There’s an interesting series of posts (which the author seems to have abandoned at some point, sadly) following the evolution of these monstrosities, with an example for each year since 1970 or so.
When I was in high school and planning to study architecture, I came across this blog. I'm glad the author is still here and putting out high-quality pieces after all this time.
The author, Kate Wagner, also writes more serious pieces on architecture and housing for The Nation. I recommend taking a look!
Great blog, I did learn quite a bit from it and also the book she recommends - A Field Guide to American Houses by Virginia McAlester.
We usually refer to any newish suburban house as a McMansion, but that's wrong. Cookie-cutter maybe, but not McMansion. The defining feature of McMansions is "more is more" mindset, a very large house with a thoughtless mishmash of styles, features, textures, colours, and shapes. Most suburban houses are not large enough nor eclectic enough to be called a proper McMansion. My random suburban house for example, has a needlessly large number of rooflines, but is generally coherent and shapely.
I think of a McMansion as an "expensive cheap house". I suspect they are mostly owned by people who aren't truly wealthy but are trying to convince themselves that they are.
I remember seeing commentary like this a few years ago. Looking at this today in the post-generative ML world, I realize that the pictures of these houses look like what such a system would produce as output.
McMansion is more than square footage, they are also a hodgepodge of impractical design features. Counterstops made of a material that stains, so many glass fixtures that keeping them dusted is somebody's entire job, weird roof shapes with so many seams that water ingress is a certainty, seemingly zero optimization for the sun since the owner can surely afford to brute force their hvac, etc.
American Farmhouse and Ranch House will never be out of style and are wonderfully practical to own and maintain.
You can certainly have expansive single floor houses--although I'm not sure they're "Ranch" at that point. In general, there is a tradeoff between allocating space for open public spaces and bedrooms. My old farmhouse has (now) a fairly open first floor plan but the four upstairs rooms are fairly small (about 10' x 12').
It's interesting if you look at some old opulent mansions in somewhere like Newport. The public rooms are opulent but even the non-servant rooms upstairs are fairly minimalist.
I like the terriblerealestateagentphotos.com post from earlier, but this feels like a parody of that. So far all of these places i'd be besides myself to be living in.
> all of these places i'd be besides myself to be living in
I think that’s the problem. All these places look purpose built to project wealth and abundance, but they don’t look nice to actually use. None of those rooms feel very welcoming or even remotely practical.
And somehow even the largest rooms manage to feel cramped because there’s too much going on. You just can’t feel at ease in a place like that. Or at least I can’t.
If you ever visit Hearst Castle it’s got a very similar vibe. Some of those rooms take 5min to walk across, but when you’re just standing there looking around, it feels cramped and tiny because the walls and floors are so full of … stuff … that it feels almost oppressive.
It's the Keynesian beauty contest - if the exterior or the layout conformed to someone's taste or use case the seller will exclude the group with different tastes. So the outcome is a mishmash that appeals badly to everyone.
It's no accident that so many supermodels are from Brazil - the nation is a true melting pot of races, it attracted immigrants from everywhere. If you need a clotheshorse you go to rural Rio Grande do Sul and look for "generic white".
McMansions don’t appeal badly to everyone: millions of Americans happily live in them.
The more accurate observation isn’t that they’re the product of a Keynesian contest, but they’re the product of distorted real estate and home ownership incentives: homeowners conflate size and apparent luxury with investment safety, and our housing and development policies encourage that conflation.
With a more individualized layout a good chunk would live happier - the standard examples are the dramatic rooflines that just encourage leaks at the edges and the two-story foyer that wastes so much space. But as you say, it's not about comfort or practicality, it's about resale value.
Even if, for purposes of argument, you stipulate that there are families that would make effective use of a very large house, the design for a family with a lot of kids and/or an older parent living with them is going to look very different from that for a couple or small family that throws large parties on a regular basis.
What I hate is that it seems to be a dichotomy. Small house, simple style. But as soon as it gets to a certain size, you have to put in stupid things like the grand entrance with a showpiece staircase.
Other things have to happen, apparently. The vaulted 20 foot ceilings above the living room. I now have the choice in the winter to heat the upstairs to 80 or keep the living room at 60. Of course, you'll need an ostentatious fireplace that will never be used here in Texas. It has helpfully been placed as the focal point of your living room, where most would want a tv.
