Faddy trends in home design

B-D-P-- wrote: »

Agreed & I have a recliner, It works great with my tv over the fireplace.
Prefer it to a lower tv

Yeh me too. I don’t get the idea that there’s an immense strain on the neck. And the TV is centred in the room.

As for the grey, as a neutral colour it’s better than magnolia. :-p

All grey is a mess though.

I quite like many of the 'unpopular' things posted here. For example, my house is grey throughout. Every room, hall, stairs and landing are grey. Carpet is grey, laminate is grey. Kitchen is white gloss, bannisters/spindles are white. However, I try to break it up with large canvas prints and blobs of colour thrown into it. We've a large 'feature wall' (for lack of a better description) in the sitting room which is turquoise. The Kitchen has a 3-canvas-print picture that takes up a large chunk of space, in blue, and three other canvas prints are in there too.

I personally find that it's easier on the eyes. More relaxing. Most other colours are turquoise, yellow and navy around the house, with different 'wood' on the worktop/tables etc. but I like the simplicity of it all.


Now that I've painted myself into a corner as being 'that guy' in the thread, the things I don't particularly like are:

A 'feature wall' in a room, were the wall has paneling on it, that's nowhere else to be seen in the house. I can see the next 'trend' for this being the easier version, where it's just 2" vertical strips on the wall, and none of the horizontal ones (sounds a bit prison-ey, but bet it'll take off once people start at it).

I don't like those large pouffe things, that are oversized and take up most of the floor space in, what are generally small, rooms.

Although I have some downlights/spotlights in my houes (only one room) I'm not a fan of them either, anymore. I like the aesthetic and space-saving kinda sleekness to them, but ever since they became LED as standard, I find them overly blinding, and it's put me right off them. Dimmable halogen ones were lovely.

I like colourful LED strip lighting, but I think it's a nice secondary compliment to a room. Some people go way overboard and have them everywhere. Houses that have rooms that look like commercial premises or nightclubs because someone got a deal on buying a load of strip lights. Not for me. (I say that as someone who also has some, in my house, but they're part of a dropped ceiling and are an ambient light, so they struggle to fully light the room the way I have them set up).


One thing I really think is stupid are window shutters that you (thankfully, rarely) see fitted to outsides of houses. Often in house estates where no other house has bothered, so the house with them looks even more odd. What bugs me is that they 1) aren't functional, they literally get nailed to the wall, and 2) the houses they are on are so small, that you can't fit a shutter that looks like it'd actually cover the window. So you lose out on both the function and aesthetic. I just don't get it at all.

I also don't like, although it's not really a fad, perhaps, is the ceiling window/light that often gets popped onto flat roof extensions to 'let more light in'. Not a bad thing in and of itself, but no one bothers to put blinds on them, so you end up with a square in the room that you can't use, because if the sun is shining, you get glare and the eyes are cut out of your head, or if it's a warm day out, you'll burn sitting underneath it. I'd rather the marginally darker interior, and option of using lights.


I also don't like silver crushed velvet and mirror-finishes everywhere. Screams 'tacky/cheap' to me (although I presume it's supposed to look more premium than cheap).


Though, it's obviously only fair to point out that everyone just has different taste. If you were to decorate your house based on a load of other people's opinions, you'd be sitting in an empty shell for a long time to come. :pac: