Black, white, and grey are also colors. The reason for their popularity is likely due to the modern aesthetics of simplicity and elegance. Bright colors give a "busy" appearance, they are gaudy and attention-grabbing. Emotionless, professional, and modest "inorganic" tones give the impression of maturity and sophistication.
It's just fashion. People try to rationalise it because they don't like to think they are influenced by fashion. Those who really aren't are just perceived as weird.
For cars I assume one factor is resell value. "Neutral" colours seem to appeal to more people and thus selling a bright yellow car will either take you longer or won't get your as good of a price.
Funny. It's "I love bright colors but the next owner might not." Are we in fact collectively nerfing our color preferences based on a false assumption?
I have been buying bright red and yellow cars for over a decade now (no problem reselling them, FWIW). The problem is that it is so hard to even find cars for sale from the manufacturer in bright colors.
I think our tastes are being directed by marketing and bean counters making "safe bets". I feel like we've been driving office beiege for a few decades now.
I would always choose bright color, as I find it safer (more visible across weather conditions). It’s just hard to get them if you want a lease (and I don’t want to own a car - ever).
I've been scrolling looking for this. This, I think, is the actual correct take. Not resale value, or mass appeal which is a symptom.
There have long been studies on the connection between societal optimism and color choice. The fashion industry and car industry in particular are trailing indicators for public sentiment on the state of the world.
Bright colors are an effort to stand out from the crowd. That no longer a laudable goal; now we admire the safe middle of the herd. Don't be unique, don't be unusual, don't be noticed.
I think it's fine not to express ourselves through consumption.
That aside, neutral colours are just more practical. They're easier to match, easier to clean, and suit more occasions. It's more economical all around.
As per the Normcore Manifesto [1], refusing to try rebel when society encourages you to really is the greatest form of rebellion.
"If the rule is Think Different, being seen as normal is the scariest
thing...
Which paradoxically makes normalcy ripe for the überelites to adopt as their own, confirming their status by
showing how disposable the trappings of uniqueness are. The
most different thing to do is to reject being different all together.
When the fringes get more and more crowded, Mass Indie turns
toward the middle. Having mastered difference, the truly cool
attempt to master sameness."
People who are self promoting on TikTok often wear garish makeup and clothing that they wouldn't wear on a bet in public. Its performance, and you get to do it "privately" in that no one watches you filming, usually. The public audience and risk of embarrassment is apart from the performance. "singing in the shower".
As one point of anecdata, my wife started doing TikTok videos recently to help promote her books. She puts on make up and wears cute bows in her hair for the videos. She rarely put on makeup and never wore bows in her hair before doing TikTok. And the bows come off as soon as she's done making the videos.
On the other hand I regularly see people in the street shooting videos, assumingly for TikTok judging by the way they act, in rather plain looking clothes. Which I'm now not sure anymore whether it proves any point or not :P
There's a couple of reasons why. None of them are particularly pleasing.
For one, it costs more money to dye the plastic or paint/anodize the metal. Everyone except children are going to buy the product based on function or need and companies have determined that the colour has no outsized effect on which one they choose. So it's cheaper to use basic black plastic and unpainted metal.
The other is that for things like cars and furniture there's a resale factor. A car is a big investment, and you want as much money as possible to put towards the purchase of the next one. A bright colour like yellow might make you happy while you own it, but it will be difficult to sell to other people as it's a very loud and ostentatious colour. It's the same with furniture and home architecture. '70s patterns in carpet will reduce the resale value of a house because few people will be willing to adapt their furniture to match.
For corporate environments it's about ease of repurposing the space and to be the least bit disruptive to where they're doing business. It'd cost a lot of money to remodel all the old red steel roof McDonald's if that lot were ever sold. In fact there are plenty of gable roof Pizza Huts that just got repainted after they were sold because remodeling the building cost too much money. McDonald's trend towards grey earth tones using metal and stone is so they can fit into big cities these days, especially in Europe and Asia. The coffeehouse aesthetic that Starbucks pioneered has proven especially attractive in those markets, and other companies are following suit by trying to use that same look to blend into modern five over ones and block highrises.
The other is that for things like cars and furniture there's a resale factor.
That's shifting the 'why' question to: why do people care more about resale value now than they did 20 years ago. I'd guess the reason would be the state of the economy? However a search for 'car color linked to economy' reveals other theories, like paint used: https://slate.com/culture/2011/10/car-paint-colors-why-are-s...
I'd posit that the real cost is the cost of carrying more inventory. It's cheaper to carry 200 in beige than 100 in each of 10 colours. It means you're less likely to be out of the colour the customer wants and you don't have to track/manage the different options.
Compare with clip on covers for mobile phones. Heaps of colours/design available, but it's not a cost to the manufacturer as they leave all that up to third parties, who are effectively charging extra for the option of colour.
> For one, it costs more money to dye the plastic or paint/anodize the metal.
