was the color of despair even without all the grime and damage. After a decade of beige/white apartment living, we were pretty eager to make things colors, but also kind of daunted by the prospect. I came up with this idea that sort of carried us through that, since it was a 50s house, maybe we should look for 50s color inspiration?
We're still, STILL painting new colors over the beige, but I'm pretty happy with what we wound up with. It's basically the accent colors on this shower curtain, which now hangs in our aqua bathroom. We have a pale pink office, which looked SO BRIGHT when we painted it but now that we have curtains and furniture looks much more neutral. Same with the lavender bedroom. It really is amazing what can be a neutral in context. I wish I could see what she's talking about with the translucent colors in real life, though. I'm still not sure I understand how that works.
Anyway, the next color adventure, after I finish painting the living room orange, is going to be either painting the siding periwinkle, or (if we're very lucky) finding periwinkle siding. The great thing about a kind of worn-in neighborhood from the 50s with no HOA is that two of our neighbors have pink houses, the guy down the block has an aqua house, there are a few yellow houses, so nobody will bat an eye when we make our (ALSO KIND OF BEIGE OMG) house periwinkle.
posted by bowtiesarecool at 3:06 PM on November 13, 2020 [8 favorites]
We're still, STILL painting new colors over the beige, but I'm pretty happy with what we wound up with. It's basically the accent colors on this shower curtain, which now hangs in our aqua bathroom. We have a pale pink office, which looked SO BRIGHT when we painted it but now that we have curtains and furniture looks much more neutral. Same with the lavender bedroom. It really is amazing what can be a neutral in context. I wish I could see what she's talking about with the translucent colors in real life, though. I'm still not sure I understand how that works.
Anyway, the next color adventure, after I finish painting the living room orange, is going to be either painting the siding periwinkle, or (if we're very lucky) finding periwinkle siding. The great thing about a kind of worn-in neighborhood from the 50s with no HOA is that two of our neighbors have pink houses, the guy down the block has an aqua house, there are a few yellow houses, so nobody will bat an eye when we make our (ALSO KIND OF BEIGE OMG) house periwinkle.
posted by bowtiesarecool at 3:06 PM on November 13, 2020 [8 favorites]
When I was a child, I had this idea that there was a sort of switch in your head that flipped when you became an adult that would cause you to enjoy the color beige. (And also neutral-colored linens.) So much stuff that belonged to adults was beige that I assumed this switch was a natural phenomenon that surely would happen, in much the same way that I was assured that I would come to like coffee as I got older and my palette expanded.
I am now 38 and the switch has not flipped. I still hate both beige and coffee. (And also neutral-colored linens.)
posted by darchildre at 3:30 PM on November 13, 2020 [8 favorites]
I am now 38 and the switch has not flipped. I still hate both beige and coffee. (And also neutral-colored linens.)
posted by darchildre at 3:30 PM on November 13, 2020 [8 favorites]
The last house I lived in had lemon custard walls and I loved it. Made me slightly hungry every time I thought about it.
posted by dbx at 3:31 PM on November 13, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by dbx at 3:31 PM on November 13, 2020 [2 favorites]
I like light, fairly neutral walls. I’ve been in some homes where there are lots of strong saturated colors on the walls and it evokes to me nothing so much as a clown house.
posted by slkinsey at 3:38 PM on November 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by slkinsey at 3:38 PM on November 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
I think of beige as the color of resale value.
posted by clew at 3:39 PM on November 13, 2020 [16 favorites]
posted by clew at 3:39 PM on November 13, 2020 [16 favorites]
It's weird how this works for some people. The first set of sheets I ever bought were brown. I bought them for myself at Target and really liked the color for whatever reason. But I got such grief from my mom and sister about how who buys brown sheets. I didn't get it at the time and still don't understand why it was such a funny thing to them.
posted by Carillon at 3:52 PM on November 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Carillon at 3:52 PM on November 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
Paint your walls whatever color you want. Just realize that if you go intense dark purple, it will take several coats of primer to change it. We bought our forever (maybe) home almost two years ago. The former owners had their bedroom painted dark, saturated purple, and the attached main bathroom... a somewhat different intense, dark purple. Two noticeably different versions of intense dark purple.
Baffling. But we had to use so much paint to change the color. So much paint.
We still have a set of brown sheets! They're sort of a "coffee with cream" color, but we love them still.
posted by SoberHighland at 4:00 PM on November 13, 2020 [3 favorites]
Baffling. But we had to use so much paint to change the color. So much paint.
We still have a set of brown sheets! They're sort of a "coffee with cream" color, but we love them still.
posted by SoberHighland at 4:00 PM on November 13, 2020 [3 favorites]
I enjoy this lady's rant. Why be so dull?