I'm continually amazed at how bad designs are on half-million dollar purchases which require 30 years to pay off.
There certainly are large house designs that are, to me, aesthetically pleasing. They tend to be simpler and more classic. I see quite a few up in coastal Maine. It probably helps when you have a view from the house which tends to focus the design on features that take advantage of that.
> But as soon as it gets to a certain size, you have to put in stupid things like the grand entrance with a showpiece staircase.
I mean, you don't, but people tend to.
Though, also, the "certain size" here is generally a minimum of about 6000sqft. This is too large to be a practical house, so you end up with either unreasonably large rooms (uncomfortable, undesirable), completely superfluous rooms (probably the least-worst option) or massive grand entrances and other not-quite-room features (most common approach).
Of course, the sensible thing would be to build a smaller house, but that doesn't appear to work for the people who like these.
Yeah, Hearst castle is one of the most ugly and uncomfortable buildings I've ever been in. It's like the ultimate example of absolutely no restraint or constraints, without thought for actual usability.
I'm guessing most of the design elements were the clients' choices and not the architects' (or any architect or interior designer with some semblance of good taste).
These kinds of houses tend to be mass produced, often cheaply, which flies in the face of the luxury and casual wealth they’re meant to evince in the onlooker. Architects aren’t anywhere to be seen in the process.
Bold to assume an architect was involved (many of the more ridiculous examples on the site are likely a result of no-architect build-to-order construction...)
I think this is the architects idea of McMansion hell.
My idea of McMansion hell is how closely they build them together AND the placement of them.
For example, many of the big communities built here in Central Florida have your living room facing the ACs of your neighbors unit, and your living room windows facing into their bed room windows.
If your homes are less than 8ft apart, JUST BUILD TOWN HOMES...
The major issue with many of these houses is their design, features and aesthetic is totally incoherent and shows no restraint.
They put every kind of shape, texture, and material all into one house, in one room.
This kind of maximalist design is trying to seem luxurious. But it ends up being overwrought, shocking to look at, and filled with unusable features like that weird fireplace in the 'dome sweet dome" house.
I agree that the aesthetics of large houses on small lots is bad, but it is more practical, which is why they get built and snapped up. Land is expensive, and whether in Florida where it's hot, or in Canada where it's cold, you get far more use out of enclosed climate-controlled space than a yard which gets occasional use. And with a detached house you don't have condo fees, have less noise, etc.
I have a friend who lives in an older suburban neighborhood next to a McMansion development and she says basically the only people you ever see outside are the landscapers cutting the lawn etc. So, if you want a large house in a high cost of living area, there's a certain practicality in not paying for a couple acres of land just to be a bit better screened from your neighbors. The style is sort of an aesthetic disaster but it mostly doesn't affect the residents much.
Whenever I see houses cheek-to-jowl like that, I wonder "why not just get an apartment or condo?" Those houses seem to have most of the disadvantages of apartment/condo living without the advantages.
You almost certainly have more space in the detached house than in all but the most luxurious condo (albeit probably not as efficiently used). And there are probably other tradeoffs.
But I don't really disagree for a lot of situations, especially without kids. I've always tended to prefer moderately rural or urban and not so much in-between.
I moved into my development before all of the houses were complete, and after about two years they started building a new set of houses that they described as "zipper" style. The houses are basically "L" shaped, but turned so that they nestle into each other. I have no idea how the property lines work because you can clearly see that the houses overlap, but the official lines are all straight. I guess easements.
My town was incorporated in 1918 and was largely developed post WWII in the 1940's and 1950's. It's a very affluent "old money", suburban area. The latest craze has been to buy these old houses and then raze them and build a McMansion on them. The problem is the houses just look at of place. They also look as fake as tits on a porn star. I don't know how people can be happy living in them - then again, what do you make of people razing charming old houses? The most ironic thing is the charming old houses were better-built than the garbage they're replacing it with. Just goes to show just because you have money doesn't mean you have sense. Or taste.
