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Comment by thematrixturtle | Hacker News Reader

There is a famous if possibly apocryphal study where random people were asked to rate various toaster colors, and everybody swooned over lime green and hot pink and whatnot.

After they finished, they were told that as their prize they could take one of the toasters home -- and everybody chose white, stainless steel or black.

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One could argue that those are two different questions. E.g. what would look nice on itself vs what would look good in your kitchen or might be more timeless

I remember reading a feature/native advertisement about Lenovo's ThinkPad focus groups a while back (I think on Ars or The Verge) that had a similar conclusion.

People would go crazy over a red or white ThinkPad in focus groups, but would never buy one because they couldn't see themselves as "that person" with the red laptop at a meeting.

Lenovo did make both a red and white x100e a long while ago, but those were more like netbooks.

I am "that person" and am quite disappointed that I can't own a lime green MacBook Air.

I mean, skins exist!

Then it's fatter and heavier and I may as well have gotten the 14" Pro. Macs aren't like iPhones that constantly fall out of your pocket and need the extra padding.

Skins are fairly slim, so I'm not sure its going to be noticable.

That's really interesting to read about (and the comment above); I hope that the people running these things know this is a thing too.

It adds up too. Companies like Apple have long advertised with a diverse range of colors for their devices, but I think most people settle on black / white in the end because it's more neutral / doesn't stand out.

At some point people had trouble distinguishing their grey macbook pro from the hundred other macbook pros. First that was resolved with full size sticker and covers (which were cute in that they used the illuminated apple logo on the back as a feature), then with... a very wild and colorful range of stickers they save up from conferences and the like.

It was an interesting thing to witness, having big groups of people with bland, uniform, sleek and neutral, to a very nerdy form of self-expression and standing out from the crowd.

The reason for that seems obvious to me. Grey, steel, white and black will work in basically every kitchen. If you want a more colorful pallet in any room in your house, then you need to put a lot more thought into planning it. I think most people aren’t highly motivated to do that.

> I think most people aren’t highly motivated to do that.

But they were in the past? I don't know but I wonder why this might have changed.

No, I think people in the past probably just had a weaker preference for designs that go together in color and style.

That seems unlikely. Look at fashion and decor magazines from the past and you see lots of lively colours that are coordinated. If you go house hunting and see a couple houses that haven’t been updated for decades they have a definite palette.

Could possibly be because most households nowadays have to be dual-income, and so there's not a dedicated homemaker with the motivation to do that.

Sad, like the "colors."

Magazines are a reflection of a narrow slice of reality, usually the slice that could afford to buy the stuff advertised in magazines. Anyone can buy a magazine and aspire to the lifestyles depicted, but most can only aspire.

What is in fashion or decor magazine and what people actually have in home or wear are two different things.

I think this is part of it. I don't think people (in real life, not in magazines) cared as much whether something "went with" the rest of the room. Like, I'm sure some people did, but it wasn't a normal thing for middle class folks to care much about, as far as trying to make their own house look that way.

There's, relatedly, probably some effect from all those home makeover & house-buying shows, which constantly push "any 'weird' color is bad, and any room without great color coordination is bad, and it's not OK not to mind it". There's a Mitchell and Webb sketch about this, in which two home-buyers on such a show are presented a bathroom with avocado fixtures, and the host berates them over multiple takes because their initial reaction isn't as negative as it ought to be. Fiction, but there's definitely a kind of same-ness to people's reactions to any but a few acceptable colors on those shows.

I think people in the past spent less time looking at a screen and had other hobbies (like interior decorating) instead.

Seems like a stretch that using screens has led to a decline in interior decorating. You could argue a whole generation including men are now devolved into desk setups, plants, terrariums, "earthy colors", hygge, woodworking, aesthetics, etc through Pinterest, Instagram, etc. The same revolution has happened for the glorification of cooks -> chefs and the proliferation of home bakers

Alternatively, people in the past had fewer possesions (not out of virtuous minimialism as some people portray, but sheer economic reality), and so had more time to consider how each would fit in.

>Grey, steel, white and black will work in basically every kitchen.

I don't understand that argument. My toaster only needs to work in my kitchen, not every kitchen.

From a manufacture's point of view I get it. It is cheaper to produce 3 colors than 54.

They're talking about a design perspective. People like the lime green toaster because it by itself looks nice, but if they placed it in _their_ kitchen, it would probably look absolutely ridiculous unless they're designers and know how to perfectly balance such a strong color in the room.

In contrast, neutral colors will look good in any color palette and require zero design talent from your side.

We're talking about the context of this "study". If people are asked which toaster they want to take home, the vast majority of them will have a kitchen where "grey, steel, white or black" works the best, even if they prefer another color. They're not going to redesign their entire kitchen for a particular toaster.

Would normally try to resist but, just as FYI, from https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/05/30/palate-palette-pallet/:

palate / palette / pallet Your “palate” is the roof of your mouth, and by extension, your sense of taste. A “palette” is the flat board an artist mixes paint on (or by extension, a range of colors). A “pallet” is either a bed (now rare) or a flat platform onto which goods are loaded.

Thanks. Good language correcting.

If I had to guess it was short term vs long term color preference, and focus preference.

Lime green is nice when it is short lived, but lime green isn't as nice in year 25, after your tastes have changed.

Hot pink is very eye catching, so it got the votes. On the other hand hot pink is very eye catching, who wants their toaster to be the center of attention?

My toaster is cherry red.

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