Looks great to me.
Now add some pops of color with paintings/art, rugs, throw pillows, and knick-knacks and you’ve got yourself a home.
Sorry but that horrible wallpaper from the original is the mildly infuriating part.
Yeah not a fan of wallpaper either. Removed like 3 layers of the stuff when we got our house. Awful.
The new one is MUCH too white, but let’s be honest, the before pictures are pretty ugly too. That wallpaper is gaudy as hell.
The before pictures are bourgie and give a 90’s generational wealth ick, but at least it still looks like there’s a human being living there experiencing something nearly recognizable as a human emotion from time to time.
Well said. The middle photo of the living room looks like white hell in the new version. Like one of those underground passages in the Hoth base with some Myst-era computer generated furniture spawned in the distance.
I was thinking the place at the end of Space Odyssey, but that works too
The thing is that the 90s shots are from a movie, the others are from a property listing. They have very different purposes. A movie needs to be visually interesting. A property listing needs to be as neutral as possible so people aren’t put off by the house before even looking at it.
Two completely different genres of photography.
I get your point but they’re both reflections of how the wealthy decorate in the different eras. The 80/90’s house would likely have been advertised with the same wallpapers and dressed up similar to the movie set by Realtors because that was the style.
I disagree actually. If you think this is what wealthy people decorate like in either era, you haven’t been around rich people.
For the movie set, you can’t forget that set and the photography of it is designed to help push the message of the movie and a sense of realism is rarely a priority. With the realty photos, they are marketing first, they want to emphasize a clean, neutral setting that is full of potential.
It is also important to remember that this grey aesthetic arose from the concrete homes that were in vogue with the rich in the 2010s. Those homes were grey, yes, but they also emphasized textures, unusual materials, and lighting. The home photographed here is clearly middle class because it has none of what made concrete homes interesting.
I could write an entire essay on this, but I think I have made my point. The only comparison that matters here is that both sets of photos are fantasy. One is literally a movie set, the other is an advertisement. Neither capture any sort of reality about rich people or even people. It is silly to say that the movie set looks lived in as an example. They are both, however, what middle class people imagine rich people are like.
Edit: And before anyone says it, yes, I’m sure some rich person somewhere decorated like that. The McAllister home is a real place after all, but it doesn’t negate that we are seeing what the director wants us to experience first.
In 1990 that was the height of sophistication. Today, Millennial white/gray is the height of sophistication. What can we learn? Trends in home design/decor are bad. Stick to something timeless and you won’t think it’s outdated every few years.
I’m really sad as a Millennial that this aesthetic has been dubbed “Millennial gray.” I’ve watched some videos on it that make the case that it’s a backlash from the 70s aesthetic we grew up with combined with poor financial prospects in early adulthood, meaning we couldn’t buy a lot of or very nice furniture. Now that I’m firmly middle-aged, I can afford better stuff and my husband and I are slowly turning over crap particle-board furniture for nice solid wood pieces (often secondhand) in the craftsman style.
There was a thread recently where someone called it “Flipper gray”, because it’s actually being done by boomers trying to flip houses.
Been meaning to get into the Craftsman style, I’ve had a kind of shaker aesthetic going on with most of my projects.
Mudhuts will always be in. Don’t move with the flow, be the rock every drowning man needs.
I prefer rustic cottage theme. I never get tired of it and if someone else thinks it’s ugly… Cool, don’t live with me then.
The 1990 looks like 1890. I’d suggest that makes it the timeless decor.
Millennial grey is outdated. It’s all about the 70s revival now baby. You heard it here first.
Millennial gray is timeless!
You can decorate it with anything because it’s so neutral
Only partially joking
Milennial gray works when you buy like a couch or something in grey, and then install colored accents around it. Red curtains with blue table lamps. If you do the entire place in shades of gray you’re just…dead.
Millennial
you’re just…dead.
you’re just…dead.
Yes, I’m a millennial.
I meant more that you can do the walls, ceilings and floors in bland neutral colours and then furniture, curtains, etc, can be changed out as the current popular style or your own taste changes. So you don’t have to rip out the floors and repaint the walls to change the color scheme.
Also that it’ll be easier for your (grand)kids to sell the place when you’re dead because it’s easier for the new owner to redecorate around the grey than around what’s on the “before” pictures here. I was originally gonna comment that but left it out because the world’s morbid enough without my sense of humour.
Wanted to say that. The new one could use a few colored highlights, while the top one is stuffy and overloaded as hell.
I might do a solid color on the walls rather than the textured wallpaper. The shot of the bedroom in particular, the wallpaper is just too busy.
