Millennials are seemingly allergic to color when it comes to home design.
A pop of color?
Formillennials, the default color palette for home interiors is 50 shades of gray.
Walk through a local open house.
Click through your 30-something cousins Pinterest.
Peruse your college roomies Instagram stories.
Youll quickly discover that millennials are seemingly allergic to color when it comes to home design.
Many others younger Gen Z especially have big feelings about that.
On TikTok, some millennials are big enough to call themselves out for their drabby home design.
Let me show you guys my house,@victoria.thatsit says in one popular clip.
My bathroom: gray.
My floor: gray.
My counters: gray.
Our mat: gray.
Our chairs: some pop in of gray.
Our couches: gray.
Our dog beds: gray.
Even her twodogsare gray, Victoria admits, sounding a little aghast at the realization.
How did we get here?
Is the all gray everything aesthetic mind-numbingly mundane, or classic and calming?
Its a rebuff of their parents shabby chic, maximalist design sense.
Or theTuscan-villa, Old-World luxury stylewe saw modeled inTony and Carmela Sopranos home.
In all those 90s aesthetic trends, the through-line was beige.
In many ways, millennials embrace of gray as their neutral of choice is just a repudiation of beige.
Millennials tend to be an anxious bunch, and gray has a calming effect.
On the whole, millennials are looking to create a calm and stable environment, Chappell Marsh said.
Theyre big on minimalism and mindfulness.
Its like having one less thing to worry about in a world of uncertainties, Chappell Marsh told HuffPost.
Keeping things simple can really help reduce stress and create a sense of order.
A neutral color scheme makes sense if you prioritize environmental sustainability.
Many millennials value sustainability in their purchases, especially big-ticket buys.
A 2023 Deloitte surveyfound that 60% of millennialsare willing to pay more for sustainable products and services.
Then theres the stain-and-smudge factor.
Like the sad beige parenting trend, its gender neutral.
They want their kids to grow up in an environment free from restrictive norms.
Kreiss, on the other hand, thinks millennial gray is near-finished in urban areas.
Even mass-produced furniture chains are backing away from the color, he said.
Ive seen a shift towards maximalism and grandma-core which I think might even be worse, he said.
Everyone wants their house to look like its old now.
Id suggest color in more subtle ways, Kreiss said.
Green is certainly a fan favorite, but in more soft sage hues.
There is a bit more meaning behind it.
Warner, the other interior designer, suggests adding a pop of color through artwork.
They add character and color while also infusing your personal style.
My best advice is to treat your millennial gray as a canvas worth adding to.This article originally appeared onHuffPost.