Ironically, I suspect the reason is exactly the opposite: that colour is now essentially free compared to grey/muted. I certainly don't think people are buying grey carpets, on balance, because it's cheaper.
It used to be that it was difficult to colour things significantly. In the long distant past, you can think of "royal purple" being so expensive that only the real elite have access to it. In early 20th century, that's no longer exactly the case but still I would expect colour fabric is somewhat expensive, so it's still the preserve of a richer class. When it become accessible in the mid 20th century, it becomes popular as people still think of it as being more premium. Finally, another generation comes along that doesn't think of deep colour as being a premium product (because everyone has it) and either rebels or just evaluates it on its actual merit.
None of the above is backed with any actual evidence. But that's certainly how elite clothing has progressed i.e. why world leaders wear grey suits today instead of elaborate coloured gowns.
Yes, and nowadays we associate bright colors more and more with ads screaming at us for attention. This makes these colors feel cheap and tasteless, you don't want to look like an ad
> you can think of "royal purple" being so expensive that only the real elite have access to it.
Depends on the timeframe, those Purple Islands shellfish were juicy at the very beginning, I think got selectively bred (by accident) to have very very little purple. Purple was originally a substance, like cocaine or gold or blue paint. Later got called purple dye. At the beginning there was no other purple anything anywhere (porphyry marble but that's different, and not the same shade, same root though).
Not even the elite, the king and maybe his family too. Elites wore red, Patrician (one of the meanings, it's a double entendre) is those who wore red. During the Republic wearing purple was a death wish. Caesar I think didn't refuse fast enough at one point, something like that. Then during the Empire--I think right away--purple was back. At least in porphyry it was back. I think in clothes and perhaps statue paint? Late Empire it was by far the most expensive substance. Like a pound of silk dyed purple was worth twelve people's lives.
And there were different shades, not like now where it's like what's the RGB hex of that color squirt squirt squirt here it is, #123456, or #abcdef. It's not the real deal.
> For corporate environments it's about ease of repurposing the space and to be the least bit disruptive to where they're doing business. It'd cost a lot of money to remodel all the old red steel roof McDonald's if that lot were ever sold.
One of my favorite examples of this is the old Red Barn Restaurant chain [1]. The buildings were barn shaped and when they went out of business, they often times were repurposed as something else. They still stick out so much anywhere you come across them and I always am excited to see what business occupies them and how the the juxtaposition between the building and business is. One of my favorites is this one, which is now (or at least was at the time of this street view), a Sushi restaurant:
Old Blue & White gas stations are a treat to find. Not sure how many are left standing, but I had dinner at one repurposed as a restaurant in Tunica many years ago.
Ugh, that "modern" all-gray home decor style. I can't stand it. Not saying everything should be purple and gold and rainbows, but for the love of all that is good and decent in this world, please: it's OK to add some splashes of bright color in your home!!
Key word being some. If everything is emphasized than nothing is. Growing up in India, I'd day good riddance to shouty colors and permanent visual overstimulation. Grey is calmn. Neutrals are calmn. Fuck colors.
Data driven opinions are not facts. An opinion may be driven by incomplete or wrong data. I don’t expect people to only believe facts, that’s not fair, and I’m no impartial arbiter anyway.
As for what data drives my favorite color, that’s actually a super interesting question.
Tragedy of the chromatic commons. Barren inoffense is maximum profit. Apartments go all white (with any tree that reducing light or view distance chopped down) and then it's on you to liven the place up.
Gray walls are one thing, ruining perfectly good wood floors with gray finish is another thing, and a lot more expensive to fix than a coat of paint. Not to mention black/gray backsplash tiles and cabinets.
Yeah. My brother just built a house and it's grey everything. As a homeowner I do see the logic in not proliferating too many different colors throughout the house but if it were me, I'd definitely have had at least some variety.
Because I think grey and orange looks cool with our hardwood (and it totally does), and while it took some initial arm twisting, she was sold on it as soon as it arrived as we put it in the room. Our friends meanwhile have a white fetish. Everything that can be white is some shade of white. If they didn't have carpet their house would feel like a hospital and/or wedding, I honestly feel more relaxed in their unfinished basement than their living room
Your rug is also removable. That means even if it's there while the house is for sale some day, the potential buyers will know that it won't be their problem if they don't like the color. Also, I think accent colors are required to make a home look great even if it's a color I don't like, it's better IMHO than all the bland stuff going around.
This, 1000%! I painted the exterior of my home a BRIGHT blue with a BRIGHT yellow door amongst the sea of beige and grey dreariness (I mean we live in Portland, was the 9 months of grey not enough?!). Two of my neighbors detest it based on their passive aggressive comments, but otherwise I get tons of compliments. Every time I arrive home from somewhere, it puts a huge smile on my face seeing those colors light up our street. This beige and grey trend can't die fast enough.
