You’ve seen the pictures: a “before” photo of Victorian tiling around a fireplace. Or a wooden mantelpiece. Or a pastel pink sink with matching soap dishes inset into a colourful tiled wall. Then you flick to the “after” and find that you’ve suddenly been plunged into a greyscale world, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz but in reverse. Check out this amazing transformation, the posts shriek! Every single unique feature has been pulverised and scrapped, so we can make our homeownership design dream come true. And that dream – the one we have scrimped and saved and strived for, ISA over fist – is to live in the grey zone.
Grey walls, grey floors, grey corner sofa. Grey crushed velvet headboard. Grey fences surrounding gardens purged of life in favour of grey paving slabs and pebbles. Grey rattan outdoor furniture and a fire pit. So flammable; so Instagrammable. Dubbed the “grey plague”, this so-neutral-its-deathly palette of “greige” has been the look of our times for what feels like aeons now. On practically every street and at every corner of the internet, you’ll find them – these humourless housing reboots, where all character has been destroyed in favour of life in a desaturated Lego block. You look at each new iteration, a near identikit copy of the last, and it’s hard not to tip into paranoia. Is there a plot to drain colour from the world? Why are so many people falling over themselves to fit a grey filter to reality, covering everything in a dull wash that resembles nothing more than the distorting lens of depression? As one Redditor put it, “It’s just soul destroying to come in from a grey, gringey British cold winter night, and oh look! Your entire house looks like outside.” Why does everything look the same, and also awful?