I know a bunch of people who live in these (buying the biggest house possible was The Thing To Do), and I tend to disagree. What I've observed is that you trade a too cold or too hot yard for enclosed space you also only occasionally use. Which you are paying to climate control, clean and fill with stuff so it at least looks like it's being used. The formal dining room you use once or twice a year. The 5th or 6th bedroom in a house with 3 or 4 people living there. Sure...more WFH offices these days, but I've seen so many 'gym rooms' that have become 'just put those boxes and other crap in there rooms' it's a bit of a joke now. The 'bonus room' whose door hasn't been opened this decade. Realizing that this or that part of the house smells funny because no one has used the 4th or 5th bathroom in so long to water has evaporated from the toilet and they're getting sewer gas leaking back. Less noise, tho, sure.
Or they could have just hired a competent architect who would quit as soon as the owner make them design something like this, but then you’d still end up with this
Who builds these things and why is BOTH the architecture and workmanship so shoddy? Who opted for this instead of making a well-architected and well built home 2/3rds the size (All you save in fake columns and moldings probably gets you some area back).
Where I live, a new home is always built by the first owner. That is, the first owner together with the architect creates the home including every plan, every material. Is that what happened here, or is it some sort of "developer" that has tried to make a disneyland looking thing to match what they already sold a buyer with sketches in a catalog?
In the US, new single-family homes are typically built by a real estate developer according to a common design. The first buyers are usually allowed some limited input on the design (choice of colors and decorative materials, size of garage, perhaps an optional additional bedroom or bathroom) but the core architectural design is chosen by the developer and cannot be changed.
Usually because a buyer isn’t lined up until the house is half completed. You could always get a builder to do a custom home, but most developers start their projects before the houses are sold, and most buyers are afraid to buy a house that hasn’t been started at all (unless asking for a custom job).
Became your neighbors are all going to have these monstrosities, and your tasteful, well-built smaller house will mark you as the weird one and be hard to sell.
My understanding (from reading this blog) is that the companies that build these homes don't have architects, or don't prioritize their work. They're building large houses for customers who prioritize having more house for less money and don't care/can't identify quality work or materials.
So I think there are a few issues. First off, this sort of approach _is_ cheaper than using an architect. So if for some reason you really want a 6000sqft house this is absolutely the budget option (of course, you then end up with massive rooms that make little sense; also a lot of examples of those on the site).
But also, some people just want what they want, no matter how absurd it might look to, well, basically everyone.
> Is that what happened here, or is it some sort of "developer" that has tried to make a disneyland looking thing to match what they already sold a buyer with sketches in a catalog?
But an architect is a way of saving money not the other way around. It’s (by comparison to the overall cost) not very expensive, and it can save costs by avoiding costly design mistakes. Also, after architecting a few homes and interiors they are already paid for, the developer can build any number of homes to amortize the costs.
I’m not sure there is anything objectively bad about these designs. Does it affect the utility of the house? Or is there some inherent ugliness that comes with affordable and popular things?
> Or is there some inherent ugliness that comes with affordable and popular things?
I would question both of these adjectives, where I live, "affordable" is sub-400'000 USD and "popular" is a 3-bedroom terraced house.
I would use expensive and extravagant instead.
I realize that calling any type of mansion affordable seems out of touch. I was commenting on the relative expense of some of these design components. The prefix “Mc” evokes McDonald’s. The post pokes fun at a statue of a maid, because the owners could not afford to hire true maids. From the site, I assume that a McMansion is like a mansion, but made with cheaper components and without the taste and class that comes with an elite upbringing.
> From the site, I assume that a McMansion is like a mansion, but made with cheaper components and without the taste and class that comes with an elite upbringing.
General consensus on definition seems to be "very large house, not designed by an architect, cheap construction". So they are both expensive (because they're really, really big) but also, well, cheaper than something that big done properly.
On the 'elite upbringing' thing, well, ever seen photos of the interiors of Donald Trump's houses? An elite upbringing does not necessarily imply taste.
I think a lot of these bloated houses are extremely impractical to actually live in. For example, I live across the street from a McMansion that I fondly call “The Hotel”. It has an ornate front entrance on the main street that the owners never use. It might as well be sealed shut. Instead, they enter and exit through the basement garage, or by walking down a rickety set of stairs from their kitchen to the side street where several of their many cars are kept. Watch out for the boat parked in the driveway!
At least in New England, it's a bit of a joke how many houses have "formal" entrances (not necessarily elaborate but obviously designed to be the house's entrance) but everyone just uses the kitchen/mudroom/garage.