Rainbows forever, as far as I'm concerned.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:15 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
Rainbows forever, as far as I'm concerned.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:15 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
metafilter: middle-aged homeowners passionately defending beige.
(this is not a joke. it’s an indictment.)
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 4:45 PM on November 13, 2020 [7 favorites]
(this is not a joke. it’s an indictment.)
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 4:45 PM on November 13, 2020 [7 favorites]
It’s funny to me because I love dressing like a monk but the “classy neutrals” trend is just absolutely killing me. Agreed that most people tend to choose colors that are TOO saturated or dark. I’ve somehow lived in my apartment for over 10 years and have this 15-foot tall wall that’s been this really artless rust-ish orange (poorly done, on top of that) since I moved in. My thoughts moving in were “at least it’s not plain white apartment walls!” But I’ve really hated it the entire time. Thanks to the pandemic year I’m spending a lot more time at home and I’m finally going to tackle that huge project and paint it. I picked a muted lilac color, which horrifies everyone I’ve told but I also insisted on having an actual color and not... beige. Plain white wouldn’t be right. I did just paint an accent wall a color uncomfortably close to both beige AND millennial pink, but it shifts between both depending on the light and it looks nice with the lilac without competing with it. This is all to say I appreciate this rant (and how in-depth scientifically and historically it went!) and I, too, would like to see these historical beige pigments.
posted by jeweled accumulation at 5:13 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by jeweled accumulation at 5:13 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
I work in an office building that is a brick military pseudo-Georgian ex-coal scuttle from WWI, and all of the interior walls are painted grey-green with darker grey-green trim. The hallways are all carpeted with Vegas hotel style wool rugs with giant banana leaves. The overall color saturation would be right at home in a Hitchcock film, and Kubrick would adore it.
I do not mind coming home to white walls with high gloss white trim AT ALL.
posted by halfbuckaroo at 5:47 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
I do not mind coming home to white walls with high gloss white trim AT ALL.
posted by halfbuckaroo at 5:47 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
The original owner of our house apparently hated light, because the house has tiny-ass windows and for most of its history it had grey carpets, walnut trim, and medium walls. So we put in maple floors and the walls are getting painted semigloss untinted white. You can finally read a book in the living room without needing an airport searchlight. And it's colorful thanks to the wood floor, furniture fabrics, book cases and art on the walls.
To me, beige isn't neutral. It's beige. Beige brings down anything it's put next to.
posted by ardgedee at 6:24 PM on November 13, 2020 [3 favorites]
To me, beige isn't neutral. It's beige. Beige brings down anything it's put next to.
posted by ardgedee at 6:24 PM on November 13, 2020 [3 favorites]
When we looked at our house just before we bought it 13 years ago, the painter the seller had hired was just finishing the last room to render every wall in the entire house beige. I am happy to say that we no longer have any beige walls. Beige is bleh.
Mind you, from the evidence I've seen, we wouldn't have like the original colours either... the previous owner like very dark colours on everything. The place must have looked like a navy/burgundy/forest green cave.
posted by fimbulvetr at 6:26 PM on November 13, 2020
Mind you, from the evidence I've seen, we wouldn't have like the original colours either... the previous owner like very dark colours on everything. The place must have looked like a navy/burgundy/forest green cave.
posted by fimbulvetr at 6:26 PM on November 13, 2020
I am reminded of this scene: Mrs. Blanding picks her colors and none of them are beige.
posted by vespabelle at 6:43 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by vespabelle at 6:43 PM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
beige is just white that something bad happened to and it doesn't want to talk about it
posted by taquito sunrise at 6:48 PM on November 13, 2020 [8 favorites]
posted by taquito sunrise at 6:48 PM on November 13, 2020 [8 favorites]
I am team vibrant color because anything too light sets too high a standard of “pristine” for my daily life. I justify this by living in an 1890 condo-ized house that seems to fit all the painting I had done. Now that I’m living in , I realize I was perhaps overly influenced by all the primary colors used in museum exhibitions (I used to work in museums). I recognized the marine blue of my living room in a photography exhibit at the late lamented Met Bruer, for example. I not-so-secretly love this, although future owners of my condo will probably repaint my long crimson hallway.
posted by mollymillions at 6:59 PM on November 13, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by mollymillions at 6:59 PM on November 13, 2020 [5 favorites]
Some friends of mine lived in a place which had a main bathroom with all pink fixtures. Pink tub, pink, toilet, pink sink, pink tile. They didn't have the money to redo it, so they just ran with it and painted every surface super bright pink. It was like being inside a plastic flamingo. It was awesome in all senses of the word.
