Over the last decade, maybe longer, it seemed like grey was the signature color of having your shit together. It was clean and modern. It was sophisticated, more interesting than white, but less risky than an actual color. Paint your walls grey, buy a sofa in slightly darker shade of grey, then throw down a textured rug in the same ashen hue and suddenly your first grown-up apartment looked, well, grown-up.
But like any trend, it got bigger and bigger until it was everywhere. Grey migrated from tasteful interiors into flipped houses, rental developments, hotel rooms and Airbnbs. It spread across walls and sofas and, most notoriously, those grey faux-wood laminate floors that now seem to cover half the apartments built or renovated since 2015. What had once felt contemporary began to feel corporate and basic.
And it resulted in the Millennial GreyTM home. You know the one. Cool grey walls. Grey sectional. White quartz countertop. Black metal bar stools. A large (but not quite large enough) vaguely abstract print hanging over the sofa. Perhaps a fiddle-leaf fig in the corner. None of these are particularly offensive on its own. That’s sort of the problem.
Our generation saw grey as a reset button of sorts. It looked crisp against white trim. It complemented stainless steel appliances. It worked with the streamlined furniture arriving from a new generation of direct-to-consumer brands. And, maybe more important than anything else, it was pretty difficult to fuck up.
That last part helped make the color (or non-color as it were) irresistible to more than homeowners. Developers, landlords and house flippers realized they could cover practically anything in it and call the result “modern.” Grey laminate flooring could replace yellowing hardwood. Grey paint could freshen a rental without alienating prospective tenants. Grey furniture photographed well and appealed to just about everyone. That is, until it didn’t.
The color’s greatest strength, its calming neutral inoffensiveness, eventually became its greatest weakness. The trouble with choosing only things nobody could dislike is that you can end up with a room nobody particularly likes. And that’s the fatigue we’re seeing now: Not that grey is “out,” but that the tasteful interiors getting noticed now reveal something about the people living in them.
It’s a shift in thinking. Less about color trends and more about moving away from cool and neutral to warm and lived-in. From pristine and matching to collected and personalized. Warm woods are back. So are rich shades like chocolate brown, burgundy, olive green and ochre. Rich cream has replaced stark white. Unfinished and aged metals feel more inviting than perfectly polished chrome. Patterned rugs, linen, wool, natural stone and furniture with visible grain bring texture into rooms that previously relied on smooth, anonymous surfaces.
And this is where bringing in some flea market finds and vintage scores comes in handy. A battered wooden side table or old leather chair can do something a brand-new matching furniture set never does. It will make a room look as though it came together over time. The scratches, patina and slight imperfections aren’t defects to hide. They offer some history and that’s what makes a room interesting.