Why Are Bright Colors Out of Fashion?

In recent years, white people hate green, yellow, and orange. How come?

Why are bright colors so out of fashion in recent years, at least among white people?

The Washington Post recently pointed out that it’s easy to find the gentrifying blocks in D.C. because you just look for gray houses.

The house color that tells you when a neighborhood is gentrifying

A Washington Post color analysis of D.C. found shades of gray permeate neighborhoods where the White population has increased and the Black population has decreased.

The Washington Post is a rare major media outlet that decided in 2020 that if they were going to capitalize “Black,” then they would capitalize “White” too.

By Marissa J. Lang and John D. Harden

March 2, 2025

If you live in an American city, chances are you have seen this house:

Its exterior is gray with monochromatic accents.

Maybe there’s a pop of color — a red, blue or yellow door.

The landscaping is restrained, all clean lines and neat minimalism.

Sleek metal address numbers appear crisp in a modern sans-serif font.

Some might call it elegant, others boring. The look itself is purposely unremarkable. Real estate agents and paint companies use words such as “quiet,” “calm” and “neutral” to describe it.

But many longtime city-dwellers see this physical transformation of residences to muted tones and know what they signal: demographic, social and economic change.

Rowhouses in D.C., craftsmans in Nashville, Victorian-style homes in San Francisco and many other styles of houses in gentrifying neighborhoods across the country have increasingly been stripped of their colors and painted shades of gray, altering the aesthetics of American cities.

In some neighborhoods, the grayification of homes has been swift and stark — and the cause of conflicts.

In the nation’s capital, residents have seen the change steadily sweeping their communities lot by lot: A neighbor’s red-brick rowhouse goes up for sale with a fresh coat of paint. A residential block that once had vivid murals painted on the sides of buildings begins to look less colorful, more monochrome.

A Washington Post color analysis of the District found that in neighborhoods where other markers of gentrification have spiked over the past decade — increased home prices, more noise complaints and the displacement of Black residents — the number of gray homes has notably increased. The analysis looked at houses that were newly built or built on lots where houses had been torn down. Homes that might have once been painted reds, yellows and browns have given way to houses in hues that range from Shark Fin to Deep Space.

Similarly, “Millennial Gray” interiors have been in fashion for the last decade or so.

Cars are lately notoriously neutral in color (with the exception of red) in recent times.

My guess is that clothes are pretty bland in color too, but I don’t pay much attention to that.

Various theories are that everybody is conformist, that the media is conspiring to take all joy out of life, and so forth.

Are people more conformist lately?

When I was young, practically every guy had longer hair in 1975 than in 1965. Of course, in 1975 everybody believed that the reason they had grown their longer was because they, personally, were nonconformists. But, these days I find it hard to explain to young men that hair length was an incredibly big deal back then, because now hair length seems like more of an individual choice than a giant trend that was widely cited, pro or con, as embodying the Spirit of the Age.

Is the media in cahoots to push boring colors?

I dunno … it seems like the media is a lot more fragmented than when I was young and there were three national networks.

Probably it’s just due to fashion changes.

But are boring colors gender neutral? Buzzfeed theorized last year:

If you’re a straight couple trying to be equitable in your home design, gray is about as gender neutral as you can get. The gender neutrality of such colors is also why many millennial parents gravitate toward a “sad beige” color palette for their kids’ clothes and bedrooms.

This drab monochrome was dubbed “sad beige parenting” by humor writer Hayley DeRoche, who chronicles the offerings of upscale children’s retailers in the solemn voice of German filmmaker Werner Herzog on her TikTok account, That Sad Beige Lady.

The idea is that both beige and gray offer a blank slate, a canvas upon which a child’s personality can be painted.

“Neutral colors help avoid those old-school gender stereotypes, aligning with more inclusive and non-binary values that many millennial parents and couples support,” Chappell Marsh said. “They want their kids to grow up in an environment free from restrictive norms.”

Maybe, although I’d put it differently: guys worry a lot more about whether something makes them look gay than it used to. For example, here are golfers Doug Sanders and Jack Nicklaus at the 1970 British Open, where they tied after 72 holes, dressed like disposable junior officers on Star Trek:

Golf is interesting because it’s not very macho yet it’s extremely heterosexual. I’m probably the only pundit to have noticed that golfers almost never died of AIDS.

My guess is that Sanders (a notorious horn dog) and Nicklaus worried less than more recent generations of men that anybody would doubt their gender identity if they wore pastels.

Here’s Sanders in 1969:

(Probably a different Walt Disney, considering that the Walt Disney died in 1966.)

Can you imagine a current golfer dressing like that?

What do you think?