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:01 PM on November 13, 2020 [13 favorites]
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:01 PM on November 13, 2020 [13 favorites]
A friend of mine once rented a furnished apartment where each room was decorated floor to ceiling in a single color: paint, upholstery, curtains, carpets, the whole nine yards. And it was laid out like a tunnel, with one room leading to another from the front door to the back. It was kind of like the palace in The Masque of the Red Death, but in 1960s decorator colors like olive green, harvest gold, and that dark brown they paint everything in state parks.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:42 PM on November 13, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:42 PM on November 13, 2020 [6 favorites]
Were the rooms each a single shade of their color?
posted by clew at 8:12 PM on November 13, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by clew at 8:12 PM on November 13, 2020 [2 favorites]
as is so often the case we can best understand this discussion through the lens of marx’s distinction between the use value and exchange value of commodities. use value is the value of, well, using the commodify — the thing satisfies some human need and you use it to do that. exchange value, on the other hand, is the value the commodity gets when it’s traded, the “money price” of the commodity.
when discussing how homes are painted (may i incidentally in passing note that private property should be outlawed? it should be outlawed it does no one any good) , uh, anyway,when we’re discussing home color schemes on the one hand we’re talking about a color scheme with high exchange value — beige — and on the other hand a range of color schemes — literally anything but beige — with lower exchange value but which satisfy a broader range of human needs and wants than beige does.
the dominance of beige as the color that fetches the highest money price (the highest exchange value) isn’t due to like simple bourgeois tastelessness, but instead due to a lot of the stuff people have observed on this thread — it’s a lot easier to repaint beige than it is to repaint dark colors, presenting the house as a blank canvas makes it easier for people to imagine their own decor on it, etc. etc.
the thing is, as a result of the high exchange value of beige, many of us find ourselves stuck in houses and apartments where either through inertia or through the diktat of a property-owner we’re all stuck looking at beige all the time. for those of us who rent, the market’s preference for beige results in us living in places that are beige, even though beige doesn’t really satisfy that many human wants or needs — even though it lacks use-value. the unwanted presence of beige serves as a continual grim reminder that, to the market, the places we live are primarily used as sources of (exchange) value for the people who claim ownership of them, with the use-value of the place as a place for us to actually live being only of secondary importance, if at all.
am i saying beige is the color of capital? it’s a little more nuanced than that. really, i’m saying that...
... you know what, i can’t pretend. i’m saying that beige is the color of capital.
if you’re not comfortable with the marxian conclusion that the prevalence of beige is both an effect of and synecdoche for the operations of capital in our lives, then it may be useful to step away from marx for a second and pick up weber instead, particularly the parts of die protestantische ethik und der gëist des kapitalismus where he discusses the stahlhartes gehäuse, often translated into english as “the iron cage,” but perhaps better translated as something like “steel-hard shell.” the steel-hard shell produced through protestant self-denial, through the continual deferral of pleasure to a future that never comes, is the apotheosis of beigeness.
anyway! hope that helps!
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 8:19 PM on November 13, 2020 [16 favorites]
when discussing how homes are painted (may i incidentally in passing note that private property should be outlawed? it should be outlawed it does no one any good) , uh, anyway,when we’re discussing home color schemes on the one hand we’re talking about a color scheme with high exchange value — beige — and on the other hand a range of color schemes — literally anything but beige — with lower exchange value but which satisfy a broader range of human needs and wants than beige does.
the dominance of beige as the color that fetches the highest money price (the highest exchange value) isn’t due to like simple bourgeois tastelessness, but instead due to a lot of the stuff people have observed on this thread — it’s a lot easier to repaint beige than it is to repaint dark colors, presenting the house as a blank canvas makes it easier for people to imagine their own decor on it, etc. etc.
the thing is, as a result of the high exchange value of beige, many of us find ourselves stuck in houses and apartments where either through inertia or through the diktat of a property-owner we’re all stuck looking at beige all the time. for those of us who rent, the market’s preference for beige results in us living in places that are beige, even though beige doesn’t really satisfy that many human wants or needs — even though it lacks use-value. the unwanted presence of beige serves as a continual grim reminder that, to the market, the places we live are primarily used as sources of (exchange) value for the people who claim ownership of them, with the use-value of the place as a place for us to actually live being only of secondary importance, if at all.
am i saying beige is the color of capital? it’s a little more nuanced than that. really, i’m saying that...
... you know what, i can’t pretend. i’m saying that beige is the color of capital.
if you’re not comfortable with the marxian conclusion that the prevalence of beige is both an effect of and synecdoche for the operations of capital in our lives, then it may be useful to step away from marx for a second and pick up weber instead, particularly the parts of die protestantische ethik und der gëist des kapitalismus where he discusses the stahlhartes gehäuse, often translated into english as “the iron cage,” but perhaps better translated as something like “steel-hard shell.” the steel-hard shell produced through protestant self-denial, through the continual deferral of pleasure to a future that never comes, is the apotheosis of beigeness.
anyway! hope that helps!