Isn't that how it is with most homes with garages, both with and without ornate front entrances? In most cases, the occupants of that house will rarely enter through the front door. Even in cases where they park in the driveway/street, they often will enter through the garage because entering a code or using a remote control is easier than using a key on the front door.
They're generally very large and of low-quality construction, making them expensive to heat, cool, and maintain, for little upside. They're also generally kind of impractical; you end up with either way too many rooms, or impractically _big_ rooms.
There's an element of subjectivity to the aesthetics, obviously, but I don't think you'll find many people who'll see most of the examples on that site and go "that looks good actually".
There's this thing that the more sophisticated the home, the more emphasis on the garden that surrounds it. I've seen a few Bali Villas on the internet, where it's a glass house in a walled garden, and it gives this living in paradise vibe.
I always find these critiques so out of place. Yes, many large houses have weird architectural elements that basically consist of "we copied bits and pieces of historically significant works of architecture". But I've also seen numerous houses that didn't do this, which I often describe as the "assembly hall". It is a house that has no distinguishing features at all. It looks like where you would go to a city council meeting and sit in benches. That's it.
I live in a tiny ~1000 sq. ft. home. Per sq. ft. it includes as many of these out of place design elements than a McMansion. Pointless columns, rooflines that come out of nowhere, trim that looks like someone took a set of prison bars for inspiration. Randomly added brick because the developer thought it would increase home value. Vents that are purely aesthetic. A window over the front door, so if you're 9 ft tall you can see the people outside without opening the door.
A lot of people would not call 1000sqft "tiny". It's a pretty standard-size UK family home. My family (4 of us) lives in ~800sqft.
When you start from this perspective you may realise that the size bloat is just overwhelming well before you get to the detailing. You may be standing too close to the wood to see the trees... %-P
That's an interesting point. I agree with the blog that McMansions are ugly but my neighborhood has multiple Queen Annes and I like those. In 100 years will people find McMansions charming?
Money aside, coming from a card board box this would be nice, but coming from a normal house and going into this would be nice but every morning/entry back you would greet yourself first thing with “WTF”, or “need to find a different home and sell this”
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 134 ms ] threadThe author, Kate Wagner, also writes more serious pieces on architecture and housing for The Nation. I recommend taking a look!
https://www.thenation.com/authors/kate-wagner/ (warning: paywall after a few articles)
Except the house has to be net zero or close to it. The nice thing about my house is all the environmental stuff is well-hidden from the street.
So many gems on this site.
We usually refer to any newish suburban house as a McMansion, but that's wrong. Cookie-cutter maybe, but not McMansion. The defining feature of McMansions is "more is more" mindset, a very large house with a thoughtless mishmash of styles, features, textures, colours, and shapes. Most suburban houses are not large enough nor eclectic enough to be called a proper McMansion. My random suburban house for example, has a needlessly large number of rooflines, but is generally coherent and shapely.
This blog has been around since 2016, so it may well have been the very same commentary. I certainly remember it making the rounds back then.
Despite their issues, I would also bet that the McMansions are much nicer to live in and raise a family in.
American Farmhouse and Ranch House will never be out of style and are wonderfully practical to own and maintain.
It's interesting if you look at some old opulent mansions in somewhere like Newport. The public rooms are opulent but even the non-servant rooms upstairs are fairly minimalist.
I think that’s the problem. All these places look purpose built to project wealth and abundance, but they don’t look nice to actually use. None of those rooms feel very welcoming or even remotely practical.
And somehow even the largest rooms manage to feel cramped because there’s too much going on. You just can’t feel at ease in a place like that. Or at least I can’t.
If you ever visit Hearst Castle it’s got a very similar vibe. Some of those rooms take 5min to walk across, but when you’re just standing there looking around, it feels cramped and tiny because the walls and floors are so full of … stuff … that it feels almost oppressive.
It's no accident that so many supermodels are from Brazil - the nation is a true melting pot of races, it attracted immigrants from everywhere. If you need a clotheshorse you go to rural Rio Grande do Sul and look for "generic white".
The more accurate observation isn’t that they’re the product of a Keynesian contest, but they’re the product of distorted real estate and home ownership incentives: homeowners conflate size and apparent luxury with investment safety, and our housing and development policies encourage that conflation.
