Colorless

Today as I was driving, I noticed that the sky was particularly gray, a deep, heavy gray.  It hung thickly above rooftops covered with white snow, contrasting with odd celestial darkness for 9:00 a.m.

As I pondered the gray and whiteness, the first thought to cross my mind was, "Why do people want their kitchens to look like this?"

Now, if you lived in a cloyingly hot, humid jungle, full of saturated green moss, shining red snakes, stunning blue lagoons and stupendous yellow flower blossoms, I can see where you might like to escape to a cool, pale, monochromatic decorating palette inside your home.  But if you live in a place where winter descends with snow, ice and bitter winds lashing endlessly from a completely desaturated sky, I would think you'd like a little bit of warmth in your home decorating.

Just because it feels like a lovely room in Florida doesn't mean it's lovely in Alaska.  There are places where you honestly need your brick to be a cheerful red, your wood to be warm brown, and your window treatments to have thermal properties.

However, I think the white trends are here to stay for much longer than one would have guessed, based on the average seven-year design cycle.  I've been trying to wait it out, but I had a revelation the other day, which made me realize my waiting is probably in vain.

Here's the deal:  Virtual reality is overtaking real reality.  People live on their devices.  Life is experienced through photographs on social media.  It makes no difference what the left half of your room looks like, if the right corner is photo-worthy.  Everything you do, you do for the purpose of taking a picture, and it's all about the picture.  If the picture puts up a good front, nothing else matters.

[Aside:  Do you know that my 20-something daughter--who is a teacher--told me kids don't even talk to each other at school anymore?  They just bury themselves in their phones.  When she has a study hall, the students sit and scroll through their phones and don't interact with the kids around them at all.  She isn't even that old, but she says, "When we were kids, we buddied up in study hall and worked on homework together, or talked and joked around.  Now they just stare into their phones."  This is both heartbreakingly sad, and bone-chillingly frightening.]

So to make my point about white decorating... here you go.  Regardless of how anyone might feel about living in a monochromatic white and gray setting, it undeniably makes an attractive background for photographs.  And since people care more about their photographic presence on social media than about their real lives, I predict that the white decorating trends are here to stay for quite some time.

So... you might as well move south, where at least you can get some warmth and color outside, if you can't have it inside.  Right?