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 8:19 PM on November 13, 2020 [16 favorites]
I like light, fairly neutral walls.
Me too. Unfortunately, the place I am living in now has fully beige walls, and they are just a bit too dark and suck up all the light. It was kind of nice in the summer but now it is winter and it doesn't matter how many lights you turn on, it still feels like being inside a smoker's lung.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:27 PM on November 13, 2020
Me too. Unfortunately, the place I am living in now has fully beige walls, and they are just a bit too dark and suck up all the light. It was kind of nice in the summer but now it is winter and it doesn't matter how many lights you turn on, it still feels like being inside a smoker's lung.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:27 PM on November 13, 2020
I am team vibrant color
I'm glad there's another one in here! Apparently my house's walls are "cartoonish" because I like vibrant, saturated colors. Most of my furniture is the dime-a-dozen, bland, neutral industrial style because that's what I can afford. The brightly colored walls instantly lift the room and make it less like that indistinguishable "millenial aesthetic" - and more like me.
Crimson walls sound great. I thought about it, but I picked a beautiful deep emerald blue for my living room and I really wanted to avoid accidentally doing my house in patriotic colors.
Another bonus I've discovered is that I really, really like sleeping in a room with a dark paint color and dark curtains.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:46 PM on November 13, 2020 [6 favorites]
I'm glad there's another one in here! Apparently my house's walls are "cartoonish" because I like vibrant, saturated colors. Most of my furniture is the dime-a-dozen, bland, neutral industrial style because that's what I can afford. The brightly colored walls instantly lift the room and make it less like that indistinguishable "millenial aesthetic" - and more like me.
Crimson walls sound great. I thought about it, but I picked a beautiful deep emerald blue for my living room and I really wanted to avoid accidentally doing my house in patriotic colors.
Another bonus I've discovered is that I really, really like sleeping in a room with a dark paint color and dark curtains.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:46 PM on November 13, 2020 [6 favorites]
She has used a house with one wall entirely made of windows and two that are out of shot. If she had selected a more typical house example I think she would have found the need for walls in very pale shades to preserve whatever light came in the windows, to the point that they wouldn't look like anything much in a photograph.
Nowadays, I like light rooms, and will use tints (including pale beige) so that the walls don't end up being too stark white. Brown tints are warm, suit any wood in the place, and they don't ever seem to clash with anything, which is probably why they are the go-to choice. But I generally go for an accent wall to satisfy my need for a bit of colour. That way, you can get your pop of colour without needing the lights on at midday.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 8:59 PM on November 13, 2020
Nowadays, I like light rooms, and will use tints (including pale beige) so that the walls don't end up being too stark white. Brown tints are warm, suit any wood in the place, and they don't ever seem to clash with anything, which is probably why they are the go-to choice. But I generally go for an accent wall to satisfy my need for a bit of colour. That way, you can get your pop of colour without needing the lights on at midday.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 8:59 PM on November 13, 2020
'Little beige chevette
Baby, you're not too fast, oh
Little beige Chevette
You need a clutch that's gonna last'
posted by clavdivs at 10:07 PM on November 13, 2020 [8 favorites]
Baby, you're not too fast, oh
Little beige Chevette
You need a clutch that's gonna last'
posted by clavdivs at 10:07 PM on November 13, 2020 [8 favorites]
I LOATHE BEIGE. My mom decorated our 50s home with beige walls, beige carpet, beige furniture, with plops of beige accessories. I bought a house with 70s light wood trailer house style paneling. I plastered over that beige ass paneling with different colors in each room: seashell pink in my bedroom, aqua in my office, coral in my media room, white in my farmhouse kitchen, and marigold and pistachio in my guest bedrooms. I have so many colors and I never tire of them. And yes, I use the classic colors theme on MetaFilter.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 12:00 AM on November 14, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by a humble nudibranch at 12:00 AM on November 14, 2020 [4 favorites]
As I am sitting here in my beige room with white trimmings and ceiling, I thought I would disagree with the author, but I didn't. This room was originally supposed to be my study, it's filled with books, and on the floor is my favorite oriental rug, with a beige and blue color scheme. The beige is a great backdrop for all the color on the book spines and the artworks on the little wall sections that are shelf-free.
For reasons, I share my apartment now, and this is now my Room, with a bed in it that has a bedcover made of old saris in red, gold and yellow. This room is bright and colorful and also cosy. And through the door, I look out into our living room, which is sky blue and a joy to look at in all light. Also: lighting. A big reason beige is so sad in many interiors is bad artificial lighting. After dark, my room gets an entirely different atmosphere because of the lighting scheme.
The building was built in 1900, and back then, they probably had dark brown panels and doors, and different gold-flocked wall papers in the living rooms and pastels in the bedrooms. I can't go there, it would be too dark and stuffy for me, but I feel I am honoring the spirit of the original design by having a different color scheme for each room, and all the oriental rugs.