Gray interiors are also optimal for making a neutral space for doing color-sensitive work like photo editing because surrounding colors can taint your perception. My office space is mostly gray with a lot of wood and small accents in earth tones so I don't ruin the atmosphere for anything related to design.
For interiors, you have to be a little careful; bold color walls can end up sucking in light, especially at night. At one point a relative's house had a red bedroom that they described as "the inside of an animal's mouth".
The article simply (and, one might argue, rather effectively) shows data; the comments here have been far more interesting.
This seems to be a surprisingly polarizing (pun not intended) issue. Why are some people sanguine with the diminishing of color, yet others find it upsetting? Why is it a fashion trend to some, yet a crucial piece of identity to others? I don't know, but I'd love to find out.
So here's my addition to the brew: urbanization. What if the trend is not entirely fashion or economy, but also a function of population density? I've spent my fair share of time in both urban and rural areas, and the urban seem to be much more chromatically homogeneous in terms of surface area, punctuated with more vivid splashes. Rural areas tend to lack the sudden bright splashes, but have miles upon miles of subtle variation. Could increasing population densities be contributing to a loss of color?
I remember being in Tokyo station at rush hour and seeing a sea of beige/pastels and white shirts, with the odd pop of bright colour (usually another tourist) - exactly as you mentioned, but in the form of a microcosm.
I also remember noting that the effect of the homogeneity as being calming, generating serenity amidst what would otherwise be chaotic.
Perhaps the trend towards homogenous colours are communal hive-mind response to 21st Century overstimulation, noise pollution and ever increasing urban density - a desperate grasp for less stimulation in a world of endless beeping, flashing and ringing.
I don't not buy this, but seems kinda far fetched. but then again this explains why the trend is apparently increasing in speed. (but i feel like there's more photos from the later we go that there has to be some kind of normalisation for this date to actually make sense...)
I think you're onto something. I went to pick up my son at the Portland airport last winter. There must have been around 100 people waiting at the baggage claims, and almost all of them were wearing black. The rest were wearing other dark colors. No light or bright colors.
I thought it was weird, but as I stood there wearing my light blue shirt, it occurred to me that I might be the weird one.
There is a very clear reason for that, and it's in the notes of the post. There is very clear disdain for the twitter user, primarily as he seems to be a 'traditionalist fascist'. On Tumblr, especially, they are not particularly fond of the author in any way.
This post was originally screenshots, but was then rewritten with additional points + additional sources. The idea was to separate out the 'the world was better in the past!' and transform it to a critique/discussion of capitalism.
I wonder how much in houses is related to how frequently we re-furnish our houses compared to 50 years back. I know old people who have the same wallpaper and furniture that they had when they got married, "if it aint broke, don't fix it", the younger generation is now much more likely to.
I have had 3 different sets of sofas/chairs in the last, perhaps, 7 years. Neutral colours means I can change the fittings to whatever I feel like. What I don't want to do is repaint everything to match.
I do think this is part of it. When I got married my spouse wanted a set of really bright-colored dishes. I liked them too, but was worried we'd get tired of them and want something else, and preferred neutral colors for that reason.
Neutral colors aren't as appealing to me at some level but I'm also less likely to tire of them, and as you say, I think they're more compatible with other changes.
I've wrestled with this in some recent remodeling too, thinking a blue would be nice here, but decided against it because I didn't want to change my mind later. But I was remodeling, so maybe it's inevitable anyway.
I think so much is disposable in our lives that maybe we gravitate toward colors that seem less ephemeral.
I find with things like "plates" that the normal china/white/off-gray colors are fine.
But with things like mixing bowls, measuring cups, etc, having bright colors is incredibly helpful if someone is in the kitchen with you - "give me the red cup" is easier to understand than "give me the 1-1/4 cup, no that other one over there".
I personally bought a white phone once, it was the S10+, i did it because it was the flashy color and it was on every AD, also the Black sucked on that phone, there was no midnight black.
After a couple of months, I regreted it, and my next phone was naturally black.
For what it's worth, I have never once regretted making a bold color choice in my home. I've been using bright orange as a the primary accent color in my kitchen for about fifteen years across four homes and still love it.
Life is too short for fucking beige. Build a space that reflects what you love and if what you love changes, so be it, change your space then. But there's no reason to shortchange yourself now in subservience to a future self you may never become.
I'm no interior designer, but I think it's fun to let decor mutate slowly instead of "redoing the living room". If I see a chair I like, what do I need to change for it to fit in with what I have? I don't know if it's cheaper in the long run, but it does keep things more interesting imo.
For shades of grey you just need titanium dioxide. It is white and not something people worry about if it is in food.
For reasons I don't understand, many colours need fairly toxic chemicals. Just think of the names. Cadmium Yellow, Cobalt Blue - would you like a bit of strontium nitrate with that?
