To Beige or Not to Beige?
Lovers, haters and friends welcome
Everybody loves beige. Everybody hates beige. Everybody thinks beige is fine. So what’s the truth?
Is beige in, out or forever somewhere in the middle?
Before I answer that, I wanna get into the nitty gritty of what’s going on with the psychology of beige. To be clear, I am NOT a psychologist, so I’m going to make some observations based on the patterns I’ve observed about beige and people’s feelies about it over time. Take it or leave it.
Love, hate it or don’t care at all — beige isn’t going anywhere.
Stick around to the end (or skip straight down) for a few mood boards to help you out if you’re a beige lover, hater or somewhere in between.
Everybody Loves Beige
I won’t sugar coat it: there’s a beige backlash underfoot — retaliation for the depressing millennial grey era we all endured. Beige is brighter, warmer — I mean, you’re reading this on a beige screen right now. It’s delightful.
If you’re a lover of beige, you probably enjoy it’s agreeability. It works. It can be layered masterfully to create a cozy, clean monochromatic look that’s easy on the eye. People might say it’s lacking in personality, and I’ll get to that in a minute, but there’s something deeper here.
Beige, in my opinion, often acts as a salve — or even a kind of security blanket when “personality” doesn’t feel safe enough to come out.
There’s a specific person who chooses beige, not because they’re boring or uncreative, but because that very creativity was snuffed out and stifled very early on. There’s an air of perfection to beige that always makes me think it’s hiding something — not necessarily in a bad way, but there’s more to the story here.
I can’t help but think about the woman who was once punished for sticking toes out line. The one who wanted to dress in sparkles and glitter, but who was confined to a more prim and proper “appropriate” manner of expression — even as a child. There’s a sense of, “this is acceptable, and it won’t rock the boat,” about beige that we understand as beautiful, yet safe.
It’s approved of. And if there’s nothing to criticize, you are safe.
There’s another person who loves beige because it’s the only passive choice you get to make. You carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, and at the end of the day carrying it all, beige is the only thing that doesn’t ask more of you. It’s the deep breath you never get. It’s catching a break in aesthetic form. You didn’t “choose” beige — you defaulted to “no frills, no fuss, looks good, I’m done.”
I don’t fault beige for this. I think it’s what we all need sometimes.
Everybody Hates Beige
The polar opposite of beige love is beige hate — ironically, judging by the color of this screen, I tend to find myself in this camp, and I’m not afraid to call it like it is.
To a beige-hater, it’s the antithesis of personality, creativity and unique self-expression. It’s the embodiment of bland. Vanilla. Dry crackers. You get my point.
I relate to that because one of my worst fears in life is being perceived as boring, uncreative or lacking personal taste.
To an anti-beiger, suppressing creativity and self-expression is damaging. To default to beige is to surrender autonomy. I think this reaction can actually stem from the same early stifling of creativity as a beige lover might have experienced. There’s a certain need to be seen, even if just by yourself, as someone who doesn’t (or doesn’t have to) adhere to the status quo. There’s a definitive choice when it comes to choosing not beige (or any of it’s ilk) to express yourself. At least it feels that way.
To land on beige feels like settling, giving up or giving in to expectations that don’t belong to you. It feels like prison more than it feels like freedom — a choice made for you by the powers-that-be, demanding obedience lest you be outcast and labeled “eccentric,” goddess-forbid.
Everybody Thinks Beige is Fine?
And then there are the in-betweeners: the “Idk, I guess it looks pretty good? I don’t not like it?”
These are the people who actually do want to play it safe, but for no other reason than it just kind of works. It’s a warm neutral, plays nice with a lot of things, and doesn’t really ruffle feathers. It can sort of sit as a backdrop to the rest of their lives, and spares them any feelings one way or another. It’s a classic, if you will.
You can look at a few swatches and just pick one. Sure, you may not love it, but you don’t hate it, either. Hell, it leaves a lot of room for you do whatever you want with it, which is cool.