Since it is a rental apartment, the landlord won't let me paint with the traditional methods she describes in the article, or treat the floors the way I want to (stained very dark, like they probably were originally). But you can actually still buy paints based on calcimine or linseed oil. You can also buy binders and pigments and do the mixing yourself. I've done it quite a bit when I was younger, but it is a bit of a bother because it's best if you do the whole wet/oily wash in one day in order to avoid dry edges.
If you want to get some of effect of those paints, you can dilute your plastic/acrylic paint with water till it is quite thin and apply it in many layers, preferably with a brush instead of rollers. I've done that at our farm, it works very well, and is admired by all my color-fanatic friends. For the best effect, use an under-paint that is one of the colors that your final color is composed of. For instance, I used a blue that is similar (but a bit more saturated) to the blue she has in her last picture. In this blue, there are elements of umbra and grey. So we mixed a light grey-umbra under-paint and painted the blue in thin layers on top of that.
One tiny thing about the article, though: the early modernists loved color, and used a lot of it. I suspect that the lack of color in "modernist" interiors in America comes from the fact that in the fifties, most design journals showed only black and white images.
posted by mumimor at 2:23 AM on November 14, 2020 [4 favorites]
For reasons, I share my apartment now, and this is now my Room, with a bed in it that has a bedcover made of old saris in red, gold and yellow. This room is bright and colorful and also cosy. And through the door, I look out into our living room, which is sky blue and a joy to look at in all light. Also: lighting. A big reason beige is so sad in many interiors is bad artificial lighting. After dark, my room gets an entirely different atmosphere because of the lighting scheme.
The building was built in 1900, and back then, they probably had dark brown panels and doors, and different gold-flocked wall papers in the living rooms and pastels in the bedrooms. I can't go there, it would be too dark and stuffy for me, but I feel I am honoring the spirit of the original design by having a different color scheme for each room, and all the oriental rugs.
Since it is a rental apartment, the landlord won't let me paint with the traditional methods she describes in the article, or treat the floors the way I want to (stained very dark, like they probably were originally). But you can actually still buy paints based on calcimine or linseed oil. You can also buy binders and pigments and do the mixing yourself. I've done it quite a bit when I was younger, but it is a bit of a bother because it's best if you do the whole wet/oily wash in one day in order to avoid dry edges.
If you want to get some of effect of those paints, you can dilute your plastic/acrylic paint with water till it is quite thin and apply it in many layers, preferably with a brush instead of rollers. I've done that at our farm, it works very well, and is admired by all my color-fanatic friends. For the best effect, use an under-paint that is one of the colors that your final color is composed of. For instance, I used a blue that is similar (but a bit more saturated) to the blue she has in her last picture. In this blue, there are elements of umbra and grey. So we mixed a light grey-umbra under-paint and painted the blue in thin layers on top of that.
One tiny thing about the article, though: the early modernists loved color, and used a lot of it. I suspect that the lack of color in "modernist" interiors in America comes from the fact that in the fifties, most design journals showed only black and white images.
posted by mumimor at 2:23 AM on November 14, 2020 [4 favorites]
I clearly remember when I noticed beige walls. It was in the 90’s and I checked into a hotel at the Los Angeles airport so I could get on an early morning flight to Australia. The room was all beige: walls, carpet, furniture, curtains. I really, really hated it. Walls fine, but not EVERYTHING!
posted by waving at 6:52 AM on November 14, 2020
posted by waving at 6:52 AM on November 14, 2020
it shifts between both depending on the light
For me all the best interior colours do this, find me the shade which looks blue in the morning and purple by the evening.
posted by Lanark at 7:21 AM on November 14, 2020 [1 favorite]
For me all the best interior colours do this, find me the shade which looks blue in the morning and purple by the evening.
posted by Lanark at 7:21 AM on November 14, 2020 [1 favorite]
My partner and I are house hunting currently and prepping our condo, which is painted in colours we enjoy that are not typically considered neutrals (greys and blues, mostly), for sale and keep getting comments from our agent that we need to paint things "neutral" colours, but the thought of living (and working from home!) in a beige place (it was beige before I moved in there; having it un-beiged was a condition I put on my cohabitating with my partner!) for the amount of time it takes us to find a place we like (which will probably be awhile; the market is hot where we are and no one wants to move in the winter) instills me with such a feeling of dread I cannot even. I *hate* beige. White is better, though not my preferred wall colour.