Because we eat food and have children, we can't have all the colours that we used to have. We can't even have lead in paint these days.
This is just one factor, and it supports my general belief that progress in fashion/art/design is technology driven.
Regarding bland houses, what do you expect when the only people buying homes are doing so in order to rent seek/flip the property? Particularly when IKEA is just a short drive out of town.
Cars is the same deal, paint technology has changed to be less toxic and people buying cars aren't buying them with their own money to own forever. They got to get that resale at the end.
Colors are often toxic because they need to have the ability to absorb many wavelengths and reflect or re-emit particular bands. Transition metals have lots of ability for electrons to move between oxidation states, allowing this absorbtion and re-emission, but many form toxic compounds. Similarly, aromatic compounds, especially those containing nitrogen, have this ability. Unfortunately many are toxic, and many of the less toxic ones fade in the light.
That said, toxicity is relative to dose and dose depends on whether these things are free in the environment. A lot of things like cadmium dyes can be effectively trapped and are less toxic than other commonly used chemicals. Long-term, however, such as in a landfill, the story is not as simple.
Notably, lead oxide paint was used because it was bright white. Titanium dioxide is not as good but obviously much safer.
Do you mind if I ask you how you know this stuff and where I can get started? I really do want to know more about the chemicals in colours and why, with the history in there too.
We get told what the colour wheel is and never what is in the paints when we are at school. I think we would value the materials more if we had any idea of how we got here.
It's basic organic and maybe advanced inorganic chemistry. The first semester of organic chemistry and probably a higher-level inorganic chemistry course (which is more about where the electrons are than what are the products of reactions). Organic chem is kind of a broad subject but you can start to see why certain patterns have broader absorption spectra and also notice that a lot of azo compounds are pretty toxic.
You can learn organic chemistry from a textbook by just reading and doing every problem in the book. There's also some free online courses and Khan Academy.
I don't think it's easy learn a lot about inorganic chemistry as an autodidact. Teachers are good at emphasizing the important things so that you don't get lost in the weeds.
For reference, you'd be looking at something like MIT's Principles of Inorganic Chemistry I and II (5.03, 5.04) which have organic chemistry I as a prerequisite, which in turn has general chemistry as a prereq.
Then, I imagine, you'd be ready to take on anything in the field of dyes.
I got so used to opening in the new tab that I don't even notice this anymore. Infuriatingly, some sites disregard ctrl+click and either still open links in the same tab or both in the same and in the new tab!
NextJS complains if you don’t use their Link component, which in turn doesn’t allow open in new tab unless you nest a dummy <a> inside it. Because I think the Link uses onclick then if there is an immediate <a> child will set it up.
The <Link/> component is used for client-side page navigations in the same application. If you need to open links in a new tab with `target=“_blank”`, you should use the normal <a/> tag.
Yeah the one thing I love to do, because hey it is the web, is open navigations in a new tab. For example when banking see my transactions in one tab while making a payment in the second. I hate sites that break that. Banks like to do that presumably for security theatre. NextJS makes it easy to mess up but once you know the trick it is ok - they should probably add a console warning for it.
I have put a link to the issue in my HN profile. I think me providing the code will clear up the confusion as to what I think is a problem as we might all be talking about something different.
I got into this habit long before I got into tech, I wasn't even conscious of the reason why. You're right, it's extremely frustrating when a website breaks middle-click to open in new tab behavior.
“Please don’t complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.”
That's a bullshit guideline. Back button breakage is a crime against usability and we should be as vocal and irritating as possible about it -- especially in a forum that regularly results in changes along the "Why did (insert FAANG) lock my account with no explanation?" front.
Again, this guideline is garbage. Rage against it. Rage against back button breakage.
There should be a guideline against citing the guidelines. I'm guilty of it too, but it's a boring and shitty (and off-topic! it's metadiscussion!) thing to do.
I think this is a worthy cause and something that interests me. But it should have its own place, and not be brought up randomly on some other topic. Perhaps you or someone else could write a post on it and submit it! That would lead to better engagement and a more focused discussion. It would also be in tune with the guidelines- come to think of it, that's probably why the guidelines are as they are.
I appreciate the juicy center of good humor inside your comment of rage. Maybe the following will help.
You're right, of course. It's just that there are competing values, so we have to make a tradeoff. One value is usability and having web content be less annoying, intrusive, abusive, and so on. No disagreement there. I think most HN readers share similar feelings about these things; certainly I do.
The other value is curiosity. Curiosity likes new things, different things [0], unexpected things—things it can learn from. It doesn't do so well with repetition [1], indignation, or genericness [2].
These two values conflict because complaints about the former tend to be repetitive, indignant, and generic.
How to decide the conflict? That question actually has a clear answer, because we're trying to optimize for just one thing here, namely intellectual curiosity [3]. So that value has to win.