Hallway wallpaper is great, bedroom one is definitely a bit ugly though I agree
In isolation the new ones are ok, I think. But an entire house without an accent colour in any room is crazy.
I find the old ones kinda gross.
The all white aesthetic can be appealing in a “clear slate, calm mind” kind of way, but this works way better for me when it has a few gentle touches like rounded corners, plush furniture, warm lighting, and natural wood accents. No sharp edges or cold lighting or it veers into “ice razors” territory fast.
I think if you literally just remove the before wallpaper and change nothing else, it would look perfect
I’m mourning that wainscoting.
It is interesting that we live in a world flooded with ads and intrusions everywhere now, and we don’t see to want detail and attention in our living spaces anymore. I wonder if there’s a relation.
as someone who lives in a world without ads and intrusions I enjoy my colorful house.
Ah yes, the installation of “millenial gray” because obviously what matters about houses is your ability to sell it 🙄
I don’t know where the term millennial gray comes from, but it is very truthful.
It’s like a disease that infects homes they have passed though. They paint their depression all over the walls, in various shades of white, black, gray and on rare occasion, taupe.
What made these poor souls afraid of colors?
They’ve infected the cars too. Each parking lot a sea of black white and gray.
Every generation has a reaction to the previous. Many millennials grew up in cluttered homes with orange kitchen tiles and purple carpets in the bathroom. The counter reaction to that is minimalism and grey. Now we’re seeing a new trend that leans toward cozy and color again.
I would like to invite everyone who has ever carpeted a bathroom on an exclusive 4-day weekend in the genital blowtorching booth.
I would like a bit of colour. But fuck wallpaper. Most of our carpets are blue, not in the bathroom or kitchen though. Could do with getting some rugs but nice ones are hardly cheap.
I had no idea that my generation was getting stereotyped for the blame here. I’m a millennial and fuckin hate the gray-plastic austere, and the bland colors of today’s cars is actually one (Of very many many) reason I’d never buy a new one.
I really think it has more to do with the complete investment-ization of everything. Everyone buying stuff has become primarily concerned with the ability to sell it because our environment has become increasingly temporary.
I would wage good money that very few millennials are buying new cars
As a younger millennial I can’t afford to take you up on that bet.
I may have coined it myself, or i saw it in an article once and adopted it.
I think the reason why it’s everywhere is because most homeowners are boomers and boomers got the idea that gray tones make a “neutral pallette” where the residents can apply whatever color they want, which increases the potential buyer pool. At least this was the explanation provided to me when I asked why every single renovation looked the same.
Another victim of big Small
big small
It’s not the size that counts, it’s how you use it.
(for some reason it’s failing to upload, but insert the meme of the guy crying behind a smiling mask.)
Every time I see that movie I think how it shaped my idea that having such a nice and big house was normal and achievable, along with like 6 kids, and it was the average normal family… I’m not even American.
I’m so much closer to the robber’s reality.
To me it is the number of children. All the happy family movies had families with multiple children, and it feels like only child families are portrayed overwhelmingly as dysfunctional and tragic.
I’m trying to work through this mindset because we only have one child, but it is hard because subconsciously, I feel like a failure, like I cannot live up to this expectation and my child is doomed to this gloomy, sad existence.
If anyone is reading this, I beg you, prove me wrong. This isn’t a challenge, I just desperately need picture perfect single child family portrayals.
Only child of lesbian parents checking in. You’re wrong, it takes all sorts to make a family please don’t let corporate bullshit brainwash you.
I was an only child and had an excellent childhood/teenage years and am still really good friends with my parents. My goal with my daughter is to do as good of a job for her as my parents did for me. I don’t live a perfect life but my relationship with my parents is not something I could ever have any complaints about. Don’t worry, as long as your kid knows you love them and you try your best to do what’s best for them (and not just what you want to be best for them), I wouldn’t have any worries personally.
Hopefully the media is changing. Off the top of my head, I thought of “Inside Out,” where the girl is an only child (I think?) and her family is depicted as pretty loving, just going through a tough move. I suspect a lot of kids’ media has also adjusted to two kids max; I’m specifically thinking of shows like Bluey and Daniel Tiger for instance.
Thank you for the tip with Inside Out, I’ll check it out! It was on our watchlist anyway and gets promoted to top rank now.
With the kids’ media that’s the thing - there is still always a sibling. We’ve always read a lot to our four year old daughter and every longer story with an only child ends up with a sibling being born. It breaks me because I actually would love to have more children and every time that I felt safe with a story and it finally was ok, a happy family of three, they add a sibling. My daughter won’t go through that. I won’t go through that. Unless, of course, the parents are divorced, one is dead, it’s an adoptive family, or a queer family. All of these are great and depict amazing, valid family structures, and I like these books too, but they still don’t represent our dynamic.