With a more individualized layout a good chunk would live happier - the standard examples are the dramatic rooflines that just encourage leaks at the edges and the two-story foyer that wastes so much space. But as you say, it's not about comfort or practicality, it's about resale value.
Other things have to happen, apparently. The vaulted 20 foot ceilings above the living room. I now have the choice in the winter to heat the upstairs to 80 or keep the living room at 60. Of course, you'll need an ostentatious fireplace that will never be used here in Texas. It has helpfully been placed as the focal point of your living room, where most would want a tv.
I'm continually amazed at how bad designs are on half-million dollar purchases which require 30 years to pay off.
I mean, you don't, but people tend to.
Though, also, the "certain size" here is generally a minimum of about 6000sqft. This is too large to be a practical house, so you end up with either unreasonably large rooms (uncomfortable, undesirable), completely superfluous rooms (probably the least-worst option) or massive grand entrances and other not-quite-room features (most common approach).
Of course, the sensible thing would be to build a smaller house, but that doesn't appear to work for the people who like these.
[0] https://allerton.illinois.edu/
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language
I'm guessing most of the design elements were the clients' choices and not the architects' (or any architect or interior designer with some semblance of good taste).
Bold to assume an architect was involved (many of the more ridiculous examples on the site are likely a result of no-architect build-to-order construction...)
My idea of McMansion hell is how closely they build them together AND the placement of them.
For example, many of the big communities built here in Central Florida have your living room facing the ACs of your neighbors unit, and your living room windows facing into their bed room windows.
If your homes are less than 8ft apart, JUST BUILD TOWN HOMES...
They put every kind of shape, texture, and material all into one house, in one room.
This kind of maximalist design is trying to seem luxurious. But it ends up being overwrought, shocking to look at, and filled with unusable features like that weird fireplace in the 'dome sweet dome" house.
But I don't really disagree for a lot of situations, especially without kids. I've always tended to prefer moderately rural or urban and not so much in-between.
That's a failure of architecture, too; it's entirely possible to build houses near each other without that happening.
(Mind you, in general architects are unlikely to be involved in these, particularly where they're one-offs/customised).
Where I live, a new home is always built by the first owner. That is, the first owner together with the architect creates the home including every plan, every material. Is that what happened here, or is it some sort of "developer" that has tried to make a disneyland looking thing to match what they already sold a buyer with sketches in a catalog?
They are the direct result of having more money than taste. If they like it, who am I to criticize?
But also, some people just want what they want, no matter how absurd it might look to, well, basically everyone.
> Is that what happened here, or is it some sort of "developer" that has tried to make a disneyland looking thing to match what they already sold a buyer with sketches in a catalog?
No architect was involved in most of these.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebration,_Florida
https://www.zillow.com/celebration-kissimmee-fl/
I would question both of these adjectives, where I live, "affordable" is sub-400'000 USD and "popular" is a 3-bedroom terraced house. I would use expensive and extravagant instead.
General consensus on definition seems to be "very large house, not designed by an architect, cheap construction". So they are both expensive (because they're really, really big) but also, well, cheaper than something that big done properly.
On the 'elite upbringing' thing, well, ever seen photos of the interiors of Donald Trump's houses? An elite upbringing does not necessarily imply taste.
They're generally very large and of low-quality construction, making them expensive to heat, cool, and maintain, for little upside. They're also generally kind of impractical; you end up with either way too many rooms, or impractically _big_ rooms.
There's an element of subjectivity to the aesthetics, obviously, but I don't think you'll find many people who'll see most of the examples on that site and go "that looks good actually".
I live in a tiny ~1000 sq. ft. home. Per sq. ft. it includes as many of these out of place design elements than a McMansion. Pointless columns, rooflines that come out of nowhere, trim that looks like someone took a set of prison bars for inspiration. Randomly added brick because the developer thought it would increase home value. Vents that are purely aesthetic. A window over the front door, so if you're 9 ft tall you can see the people outside without opening the door.
When you start from this perspective you may realise that the size bloat is just overwhelming well before you get to the detailing. You may be standing too close to the wood to see the trees... %-P
Same idea of quirky mish-mash of styles, but they had less styles to choose from back then