The Beige Conspiracy: American interior design as a symbol of the quiet despair of capitalism and suburbia
Do you remember those cars with the wood-paneling on the side? They were everywhere in the ‘90s, so you must. When my family first moved to America, my mother was distraught over the idea that one day she, too, would be forced to own such a car, for they really were everywhere. Who would have thought that such an innocent design choice would give someone anxiety?
And thus began my fascination with the quiet despair of the American suburban aesthetic.
Luckily, my mom never had to buy that wood-paneled car, since that proved to be a blissfully short-lived fad. In fact, she never once caved to any American aesthetic, and our cars, our house, our wardrobe stayed decidedly foreign. Most of my childhood friends were immigrants, too, so the inner reality of the American suburban home has largely always been a mystery to me. Honestly, I imagined every house probably looked like the house from Boy Meets World: beige, tan, olive green, and the very definition of horror vacui. Just look at how busy (and beige) that wallpaper is.
I wasn’t wrong. To this day, whenever I step into what I think of as “a real American home”, it makes me uneasy. Its safe, monochromatic neutrality is trying just a little too hard to make everything seem normal. Everything is awash in a dense beige and brown, with no fresh colors anywhere in sight, no reprieve. And the knick-knacks. My god, the knick-knacks.
It turns out I’m not the first to notice this beige epidemic: Paul Ford has written about the off-white American room we see in YouTube videos, ending it so poetically:
But for most of us life happens against a backdrop of intersecting off-white walls. Those are our homes, plain and a little grim. Our fantasy homes are busy with bright things yet old. Our pins and dreams are not beige. When we sleep we leave the computer behind and step out onto the widow’s walk, to wait for our sailors to come home from the sea.
Indeed, Paul, our dreams are not beige, and yet! this color haunts the suburban landscape. Why?
Given that I have seen the same drab color scheme in every American suburban house, I thought for sure that I could Google “why are american houses so beige” and I wouldn’t have to go past the first two, maybe three, results to get my answer, and move on with my life.
But no, my friends. Trying to unravel the mystery of contemporary American interior design is like trying to find out what really happened on 9/11, and I feel like I’m on some kind of watch list now. I have searched for hours, to no avail. No one wants to acknowledge this phenomenon. At least, not directly.
Trying to look into the manic popularity of beige only leads to listicles about which shade of beige is right for your suburban hellscape. Some do offer explanations: “Brown colors are comfortable and cozy, calming and versatile.” You’d think these were design tips for a senior home, but I digress.
This beige worship has very much been internalized, assuming we can use one forum post by one person on one website as the voice of an entire people (and yes, we can). User “Ponderosa”, writing in 2006 on the supposedly reputable website www.city-data.com, started a thread in defense of cookie-cutter homes, stating that “[c]olors are all shades of brown but there are several choices” as proof that we have all the versatility we need. To be fair, if my disgust for this color scheme could inspire me to write an entire article about it, it’s completely reasonable for someone to love the color scheme so much they’d defend it anonymously on a poorly-designed Internet forum. Why not, y’all.
Such is the divisiveness of beige that it quite literally made the news in Irvine in 2011 when some non-beige homes were approved for construction:
As desirable as Irvine is, it’s safe to say the master-planned community isn’t exactly known for avant-garde architecture, something that became clear earlier this year in reader responses to stories about the launching of a city motto contest.
“Irvine: We Have 62 Different Words for Beige,” one commenter suggested.
“Where Bland is in Demand,” another offered.
“Sixteen Zip Codes, Six Floor Plans,” a third said.
“Sorry, I Thought This Was My House,” yet another reader replied.
You get the idea.
But 40 years into its love affair with earth tones and stucco, Irvine is about to witness a significant splash of color and mixed media.
After hours, literally hours, of looking up “american beige interior design”, I want to sincerely thank Jeff Overley of the Orange Country Register for being the first to validate my beige conspiracy theory. I am not the only one who is tired of off-white American rooms. At least four people from Irvine are tired of them, too.
Going back to www.city-data.com (which Google keeps trying to tell me is unsafe to access), we find another thread about cookie-cutter homes, where user “scorpionleather”, writing in 2008, shares my same frustration with these homes, stating:
Cookie cutter homes remind me of the stale square apartment buildings in Eastern Europe built during the Communist era. They stick out like sore lifeless constructs amongst the other architectural cultural riches of Europe.
Amazing! Not only can I count a total of five people who are with me in this fight (four Irvinites, one scorpionleather), but this is the first hint that perhaps these designs are somehow linked to economic movements. Indeed, the grim communist aesthetic is so well-defined that someone recreated it in Fallout 4. Surely, if this drab utilitarian look is tied to economics, then is it a stretch to say the same of beige suburbia and capitalism?
Regrettably, other than a ClickHole quiz about which circles of suburban hell you’ve lived in, the trail goes cold here. No more mention of why beige is the fucking worst. Instead, we go deeper into enemy territory.
I read about Levittown, New York, America’s first suburb, mass-produced shortly after WWII. They used non-union contractors and it was criticized for being bland and racist, so if we read between the lines here, suburbs are deeply rooted in the oppression of the working class. Just my take on it.
I read about ranch-style homes, the quintessentially casual house of the West, and the more modern neo-eclectic architecture of McMansions, which was subtly derided for “[differing] from postmodernism in that it is not creatively experimental.” Again, lots of beige here, and a recoiling from individual expression. Makes you wonder what the real difference is between a tan suburban home in California and a blocky apartment building in Russia.
The crown jewel of this delirious thesis, however, is brought to us by those pariahs of society: real estate agents. While they cannot explain the aesthetic sensibilities of middle America, they can explain “why beige”, because they’re the ones pushing it on everyone. You see, beige—and any neutral colors really—are great colors when you consider resale value. Of course, you don’t have to use beige:
If you’re still living in the home you’re selling, though, does that mean you’re stuck inside a bland, beige nightmare? Not necessarily. Remember, the term “neutral colors” doesn’t limit you to shades of white and beige. With a little pre-planning and a sense for the effect color has on the human mind, you can use browns, greens and even bolder colors to highlight your home.
People, rejoice. We don’t have to use beige. We can also use… brown. Truly, we have made it.
This makes (somewhat) more sense when you consider that Americans move, on average, once every five years. People buy houses with an eye on the next house. Even my parents, who don’t necessarily plan on leaving their gloriously non-beige suburban home anytime soon, do pay attention to the market and how much their house is currently worth. It’s almost like capitalism is deeply rooted in the suburban dream. Your house is only worth anything if someone else will want to buy it from you in a few years for more than you bought it for.
In other words, your house is never a home but a commodity you’re waiting to sell when the market improves. Or, it was your home, but then the 2008 housing crisis happened, and you couldn’t afford it anymore and you had to leave. Or, you’re simply renting apartment after apartment because you can’t even dream of affording an actual house.
For many of us, home ownership is synonymous with capitalism, even if we’ve never once considered that angle at all. But it is. You have to play the market. You have to make it sure it’s still worth something to other people, not just yourself. And it will get taken away from you if you can’t play the game anymore. A suburb is not a symbol of success, but a place where people are quietly and anxiously waiting to make their next move up the little ladder. Maybe one day they can get a slightly bigger house, with more beige walls. That’s the dream.
Thank you for reading, and if anyone has any insight into why throw pillows with quotes on them are so popular in middle America, please reach out to me. The end.
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Morgane was very sick when she wrote this.