It's also super hard looking at people's beige or all white homes and picturing myself living there. Don't even get me started on the all white kitchens everyone seems to be putting in, often for "resale value" - I don't want to rip out a brand new kitchen!
posted by urbanlenny at 9:30 AM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
It's also super hard looking at people's beige or all white homes and picturing myself living there. Don't even get me started on the all white kitchens everyone seems to be putting in, often for "resale value" - I don't want to rip out a brand new kitchen!
posted by urbanlenny at 9:30 AM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
Last place I lived was a one-bedroom apartment that, when I moved in, had not been redone since the late 70s.
It had beige carpet. The curtains were a different, more oatmeal-y shade of beige. The walls were entirely covered in burlap wallpaper, which was also beige. It was all saturated with decades' worth of cigarette smoke and smelled like an ashtray no matter what I did.
I ripped that burlap stuff off the walls and painted the whole thing myself. I can still see the colours. Cream colour in the hallway, bedroom and kitchen; the bathroom a lovely tranquil jade green. The living room ended up a golden yellow, which was the only shade I found that still looked warm on a grey London day.
My mother, by contrast, loves beige. She's a Pottery Barn/Crate & Barrel devotee. She also wears a lot of beige. I suspect that if her soul were visible, it would be beige. No wonder I grew up goth.
posted by Pallas Athena at 9:56 AM on November 14, 2020 [4 favorites]
It had beige carpet. The curtains were a different, more oatmeal-y shade of beige. The walls were entirely covered in burlap wallpaper, which was also beige. It was all saturated with decades' worth of cigarette smoke and smelled like an ashtray no matter what I did.
I ripped that burlap stuff off the walls and painted the whole thing myself. I can still see the colours. Cream colour in the hallway, bedroom and kitchen; the bathroom a lovely tranquil jade green. The living room ended up a golden yellow, which was the only shade I found that still looked warm on a grey London day.
My mother, by contrast, loves beige. She's a Pottery Barn/Crate & Barrel devotee. She also wears a lot of beige. I suspect that if her soul were visible, it would be beige. No wonder I grew up goth.
posted by Pallas Athena at 9:56 AM on November 14, 2020 [4 favorites]
Yep, also noticed way back in the mid 1990's how color was being sucked out of fashion by the (now) endless wars that 'inspired' the khaki/tan, black, and grey look. It's now everywhere.
As hypatia said, ". . . like, constantly 9 pm inside your house. Why would anyone want this? Why? "
It's like perpetual mourning.
posted by Mesaverdian at 10:00 AM on November 14, 2020
As hypatia said, ". . . like, constantly 9 pm inside your house. Why would anyone want this? Why? "
It's like perpetual mourning.
posted by Mesaverdian at 10:00 AM on November 14, 2020
As hypatia said, ". . . like, constantly 9 pm inside your house. Why would anyone want this? Why? "
It's like perpetual mourning.
Yes and not only interiors but now all of the exteriors too. I live in a beautiful historic neighborhood where everyone seems to be doing their damnedest to make the houses utterly charmless. Bluish corpse gray, light-sucking charcoal gray. Try keeping your will to live while walking past all of that with everyone wearing masks and the air thick with wildfire smoke.
posted by HotToddy at 10:11 AM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
It's like perpetual mourning.
Yes and not only interiors but now all of the exteriors too. I live in a beautiful historic neighborhood where everyone seems to be doing their damnedest to make the houses utterly charmless. Bluish corpse gray, light-sucking charcoal gray. Try keeping your will to live while walking past all of that with everyone wearing masks and the air thick with wildfire smoke.
posted by HotToddy at 10:11 AM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
No colour is neutral
posted by Flashman at 10:23 AM on November 14, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by Flashman at 10:23 AM on November 14, 2020 [4 favorites]
We're in urban New England, is life just too damn colorful and stimulating outside?
Grey places - aka anywhere with a long winter - need bright colours inside: warm reds, deep blues, vibrant greens. Our couch (not bought by us) is beige, but always accented with blue & gold pillows or multicoloured blankets (just like these - my great-grandmother made so many, and I've taken up the mantle to make more).
posted by jb at 11:36 AM on November 14, 2020 [4 favorites]
Grey places - aka anywhere with a long winter - need bright colours inside: warm reds, deep blues, vibrant greens. Our couch (not bought by us) is beige, but always accented with blue & gold pillows or multicoloured blankets (just like these - my great-grandmother made so many, and I've taken up the mantle to make more).
posted by jb at 11:36 AM on November 14, 2020 [4 favorites]
What happens to colors outside the neutral zone? These exciting and fun swatches are filed away in fan decks and forgotten. They are like forlorn volumes in a rare books store desperate for attention and waiting to be rediscovered.