Funnily enough my daughter caught me reading Sailor Moon mangas once and at least there the protagonist has an only child. (If you do not count parallel universe stories which I don’t for my sanity.) Sailor Moon makes me cope the most currently.
There’s a whole trove of portrayals of happy, loving single-child families out there! You just have to look to China’s one-child policy era.
“But Fireweed! This is literally propaganda!” It’s all propaganda, whether it’s “be content with one child” or “be fruitful and multiply.” Media depictions of large families appear fun and loving because the creators make it that way (the more kids the more you have to work with: there’s the jock kid, the geek kid, the uptight kid, the…). Even media about the difficulties of large families (e.g. Cheaper by the Dozen) still end with everyone being happy and loving because it makes for a feel-good ending; that doesn’t mean it reflects reality in the slightest. Society doesn’t like to talk about the darker sides of large families because of heteronormativity, but there’s some media out there portraying large families as hopelessly dysfunctional (Shameless for instance, or you can read about any of the large family “reality TV” shows that have ended in scandal).
Remember that we’re in unprecedented times; large families used to not only be the norm but were practically required (have lots of kids to work the farm, or because you don’t know how many are going to survive to adulthood, or because there’s no social safety net for when you become old/sick/injured except your family members). Nowadays it’s the opposite: more kids equals less resources to go around, and unchecked population growth combined with unchecked consumption is wrecking the planet. But media hasn’t caught up yet, and with influential, wealthy people out there screaming racist nonsense about “crashing birth rates” and “great replacement theory,” there’s pressure to continue to portray large families positively and small families poorly. It’s the same situation as the propaganda I linked above, but in reverse.
In other words, rejoice that you’ve eschewed the media narrative and done the right thing for your family! Also forget visual media (where creators use large families to portray the appearance of a happy family, because more kids = more hugs and smiling faces in the shot = more love, right?) and look to books, where there are plenty of depictions of loving, functional, single-child households.
In the 90s it was more possible. I knew a lot of people like this. They were middle class.
Although this family is higher than that. I think the mom was like a fashion designer or something?
They both kind of suck tbh. The first looks like a nightmare to acid trip in and the other looks like a wizard sucked all the colour out of it.
The first looks potentially incredible to acid trip in based on visuals. But indoors is a no-go for me when tripping.
If you look at the proportions on the railings and windows, it is very clearly not the same house. Stairs and a foyer is a really common layout.
very clearly not the same ho
It’s real, but there are gotchas
It’s a 5 million dollar home in near Chicago that sat on the market for ages so it got a pretty significant makeover.
However, most of the rooms were recreated and shot on a soundstage. Other than the main entrance and a couple of scenes it was too small to film in.
I hate it. I hate how there’s no colour in the world any more. Houses are black and white, cars and black and white, clothes are black and white.
Why do people hate colour?
People in developing countries don’t hate color, I swear the classism has to be part of it. Go to almost any place in South America and it is so colorful. Go to Africa everything’s full of color, and I’m sure that goes for a lot of other countries. But any country that is supposedly wealthier has gotten super boring.
Advertising made people prefer those colors. IPhones, tech gadgets, speakers, televisions, computers, desks, chairs…
Its not generic, it’s programming of our minds. And now, when a new color MacBook appears, we feel it’s amazing and we want it. Right? Absolutely ridiculous.
I would argue that it’s not just advertising. It’s also a lot to do with how many people grew up in really terribly design homes with terrible hoarding situations.
A lot of millennials seem to course correct to the other extreme. Add to that the rental market where neutral is better because it can be customized without clashing with what renters already own.
generic taste of modern house, copy and paste.
People who grew up outside vs people who grew up inside.
A mind grown in the cacophony of nature, literally formed to use it as substrate for thought and inspiration, finds the stimulation necessary. They are made of it.
One grown inside, finds it overwhelming and uncomfortable. For them, stimulation must be confined to a completely controlled experience.
Good. That place needed a renovation. It was a regular death trap!
Careful what you wish for, what with the paint cans and all.
You do know that the inside of that house in the movie was built on a sound stage. That only the exterior of the house was shot for the movie.
Some shots were done on a sound stage but I’m pretty sure this part is from the actual house. https://www.atlasofwonders.com/2023/01/home-alone-house-location.html?m=1
Nope the outside shots were of the house and the inside shots were not. Its on a documentary of the making of the movie. Movies that made us?
I had to make sure my eyes are looking at the supposed interior, uh, “refresh” isn’t something made with ChatGPT.