But it doesn’t stir you either way — that’s the thing about fine. Not ideal. Not awful. Just there, functional and aesthetically neutral.
You might actually want more out of your home, but you don’t really know what that means because you’ve never actually thought much about it. It never struck you as a priority to buck the current. Maybe you never realized you could scribble outside the lines because the box was right there for the checking.
I see you, mild-beigers. I see you.
So, What’s the Truth about Beige?
Well, I just told you. Everyone has their own truth about beige — but the real question I’ll ask you is: Did you choose your truth about beige?
Is your house one big monochromatic beige boucle cloud because you love it, or because your mom used to rag on you every time she found glitter in the washing machine?
Do you hate beige because it has no personality, or are you afraid of disappearing without fuchsia covering your walls?
Is beige fine, or did no one ever tell you that you can actually do what ever the hell you want with your house?
These questions are worth asking, and as a Holistic Home Stylist, I’d suck at my job if I just said, “Beige? SLAY!” “Beige? EW!” or “Beige? Sounds good.”
There’s so much more to you than that. There’s so much untapped in you that deserves to be seen — at the very least by you. When you understand why you make the choices you do, they don’t become passive anymore. They become expressions of you for the sake of you yourself. I am deeply obsessed with this idea.
Yeah, yeah, of course I care about whether your sofa goes with the coffee table and if the curtains make sense with the rug and all that — but before we get there, we gotta back the train way the hell up and make sure we’re even on the right track, otherwise, we arrive at a destination that ISN’T home at all.
The Beige Agenda
Before I love you and leave you, I promised to give you some inspo for your beige perceptions, no matter what they are. Lover, hater or whatever, I’ve got you covered.
Lovers
If you’re a beige love, mood board number one is for you. I’m not going to ask you to show beige the door. Instead, I’ll invite you to choose JUST ONE COLOR that’s pleasing to YOU, and make it part of your palette. No one can talk shit about ONE color. It’s my personal opinion that there’s just a little bit of “I know exactly what I’m doing and I did it on purpose.” air to incorporating one power color.
I went with blush pink here, but with beige — just about anything goes.
Haters
For the haters in the room, I’m going to ask you to consider beige the steady foundation that can handle the drama. Get weird with it. Get deep. The high-contrast of board number two isn’t bowing to beige, but rather it’s demanding beige set the stage for your story to unfold. Beige can be really striking, and really does make even the most eccentric of homes look subtly refined.
It’s worth thinking about — the tension is magical.
Friends
Hey, you’re just a classic, and I see you. Don’t overburden yourself trying to force something that you don’t feel any kind of way about. You’re right — beige DOES work. It’s a classic for a reason, so you can lean all the way into that by keeping with a classic theme. In board number three, I added dark leather and wood to give your beige some complimentary depth, along with some easy infusions of green to keep things a little interesting.
You can show your personality in more ways than just color — cool art, unique shapes and rich textures can make even the beige-est of rooms feel alive.
Bringing it all Home
You’ve come a long way, baby, and now you hopefully have a more robust perception of beige in all its glory.
I’m someone who believes that you don’t have to overhaul your house or your personality to decorate a home that truly feels like you. In fact, I specialize in this kind of bespoke styling because I think it’s the most valuable there is. I don’t think every home should be an imitation of a designer Pinterest board — I think it should be an iteration of all the quirks and details that make you who are.
Your story is yours and yours alone, and your home can tell it beautifully.
I love this work, if you can’t tell, but it might be new for you. If that’s the case, and you want to get a deeper feel for it and see how this kind of home styling can work in your house, I offer free Vibe Check Room Audits.
You can actually send me a few pictures and a video of the room you’re working on, and I’ll respond back in a quick video with some ideas and suggestions that apply to you.
If you ever want to do that, just click the button and you’ll be on your way. And if you liked this post, you may want to sign up for my email list so I can send them to you every week.
Either way, thanks for reading and somehow making “beige” fun to talk about.
Talk to you soon.