This is one of those cases where it's super helpful to have just one thing you're optimizing for and to know exactly what it is. It's not that this is the 'right' decision, the 'correct' guideline, or anything like that—it's just correct relative to what we're trying to optimize for.
Thanks for writing that up and taking the time to explain the "optimizing". The moderation approach makes a lot more sense when you consider it as a hill-climbing heuristic along that one particular axis.
> complaints about the former tend to be repetitive, indignant, and generic.
Rest assured that I'll do my best to avoid these in any future complaints about back button breakage!
As an Australian visiting Europe, I noticed a huge difference in the way Australians paint their homes and how it's done in Northern Europe. Australia is indeed mostly pastels, and always has been. I remember thinking the occupants of the first house I saw Brittan must have been schizophrenic. The bright colours and contrasts almost hurt my eyes for a while. But it turns in the UK I was the odd one out as most people used colour in that way. Right now I'm in the Netherlands and it's the same deal - wall sized murals cascading with colour through the house.
I'm no expert in why people do things, so I have no good reason to speculate. But I did anyway. I put it down to Australian's being able to spend part of every day outdoors for the entire year. There is no need for artificial brightness inside when you looking into a world illuminated by 1kW of sunshine per m2 every day. But the UK was downright dreary for large chunks of the time. It's not unusual to hear a UK expat in Australia say they left the place because they could not stand the depressing weather.
If you accept that's what's going on, then the answer is obvious. It's caused by global warming. The world is becoming more like Australia. :D
On possibility is that color is used to make the darker months more bearable. I live in Spain now, but am from Sweden. Whenever i visit Sweden during Christmas I see a lot of reds and greens in the houses with lots of lights and decorations etc. Meanwhile, in Spain, people do decorate, but its normally less colors, more pastels etc. Barcelona city mostly uses blue lights for street decorations, which makes the streets feel even colder.
At least when I was in Mexico the pastels made sense, because the outsides of the buildings would get dusty pretty quickly, and pastels look fine under dust, but bright colors get muted and look a bit weird.
And not everyone would wash their houses, and it didn't rain much.
> It's not unusual to hear a UK expat in Australia say they left the place because they could not stand the depressing weather.
I did too, I lived in Ireland for a while but I couldn't stand the depressing weather and short days in winter. It didn't help that I lived on the west coast which is even worse than the east. Many weeks of non-stop grey and rain.
I live in Spain now and it really helped my mood. Wages are lower here but quality of life is so much better. Not just in terms of weather but socially too, because people live outdoors more.
I lived 2 years in Australia as well which has a similar climate but it was too far from family.
> It's not unusual to hear a UK expat in Australia say they left the place because they could not stand the depressing weather.
Note that by definition that is a biased set. Some people's concept of fun is limited to high intensity sunshine on a beach, personally I like the weather in the UK which feels quite balanced compared to many countries, and ideal for a lot of outdoor activities... Although this year it's been a bit on the hot side, probably not by comparison to Australia, which is why I can't imagine living in Australia, i'd constantly be too hot to want to do anything more than sit on my arse and drink beer.
It's possible people who find this weather depressing are in a depressing setting of suburbia where only intense sunshine could possibly make it appear less gloomy - maybe they just needed to get out and enjoy the wilderness more.
I’m absolutely with you. While I want some sun and sunny days, I much prefer overcast and even rainy days. In fact, I’m one who will probably relocate at some point to a place that fits that better.
I think the relationship with ambient light may be important, but shouldn't the trend have gone the other way for the latter 19th and early 20th centuries then? As more people shifted from being involved in some form of agricultural or other outdoor manual labor to factory and office jobs, wouldn't we have seen a greater demand for bright colors as people spent more time inside?
Maybe these days people spend more time looking at screens, which are super colourful and bright. Neutral colours in the real world bring a little balance, calmness to it?
This was my thought as well. The first graph in the article is of the color of objects, not all images. I wonder how it would compare if it were to include screenshots and whatnot.
I do miss when I was a kid and cars were bright colors. One trend I've been watching with eager anticipation is the recent rise in two-tone car body colors. They're so much more fun to look at than a single shade.
Colour might be missing in the real world. But it lives on in Media. Think Printing, TVs and Computer. We might have a less colourful in house decoration, but our TVs, Games, Movies has brought out much more colour than ever before.
I believe because modern media are too colourful, we subconsciously want a much less colourful real world.
Personally I find colour very stimulating. I have to hide my art books otherwises I end up mesmerised by them for hours. I had a bookshelf with a video game collection on it and if I so wondered past it I would get trapped staring at it. Not the individual games but the whole thing in its entirety
I came across a term for this called HSP (highly sensitive person). It seemed pseudo scientific but there is some anecdotal truth to it. I often wonder if watching cartoons as a kid somehow programmed me to be like this or is it some deeper evolutionary trait.