Have to agree with the author's point to thoughtfully be more adventurous with color. Neutrals, not necessarily beige, are fine but not to use solely. The thing with using stronger colors is they're higher risk because if you get them wrong it's much worse than just having bland, while just bland can be rather lifeless. When I was hoping to buy a house a few years ago, the one of my favorites had a nice light teal kitchen, a cheerful light yellow livingroom, and I don't remember the other rooms, but it really stood among endless offwhites. In addition to the commercial lowest common denominator factor, I think there may still be a reaction to color fads like the 70s that didn't age well, and then when people do experiment they sometimes go a bit crazy.
posted by blue shadows at 1:04 PM on November 14, 2020
Have to agree with the author's point to thoughtfully be more adventurous with color. Neutrals, not necessarily beige, are fine but not to use solely. The thing with using stronger colors is they're higher risk because if you get them wrong it's much worse than just having bland, while just bland can be rather lifeless. When I was hoping to buy a house a few years ago, the one of my favorites had a nice light teal kitchen, a cheerful light yellow livingroom, and I don't remember the other rooms, but it really stood among endless offwhites. In addition to the commercial lowest common denominator factor, I think there may still be a reaction to color fads like the 70s that didn't age well, and then when people do experiment they sometimes go a bit crazy.
posted by blue shadows at 1:04 PM on November 14, 2020
A friend of mine once rented a furnished apartment where each room was decorated floor to ceiling in a single color: paint, upholstery, curtains, carpets, the whole nine yards. And it was laid out like a tunnel, with one room leading to another from the front door to the back. It was kind of like the palace in The Masque of the Red Death, but in 1960s decorator colors like olive green, harvest gold, and that dark brown they paint everything in state parks.
A relative of mine did this with an enormous mid-century home and the imprint on my child brain was indelible. In particular, the purple bathroom with every conceivable shade all the way down to the lavender toilet paper. She had also installed a leaded-glass diamond-pane window in a basement wall that separated the home bar from the basement workshop, complete with planter full of fake geraniums, like it was a little pub.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:08 PM on November 14, 2020 [4 favorites]
A relative of mine did this with an enormous mid-century home and the imprint on my child brain was indelible. In particular, the purple bathroom with every conceivable shade all the way down to the lavender toilet paper. She had also installed a leaded-glass diamond-pane window in a basement wall that separated the home bar from the basement workshop, complete with planter full of fake geraniums, like it was a little pub.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:08 PM on November 14, 2020 [4 favorites]
We just bought a house and the living room and dining room are beige travertine tile which is not my fave. I keep googling colors that go with beige tile cause I’m trying to make the tile work but most of the result are rooms that are all beige. Blah. If anyone has suggestions, I’ll take em!
posted by Pretty Good Talker at 1:52 PM on November 14, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Pretty Good Talker at 1:52 PM on November 14, 2020 [1 favorite]
Pretty much everything goes with beige. That’s kind of the point.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:00 PM on November 14, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:00 PM on November 14, 2020 [1 favorite]
If anyone has suggestions, I’ll take em!
Well, as The Underpants Monster says, anything goes. And it depends a lot on the light. Which directions do the windows face? But blues and greens always go very well with travertine.
Or buy a rug you like for each room, and match every other color to the rug rather than the tile.
posted by mumimor at 3:10 PM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
Well, as The Underpants Monster says, anything goes. And it depends a lot on the light. Which directions do the windows face? But blues and greens always go very well with travertine.
Or buy a rug you like for each room, and match every other color to the rug rather than the tile.
posted by mumimor at 3:10 PM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
The key to working with beige is understanding the undertones. They're always either pinkish or yellowish and that should guide your other color choices.
posted by HotToddy at 3:26 PM on November 14, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by HotToddy at 3:26 PM on November 14, 2020 [1 favorite]
Well I guess some of them are kind of greenish too.
posted by HotToddy at 3:28 PM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by HotToddy at 3:28 PM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
I’ve lived my whole adult life in rental suites where repainting was not allowed. I am a huge beige hater! Tasteful neutrals are a snooze fest.
posted by vanitas at 6:28 PM on November 14, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by vanitas at 6:28 PM on November 14, 2020 [1 favorite]
When I bought my first house, I got a deal on five gallons of Kwal-Howells Hayseed. That became the default color for the walls in the house, although we ended up adding two deep red accent walls in the living room, a turquoise in the master, electric orange in the spare bedroom/office, and a deep green in the bathroom.
Loved it. The hayseed was really light and bright, allowing the house to really feel open and cheerful on a sunny day. It also helped the other colors we selected to pop. I miss it, personally.
Also, don't paint your walls with flat paint. Use the cheapie industrial flat white on the ceilings, eggshell or satin on the walls, and semi-gloss for the trim.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 6:43 PM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
Loved it. The hayseed was really light and bright, allowing the house to really feel open and cheerful on a sunny day. It also helped the other colors we selected to pop. I miss it, personally.
