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Comment by nemomarx | Hacker News Reader

I think it's like millennial grey. Not only is it more expensive to add ornamentation, it also hurts resale and repurposing of buildings. Ideally you want mostly identical boxes where you could change the sign to make it a church, a McDonalds, a clothing store, etc every few years.

Or that seems like the goal of commercial builders now, right?

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This is the crux. Houses used to be built to be lived in, so ornamentation added value. Now they are commodities to be traded and sold, and variation makes a portfolio harder to manage/less uniform.

> so ornamentation added value.

When and where was this a common thing?

I've lived and owned houses built from the 1750s to the 1960s in England and Norway and none of them have much in the way of ornamentation.

> Houses used to be built to be lived in

Of course and that's one reason why most didn't have a lot of ornamentation, the money would be spent on necessary functionality first.

Perhaps I'm just not wealthy enough.

    > so ornamentation added value.

    When and where was this a common thing?

Depends on the houses. Your neighborhood one? Yeah I get what you're saying I guess, tho some of this probably still applies!

Large urban buildings? I recently-ish randomly watched this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBOXF-FION4 "Why Everything We Build is Flat" i.e. how availability of caulk contributed to less beautiful houses (in urban settings at the least).

Very common in the USA. Queen Anne, craftsman, just to name a few styles, featuring elaborate corbels, crown molding, coves, built in cabinetry, wainscotting etc.

I wish people would stop calling it millennial grey. It's Gen-X grey. Kim K and Kanye were the ones who built the logical conclusion in their contrast-less white casa; millennials are born maximalists who pair tech accoutrements with actual wood grain because their fondest memory is of being sat in front of a PS1 and a CRT housed in a stained oak cabinet in their childhood den, wires, manuals, remotes, and jewel cases hither and thither.

Yeah I've noticed that millennials are often maximalists, years and years of ghastly 'landlord white' paint jobs contributed to that as well I think.

I'm currently renting but looking to buy in my area, I'm sure I'll find the chemical stripping of horrible white gloss paint and the painting over of 'minimal' white walls with a riot of colour outright cathartic. The house I'm renting would look so good if someone took the time to undo all the bodge jobs and cheap decoration choices I think. The lovely hardwood doors have proper brass hinges for example but it's all covered up with decades' worth of horrid white paint. Half the houses round here probably have gorgeous hardwood floors under crappy laminate or lino, and almost all have nice fireplaces I'd love to reinstate and use with a wood burner.

Does it actually hurt resale value? Anything with style won't be universally loved, but will make something more attractive and valuable to some. It certainly hasn't stopped fashion and design in other products. Is the solution for "This won't be to everyone's tastes" to make everything into something that nobody actually likes?

Some people think so. Then you have to paint your new house before moving in because it is so ugly.

Tastes change though. A look that was popular 15 years ago might appear garish or old fashioned today.

Fads come and go, but people's tastes are longer lasting and even fashion is cyclical. There's still a thriving market for 1950s-style kitchen appliances and Art Deco designs from the 20s and 30s. If you think a house looks really cool, you're probably not going to change your mind.

The house I bought has one room painted a much more interesting colour (sort of slate blue). I think it made the house much more attractive to us.

Paints not valuable at all. It's a 100 dollars of materials and a couple hours for a pro.

Which is neither here nor there to the effect it creates.

The real estate industry (gag) says that because the whole goal is to turn housing into standard product that they can sell with the least work possible.

That's why you see houses for sale where they repainted everything grey, ripped out the mature landscaping and put down plastic and dyed wood chips.

I am romantic, I would actually love to move into a house that carries the mannerisms, tics, and aesthetic of the previous inhabitants like a permanent ghost, and add mine on top. It feels like a world that was and will be without me, where I struggle to leave a trace by respecting and appreciating the traces of others. When I saw some minor graffiti from a child in the wardrobe of a house I rented, I loved it.

It can be harder to maintain. Repainting and maintaining a look like the Painted Ladies costs much more than vinyl siding.

When we built our house a few years back, our builder gave us 3 total paint colors, for the entire house. Anything above that was $500/room. So, we let our kids pick out their own room colors, leaving us with one color for the rest of the house.

We chose Millennial Gray because it goes with anything, not because we especially liked it. It was a perfectly acceptable option for free.

By now we've repainted half the house or so. But the rooms where the gray remains are just fine.

$500 a room is honestly criminal. You're already paying for the labour, different colors should be the cost of the materials and no more. :/

"Ideally you want mostly identical boxes"

I get your point, but I still feel the need to say here clearly: No, I don't. Identical interchangable boxes are not what I would call a ideal standard for housing.

re commerical buildings today, absolutely. Most developments, especially retail ones have the goal of being wrapped up in a commerical real estate portfolio. That might be a REIT or held by a private investor. Their goal is to collect buildings with the widest marketability for retail. They are not generally curating locations with intent. Though some owners specialize in that in high density tourist or luxury retail spaces.

To be fair, this isn't entirely new. The American West was strewn with cheap wooden structures that all looked alike with big fake fonts with hand painted signs. Those mostly rotted so they're uncommon in our lexicon outside of movies.

This is very sad to read.

Alas, each time I pass Passeig de Gràcia I lament there are no more interesting buildings... everything is soo f* bland :|

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