We are deleting color from our computer user interfaces. First dark mode, and then people started talking about light and dark modes/themes. Well, if dark mode is dark primarily and uses color to make a select few things pop, then what's light mode supposed to be like? Well, if one is intentionally really dark, then the opposite should be...
And now we live in a world of UIs that are either dark grays or some mix of white and light grays, and the older, more middle of the road UI design that wasn't intentionally light or dark is more or less gone.
311 comments
[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 387 ms ] threadDon't worry about it, this is made-up and just encourages you to be nostalgic and fearful.
I have been buying bright red and yellow cars for over a decade now (no problem reselling them, FWIW). The problem is that it is so hard to even find cars for sale from the manufacturer in bright colors.
I think our tastes are being directed by marketing and bean counters making "safe bets". I feel like we've been driving office beiege for a few decades now.
There have long been studies on the connection between societal optimism and color choice. The fashion industry and car industry in particular are trailing indicators for public sentiment on the state of the world.
https://www.pcimag.com/blogs/14-pci-blog/post/104991-how-col...
Any other car color would have cost extra which I was not willing to pay.
60-80 were weirdly colorful too bright for no particular reason.
I don't think there is much to interpret into this.
That aside, neutral colours are just more practical. They're easier to match, easier to clean, and suit more occasions. It's more economical all around.
"If the rule is Think Different, being seen as normal is the scariest thing... Which paradoxically makes normalcy ripe for the überelites to adopt as their own, confirming their status by showing how disposable the trappings of uniqueness are. The most different thing to do is to reject being different all together.
When the fringes get more and more crowded, Mass Indie turns toward the middle. Having mastered difference, the truly cool attempt to master sameness."
[1]: http://khole.net/issues/youth-mode/
Aren't TikTok and all other self-promotion channels not exactly about being noticed, being unique (or rather thinking you're unique) and so on?
For one, it costs more money to dye the plastic or paint/anodize the metal. Everyone except children are going to buy the product based on function or need and companies have determined that the colour has no outsized effect on which one they choose. So it's cheaper to use basic black plastic and unpainted metal.
The other is that for things like cars and furniture there's a resale factor. A car is a big investment, and you want as much money as possible to put towards the purchase of the next one. A bright colour like yellow might make you happy while you own it, but it will be difficult to sell to other people as it's a very loud and ostentatious colour. It's the same with furniture and home architecture. '70s patterns in carpet will reduce the resale value of a house because few people will be willing to adapt their furniture to match.
For corporate environments it's about ease of repurposing the space and to be the least bit disruptive to where they're doing business. It'd cost a lot of money to remodel all the old red steel roof McDonald's if that lot were ever sold. In fact there are plenty of gable roof Pizza Huts that just got repainted after they were sold because remodeling the building cost too much money. McDonald's trend towards grey earth tones using metal and stone is so they can fit into big cities these days, especially in Europe and Asia. The coffeehouse aesthetic that Starbucks pioneered has proven especially attractive in those markets, and other companies are following suit by trying to use that same look to blend into modern five over ones and block highrises.
That's shifting the 'why' question to: why do people care more about resale value now than they did 20 years ago. I'd guess the reason would be the state of the economy? However a search for 'car color linked to economy' reveals other theories, like paint used: https://slate.com/culture/2011/10/car-paint-colors-why-are-s...
I'd posit that the real cost is the cost of carrying more inventory. It's cheaper to carry 200 in beige than 100 in each of 10 colours. It means you're less likely to be out of the colour the customer wants and you don't have to track/manage the different options.
Compare with clip on covers for mobile phones. Heaps of colours/design available, but it's not a cost to the manufacturer as they leave all that up to third parties, who are effectively charging extra for the option of colour.
Ironically, I suspect the reason is exactly the opposite: that colour is now essentially free compared to grey/muted. I certainly don't think people are buying grey carpets, on balance, because it's cheaper.
It used to be that it was difficult to colour things significantly. In the long distant past, you can think of "royal purple" being so expensive that only the real elite have access to it. In early 20th century, that's no longer exactly the case but still I would expect colour fabric is somewhat expensive, so it's still the preserve of a richer class. When it become accessible in the mid 20th century, it becomes popular as people still think of it as being more premium. Finally, another generation comes along that doesn't think of deep colour as being a premium product (because everyone has it) and either rebels or just evaluates it on its actual merit.
None of the above is backed with any actual evidence. But that's certainly how elite clothing has progressed i.e. why world leaders wear grey suits today instead of elaborate coloured gowns.
Depends on the timeframe, those Purple Islands shellfish were juicy at the very beginning, I think got selectively bred (by accident) to have very very little purple. Purple was originally a substance, like cocaine or gold or blue paint. Later got called purple dye. At the beginning there was no other purple anything anywhere (porphyry marble but that's different, and not the same shade, same root though).
