Color makes me happy and I refuse to decorate otherwise

Okay, so I am fully aware that half the internet is going to have feelings about this. That’s fine. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that not every trend is for every person, and this one is very much not for me.

Everywhere I look right now, home decor is beige. Cream. Greige. Oat milk. Linen. The whole vibe is ‘expensive person who feels nothing.’ And I get why people love it — I genuinely do — but I have scrolled through hundreds of these rooms and I keep arriving at the same place. I don’t want it anywhere near my house.

Because here’s the thing — color makes me happy. Not ‘happy’ like a vague aesthetic preference. Actually happy. Walk-through-the-door, exhale, this-is-mine happy. And I’m not editing that out for a trend.

What even is quiet luxury in home decor?

Quiet luxury is the interior design version of spending $900 on a plain white t-shirt. Everything is understated, relentlessly neutral, and staged to look like nobody actually uses it. Think Restoration Hardware catalog meets a Scandinavian hotel lobby — no clutter, no color, no personality, on purpose.

The pitch is that restraint signals taste. Less is more. And I understand the appeal — there’s something genuinely calming about a room that isn’t visually chaotic. But there’s a real difference between calm and sterile, and a lot of what I’m seeing has crossed so far into sterile territory that it looks like a model home where the people moved out three weeks ago.

Why did everyone decide beige was the answer?

Beige started performing well on Pinterest and Instagram and then it just — spread. Someone with a big following had a gorgeous neutral home, it went viral, and now every new build and every rental-turned-content-space looks identical. That’s genuinely the whole story.

Neutrals photograph well, they feel safe, and they’re easy to sell to a broad audience. It makes sense because a neutral room doesn’t alienate anyone. But ‘doesn’t alienate anyone’ and ‘makes you feel at home’ are wildly different goals, and I think we’ve mixed them up.

Does color actually affect how you feel in a room?

Yes — and there’s real research from environmental psychology that backs this up. Color genuinely influences mood, energy, and how long you want to stay somewhere. Visually busy spaces can raise cortisol for some people, which is the argument for neutrals. But the flip side is also true — spaces stripped of all warmth and personality can feel cold, temporary, like you’re just passing through.

For me personally, color is the thing that makes a room feel occupied. Lived in. Mine. My bedspreads are colorful and bright. The art on my walls makes me smile because it’s stuff I actually chose — not because it was trending, because it meant something. That’s not clutter. That’s a home.

The part that actually bothers me about this trend

The quiet luxury aesthetic has this undertone — subtle but it’s there — that color is tacky. That if you have a bold rug or a gallery wall that doesn’t match or throw pillows in three different patterns, you just haven’t figured it out yet. And I reject that completely.

There’s a version of decorating that starts with ‘what do YOU want to feel when you’re in this room?’ and then there’s a version that starts with ‘what are people pinning right now?’ Those lead to completely different houses. One of them you actually want to live in.

I’m not decorating for a photoshoot. I’m decorating for a life. And a life has color in it.

Is the quiet luxury crowd wrong, though?

Absolutely not — and I want to be honest about that, because this isn’t about telling anyone their beige couch is a mistake. If you walk through your front door into an all-cream room and you exhale, that’s the whole point. That’s what a home is supposed to do. Some people find visual simplicity genuinely restorative and that’s a real thing.

What I’m pushing back on isn’t neutrals existing. It’s the algorithm deciding this is THE way to have a home, full stop. The way people apologize for having color. The way ‘cozy’ got quietly swapped out for ‘curated.’ In my ongoing rant about home organization trends, I talked about how certain aesthetics just snowball until everyone feels like they’re doing it wrong if they’re not participating. Same energy here, different room.

What I’m actually doing instead

Keeping every single colorful, slightly chaotic, completely-me thing in my house. That’s the whole plan.

If something makes me smile when I walk past it, it stays. If I bought it because it felt like me and not because it was on a mood board, it stays. Maximalism that’s personal — not just more stuff, but more of YOUR stuff — is having a real comeback right now and I am here for it. Bold paint on one wall instead of a full room commitment. Vintage pieces mixed with new. Art that makes guests ask questions. Mismatched chairs around a dinner table that you actually love.

None of that photographs as cleanly as a quiet luxury space. But it feels alive. And I will take alive over catalog-ready every single time. It makes sense because a home isn’t a mood board — it’s where you actually exist.

The beige trend isn’t going anywhere soon. I know that. It’ll keep dominating Pinterest boards and open-house walkthroughs and every apartment someone moves into and immediately paints Accessible Beige. And that’s fine — trends exist, people love them, they move on.

But I’ll be over here with my colorful stuff, not staging anything, not curating anything. Just actually living in my house the way I want to live in it. You’re allowed to do the same — whether that means beige or bright or some chaotic mix of both.

Color isn’t a decorating mistake I haven’t corrected yet. It’s the whole point.

If your home makes you happy when you walk through the door — really happy, not ‘this looks good for a Reel’ happy — then you’re doing it right. Full stop. And if you’ve been second-guessing your colorful stuff because the internet told you to edit it out, I want you to know that I see you and your excellent taste.

Keep the rug. Keep the art. Keep all of it.

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