Also, don't paint your walls with flat paint. Use the cheapie industrial flat white on the ceilings, eggshell or satin on the walls, and semi-gloss for the trim.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 6:43 PM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
There was a house in the neighborhood where my sister and I used to live, whose exterior was painted a bunch of different random colors, but not in any deliberate pattern we could detect. Our theory was that it was painted with those odd gallons of paint you see at the store, that are marked way down because the custom tinting didn’t turn out right. We called it “Mistint Manor.”
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:18 PM on November 14, 2020 [9 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:18 PM on November 14, 2020 [9 favorites]
Pretty Good Talker, these are travertine floors? Walls? What climate are you in? Do you have any colorful furniture?
posted by clew at 8:33 PM on November 14, 2020
posted by clew at 8:33 PM on November 14, 2020
My first job was in a bingo hall working as a checker for a local charity. The players, to a person, smoked, often heavily. The walls in the old converted movie theatre were beige. Or so we thought, until one evening the maintenance worker decided to wipe a particularly grimy spot. She spent the rest of the evening scrubbing the whole hall, restoring the original marble white walls. The hall was stunning restored at least in part to its original appearance. The regulars were all abuzz about how much money the management had spent redecorating the place.
Beige is the color of neglect, of the grime of years. Whenever I see it, I get that itchy feeling of flop sweat and smoke in my scalp that I felt every Wednesday night as a teen. I'm not a fan of beige.
posted by bonehead at 7:28 AM on November 15, 2020 [7 favorites]
Beige is the color of neglect, of the grime of years. Whenever I see it, I get that itchy feeling of flop sweat and smoke in my scalp that I felt every Wednesday night as a teen. I'm not a fan of beige.
posted by bonehead at 7:28 AM on November 15, 2020 [7 favorites]
We we moved in to this house, every wall in the place was white. After the extensive building work I wanted colour, so we have the perfect sage green, a cheerful pink, light orange with glitter in (!), and in the living room, beige walls. It took a bit of doing to find a beige with a bit of personality and not too much yellow, but we did. I always fall in love with pictures that are abstract and in shades of red+brown+gold, and have bought/acquired several, and it's hard to see what other colour might have made a good background for them.
Beige walls unadorned would be quite another matter.
posted by Pentickle at 6:56 AM on November 16, 2020 [1 favorite]
Beige walls unadorned would be quite another matter.
posted by Pentickle at 6:56 AM on November 16, 2020 [1 favorite]
a main bathroom with all pink fixtures. Pink tub, pink, toilet, pink sink, pink tile
We recently moved into a place like this. It also has a second bathroom that's all pale yellow with a row of jolly haymaking peasant tiles over the sink.
It's a 1930s house, empty for five years and neglected for longer. We had to replace the pink and yellow toilets with cheap white ones right away because they didn't work.
And we're going to have to ditch the rest of the pastel tiles within the year because the floors and interior walls aren't sound. We did consider the exhortations at Save the Pink Bathrooms but I just don't think that's going to happen.
posted by tangerine at 5:42 PM on November 16, 2020
We recently moved into a place like this. It also has a second bathroom that's all pale yellow with a row of jolly haymaking peasant tiles over the sink.
It's a 1930s house, empty for five years and neglected for longer. We had to replace the pink and yellow toilets with cheap white ones right away because they didn't work.
And we're going to have to ditch the rest of the pastel tiles within the year because the floors and interior walls aren't sound. We did consider the exhortations at Save the Pink Bathrooms but I just don't think that's going to happen.
posted by tangerine at 5:42 PM on November 16, 2020
For a while, my parents lived in a development I called Beigeland. Every house was some shade of light brown or cream. I got lost in there once.
I am a saturated color fan. I could see white walls, but not beige, or greige, or any of that crap. Our house is quite colorful. If we ever sell, we will have to have every wall patched and painted vanilla.
What I really hate (really) is wallpaper. Wallpaper is of the devil. This house had dark wallpaper in both baths. I removed 3 layers of wallpaper in the (windowless) main bathroom and had to mud and skim the walls three times to make it paintable. When we had the master bath redone, we just replaced the drywall.
posted by corvikate at 8:33 AM on November 17, 2020
I am a saturated color fan. I could see white walls, but not beige, or greige, or any of that crap. Our house is quite colorful. If we ever sell, we will have to have every wall patched and painted vanilla.
What I really hate (really) is wallpaper. Wallpaper is of the devil. This house had dark wallpaper in both baths. I removed 3 layers of wallpaper in the (windowless) main bathroom and had to mud and skim the walls three times to make it paintable. When we had the master bath redone, we just replaced the drywall.
posted by corvikate at 8:33 AM on November 17, 2020
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I drive a beige Volvo. It’s nice.
I don’t need personality from walls, that’s what the artwork is for.
posted by leotrotsky at 1:05 PM on November 13, 2020 [8 favorites]