Not even the elite, the king and maybe his family too. Elites wore red, Patrician (one of the meanings, it's a double entendre) is those who wore red. During the Republic wearing purple was a death wish. Caesar I think didn't refuse fast enough at one point, something like that. Then during the Empire--I think right away--purple was back. At least in porphyry it was back. I think in clothes and perhaps statue paint? Late Empire it was by far the most expensive substance. Like a pound of silk dyed purple was worth twelve people's lives.
And there were different shades, not like now where it's like what's the RGB hex of that color squirt squirt squirt here it is, #123456, or #abcdef. It's not the real deal.
One of my favorite examples of this is the old Red Barn Restaurant chain [1]. The buildings were barn shaped and when they went out of business, they often times were repurposed as something else. They still stick out so much anywhere you come across them and I always am excited to see what business occupies them and how the the juxtaposition between the building and business is. One of my favorites is this one, which is now (or at least was at the time of this street view), a Sushi restaurant:
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.1006047,-80.743547,3a,75y,21...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Barn_(restaurant)
https://blueandwhiterestaurant.com/
As for what data drives my favorite color, that’s actually a super interesting question.
All I know is Orange is the best color, fact.
Part of the appeal of course of a grey interior is that you can just drop in green upholstered chairs and not have to try and match the walls.
I assume any non wood color floor that has wood-like markings is vinyl.
> I can't stand it.
So don't do it. This isn't even a mole hill.
He also started disliking colors. Couldn't actually see the color but he thought they looked "dirty and weird".
So that's a possible cause for the popularity of gray. Brain damage. Caused by ubiquitous use of antidepressants or bad air or whatever.
Because I think grey and orange looks cool with our hardwood (and it totally does), and while it took some initial arm twisting, she was sold on it as soon as it arrived as we put it in the room. Our friends meanwhile have a white fetish. Everything that can be white is some shade of white. If they didn't have carpet their house would feel like a hospital and/or wedding, I honestly feel more relaxed in their unfinished basement than their living room
This seems to be a surprisingly polarizing (pun not intended) issue. Why are some people sanguine with the diminishing of color, yet others find it upsetting? Why is it a fashion trend to some, yet a crucial piece of identity to others? I don't know, but I'd love to find out.
So here's my addition to the brew: urbanization. What if the trend is not entirely fashion or economy, but also a function of population density? I've spent my fair share of time in both urban and rural areas, and the urban seem to be much more chromatically homogeneous in terms of surface area, punctuated with more vivid splashes. Rural areas tend to lack the sudden bright splashes, but have miles upon miles of subtle variation. Could increasing population densities be contributing to a loss of color?
I also remember noting that the effect of the homogeneity as being calming, generating serenity amidst what would otherwise be chaotic.
Perhaps the trend towards homogenous colours are communal hive-mind response to 21st Century overstimulation, noise pollution and ever increasing urban density - a desperate grasp for less stimulation in a world of endless beeping, flashing and ringing.
I thought it was weird, but as I stood there wearing my light blue shirt, it occurred to me that I might be the weird one.
A month ago there was a 200 comment HN thread about the Twitter original OP was based on.
Edit: found it, this article was similar https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32468950
https://twitter.com/culturaltutor/status/1551976051860963333
Previous HN threads about the Twitter thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32261571 (215 comments, 27 days ago)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32246181 (5 comments, 28 days ago)
This post was originally screenshots, but was then rewritten with additional points + additional sources. The idea was to separate out the 'the world was better in the past!' and transform it to a critique/discussion of capitalism.
I have had 3 different sets of sofas/chairs in the last, perhaps, 7 years. Neutral colours means I can change the fittings to whatever I feel like. What I don't want to do is repaint everything to match.
Neutral colors aren't as appealing to me at some level but I'm also less likely to tire of them, and as you say, I think they're more compatible with other changes.
I've wrestled with this in some recent remodeling too, thinking a blue would be nice here, but decided against it because I didn't want to change my mind later. But I was remodeling, so maybe it's inevitable anyway.
I think so much is disposable in our lives that maybe we gravitate toward colors that seem less ephemeral.
But with things like mixing bowls, measuring cups, etc, having bright colors is incredibly helpful if someone is in the kitchen with you - "give me the red cup" is easier to understand than "give me the 1-1/4 cup, no that other one over there".
After a couple of months, I regreted it, and my next phone was naturally black.
Life is too short for fucking beige. Build a space that reflects what you love and if what you love changes, so be it, change your space then. But there's no reason to shortchange yourself now in subservience to a future self you may never become.
For reasons I don't understand, many colours need fairly toxic chemicals. Just think of the names. Cadmium Yellow, Cobalt Blue - would you like a bit of strontium nitrate with that?
Because we eat food and have children, we can't have all the colours that we used to have. We can't even have lead in paint these days.
This is just one factor, and it supports my general belief that progress in fashion/art/design is technology driven.
Regarding bland houses, what do you expect when the only people buying homes are doing so in order to rent seek/flip the property? Particularly when IKEA is just a short drive out of town.
