The Boundless Banality of Beige | Hacker News Reader

The Boundless Banality of Beige

commonedge.org

32 pointsanimalcule14 comments

One nitpick with the writer, while beige is something I have a hard time with, pure resplendent white can be beautiful and is also a vivid color (or vivid absence of color?). But I mostly agree with her points...

Some of my most memorable experiences were staying at hotels that featured vivid colors, like the Blue House in Penang and I wish I was not renting and could decide on the colors I'd want in my space. Dull neutral colors might make decoration easy but it certainly doesn't make it sexy.

My house is painted all white inside, as was the house that I grew up in. Among other things, it's the most efficient, and I like lots of light.

Now bring that one coloured object into the green room, which clashes badly: At this point, you're in Frank Lloyd-Wright territory (he used to move the chairs back to where he damn told you to put them)

Beige being neutral, tolerates more random colour intrusion. Choice of colour is about more than the empty room.

This doesn't match my experiences with colored rooms at all.

My experience with colored rooms is that they absolutely drink light and require an outrageous amount of power to keep bright. But they're fun and I love being in them when someone else is paying the power bill.

During a difficult time in my life when I was squatting in London in the mid 1980s I painted my room pink, grey and black and it was very effective for shifting my mood. Now that I live in more settled, contented circumstances 35 years later I don't find I need these bright colours to enjoy being in a space. (I appreciate that black and grey are not bright: the point was they threw the pink into sharp focus)

Don't you feel like beige begets more beige though? All you need to do is look to new suburbs to see how beige or a faint peach colour abounds, often times (I imagine) with an HOA that prevents you from painting it something vibrant. Look to the restaurants that serve the people in those houses, and they have menus 10 pages long and densely packed, but all of it sub-par and bland having not been seasoned.

I chose to decorate with a colour called "mushroom" as a mutual decision. We did brighter colours in the kitchen and on some ceilings. Feature walls didn't exist because we had a lot of books, huge fields of visual clutter. Beige walls were peaceful. they also worked with almost any colour we brought into the room.

But it is true we tended to a more muted palette by choice.

Does the colour logic used in interior design apply in other domains? I kind of like beige for text background, it's a softer white, or a lighter black. Pure white and black can be jarring on the screen.

From my limited experience I know that it's better to choose a few (2-3) colours that match well, perhaps two dominant colours and one extra darker nuance for each.

It's entirely subjective; use it if you like it.

Irony, posting this to orange on beige HN. I rather like beige. It does make other colors pop, and goes with most of them. It lessens the eye-murder of bright white without reducing legibility of black.

And maybe this is just me but I could go for a beige computer case just for old time sake.

The article isn't wrong, we tried too much beige, and don't need to go there again... but you can mix it up without hating on beige.

Left to my own devices, I would paint walls blue and ceilings white. My wife takes an interest in these matters, so I am not left to my own devices. Her method is to settle on the curtains, then choose the paint to suit them.

>The room comes alive, combining the oriental rug with walls painted Blue Ground. So much for the theory that one color limits other colors.

To me that dark brown rug clashes with the Blue walls.

“We see things not as they are, but as we are.”

― Anaïs Nin

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