I bet the owner of this house also has a, ugh, Tesla in the garage.
I’d rather choose the more iconic tacky but more identifiably human and warm interior design over that horribly sterile aesthetic.
Not going to lie, I like the clean look of the millenial house more. We collectively grew up in clutter, where your grandma would have weird porcelain dolls, or a cabinet to display her fine china.
My grandpa had a taxidermied pheasant, great horned owl, and a coyote pelt on his living room wall.
Nothing wrong with all that, it’s just weird as a kid.
Our parents generation hoarded shit, because their parents lived through the depression. That has its own value but it gets overwhelming.
Clean? As in sterile like a hospital?
I think your example is the other extreme, but a little bit of color and a few personal items is a huge improvement over the sanitarium look.
Clean lines and a warm color scheme might be a good middle ground. The old version’s wallpapers were a bit too busy and the new one definitely looks way too sterile.
But yeah, of I had to choose I’d go with the old one.
It’s definitely lacking some colour, but we keep our house very tidy.
I dunno, I kinda like wondering if I’m going to be ax-murdered by a Bateman copycat when I walk into a place
As white as an operating room
I was just thinking about this the other day. When I grew up, bills, books, the news, interesting articles, photos, and every piece of information you needed to work with or keep safe was stored on paper. Almost all electronics were wired, so cords were running everywhere.
They also had less time to manage all that because they were forced to commute every single day for work.
The fact that some people had uncluttered houses is some kind of miracle.
Now, some people, myself included, also had at least one parent who couldn’t throw anything away or keep things properly organized to save their life, but I look back on my cluttered childhood home with a little more grace these days.
I get that. It can quickly evolve to clutter. I grew up in clutter and couldn’t stand it if that happens in my house. I’m already frustrated that I have a few things on a coffee table at home.
I think there is a nice balance though, to make something feel more homey without all the dead, dusty pheasants.
I don’t think this can be true. The house interiors in the movie weren’t filmed on location. They were custom sets built into a school gymnasium. So everything in the “before” photos are sets and set decoration.
I’m not Amerucan, but as far as I know, America often builds houses en mass. Often in factories. Everything is standardized, zo many houses look the same. It wouldn’t be weird if a set also looked exactly like a real, standardized, house. These “now” pictures could be from a look-a-like house.
And what you know is so wrong, lol.
Mobile Himes or Manufactured Homes are built in shops, but even with those the interiors can be vastly different.
Interior design is a thing, which makes every house different inside.
And the type of house in Home Alone definitely isn’t a manufactured home or even one built in a development where there are only 3 models, but a very old, custom-built house.
Thanks, I kind of expected this house to be old and custom build, like you say.
Is prefab parts not a common practice with newly build houses? Like, you get a truck with some walls and a roof, you stick them together, put in some wiring and plumbing, stick on some plaster and repeat for the next house?
Extremely uncommon.
The only prebuilt part is the roof truss. Not the roof, just the truss.
Eh, you’ll find neighborhoods where most or all of the houses share floor plans.
They’re not exactly manufactured on an assembly line but the same architects and contractors will end up doing an entire area, they’ll get a few designs approved and then they can just stamp them out. If your neighborhood is a warren of cul de sacs that’s probably you.
Then there’s the neighborhoods of Sears houses, which were literally ordered from a catalog.
That is not the same as prefab.
Sears houses as a percent of overall houses is extremely low.
Prebuilt homes, even prebuilt sections, not including trailer homes, are extraordinarily rare in the US.
To clarify what others are saying, the design and layouts are repeated, but done in situ. So especially in a new house/neighborhood you’ll have a neighborhood with maybe 1-4 variations (possibly also mirrored versions of them), but each was made on the spot with a mostly standardized lot. Then over time some will slowly be modified and they’ll all get their owners’ touches to them.
It’s very much an industrial process in the suburbs starting after the world wars.
They’re rare. When you see many identical houses in a neighborhood, it means one contractor developed the whole group. Usually through deforestation to expand the suburbs. They are still fabricated on site, not delivered/assembled
You’re talking about a country that still uses chequebooks. They’re probably decades away from prefab construction.
We don’t use checks except very rarely and we have manufactured houses (called mobile homes here). They just don’t come with the land under them so they constantly lose value and cost rent for the lot, are generally smaller and worse than in situ buildings, and are stigmatized as “for poor people” because of the fact that they’re cheap in the moment and expensive long term, which is the opposite of normal housing.
Due to a weird law, in the USA manufactured homes must be built on a permanent chassis.
Most homes in the USA are built entirely on site.