Cars is the same deal, paint technology has changed to be less toxic and people buying cars aren't buying them with their own money to own forever. They got to get that resale at the end.
That said, toxicity is relative to dose and dose depends on whether these things are free in the environment. A lot of things like cadmium dyes can be effectively trapped and are less toxic than other commonly used chemicals. Long-term, however, such as in a landfill, the story is not as simple.
Notably, lead oxide paint was used because it was bright white. Titanium dioxide is not as good but obviously much safer.
We get told what the colour wheel is and never what is in the paints when we are at school. I think we would value the materials more if we had any idea of how we got here.
You can learn organic chemistry from a textbook by just reading and doing every problem in the book. There's also some free online courses and Khan Academy.
I don't think it's easy learn a lot about inorganic chemistry as an autodidact. Teachers are good at emphasizing the important things so that you don't get lost in the weeds.
For reference, you'd be looking at something like MIT's Principles of Inorganic Chemistry I and II (5.03, 5.04) which have organic chemistry I as a prerequisite, which in turn has general chemistry as a prereq.
Then, I imagine, you'd be ready to take on anything in the field of dyes.
I'm just saying they are talking about something else.
https://github.com/vercel/next.js/pull/36436
“Please don’t complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.”
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
And in any case it’s not at all relevant to an article about color scales.
Again, this guideline is garbage. Rage against it. Rage against back button breakage.
There should be a guideline against citing the guidelines. I'm guilty of it too, but it's a boring and shitty (and off-topic! it's metadiscussion!) thing to do.
You're right, of course. It's just that there are competing values, so we have to make a tradeoff. One value is usability and having web content be less annoying, intrusive, abusive, and so on. No disagreement there. I think most HN readers share similar feelings about these things; certainly I do.
The other value is curiosity. Curiosity likes new things, different things [0], unexpected things—things it can learn from. It doesn't do so well with repetition [1], indignation, or genericness [2].
These two values conflict because complaints about the former tend to be repetitive, indignant, and generic.
How to decide the conflict? That question actually has a clear answer, because we're trying to optimize for just one thing here, namely intellectual curiosity [3]. So that value has to win.
This is one of those cases where it's super helpful to have just one thing you're optimizing for and to know exactly what it is. It's not that this is the 'right' decision, the 'correct' guideline, or anything like that—it's just correct relative to what we're trying to optimize for.
[0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
> complaints about the former tend to be repetitive, indignant, and generic.
Rest assured that I'll do my best to avoid these in any future complaints about back button breakage!
Yes, exactly - it's hill-climbing. Sisyphean optimization, you might call it.
I'm no expert in why people do things, so I have no good reason to speculate. But I did anyway. I put it down to Australian's being able to spend part of every day outdoors for the entire year. There is no need for artificial brightness inside when you looking into a world illuminated by 1kW of sunshine per m2 every day. But the UK was downright dreary for large chunks of the time. It's not unusual to hear a UK expat in Australia say they left the place because they could not stand the depressing weather.
If you accept that's what's going on, then the answer is obvious. It's caused by global warming. The world is becoming more like Australia. :D
And not everyone would wash their houses, and it didn't rain much.
I did too, I lived in Ireland for a while but I couldn't stand the depressing weather and short days in winter. It didn't help that I lived on the west coast which is even worse than the east. Many weeks of non-stop grey and rain.
I live in Spain now and it really helped my mood. Wages are lower here but quality of life is so much better. Not just in terms of weather but socially too, because people live outdoors more.
I lived 2 years in Australia as well which has a similar climate but it was too far from family.
Note that by definition that is a biased set. Some people's concept of fun is limited to high intensity sunshine on a beach, personally I like the weather in the UK which feels quite balanced compared to many countries, and ideal for a lot of outdoor activities... Although this year it's been a bit on the hot side, probably not by comparison to Australia, which is why I can't imagine living in Australia, i'd constantly be too hot to want to do anything more than sit on my arse and drink beer.
It's possible people who find this weather depressing are in a depressing setting of suburbia where only intense sunshine could possibly make it appear less gloomy - maybe they just needed to get out and enjoy the wilderness more.
I believe because modern media are too colourful, we subconsciously want a much less colourful real world.
brown and bloom :p
Personally I find colour very stimulating. I have to hide my art books otherwises I end up mesmerised by them for hours. I had a bookshelf with a video game collection on it and if I so wondered past it I would get trapped staring at it. Not the individual games but the whole thing in its entirety
I came across a term for this called HSP (highly sensitive person). It seemed pseudo scientific but there is some anecdotal truth to it. I often wonder if watching cartoons as a kid somehow programmed me to be like this or is it some deeper evolutionary trait.
And now we live in a world of UIs that are either dark grays or some mix of white and light grays, and the older, more middle of the road UI design that wasn't intentionally light or dark is more or less gone.