When Watching HGTV Gives You The Sads

by Corcoran McEnearney

We know scrolling through social media can give users FOMO, but are you also worried about your home measuring up?

They say your home is your castle, but does watching HGTV or Bravo’s real estate reality shows have you worried it will be rated more as a dungeon than a showcase for your taste? Are you afraid of what it says to the world if you desire a serene Coastal Grandma vibe when vivacious Cluttercore is the hot new thing? And why can’t design critics just leave white kitchens and sliding farmhouse doors alone?!

If all this criticism has you worried about putting a foot wrong, you aren’t alone. According to a 2022 study by two researchers who studied a number of homeowners during renovation projects, the fear of not having “the perfect look” is pushing trends that favor a neutral, standardized style so that many homes resemble hotels or staged listings devoid of any personality.

The Washington Post recently dug into the report by Annetta Grant of Bucknell University and Jay M. Handleman of the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, to find out why the way we decorate our homes is getting less personal and more homogenous, and how that’s negatively affecting the enjoyment of owning a place to call your own.

The researchers found that some homeowners are so afraid of making a design “mistake” that will hurt their home’s future resale value that they end up living in a “professionalization” style meant to appeal to a hypothetical “next owner” instead of making choices that would reflect their own taste. Grant calls this the “market-driven gaze” that leads owners to continually critique their home based on popular trends or an ideal of “perfection.”

When their home doesn’t match those expectations it results in unease or “dysplacement,” a sense that their home isn’t really theirs to enjoy but is instead meant to live up to the expectations of the current market or others.

So what’s an owner to do when they are torn between making smart design choices and cultivating their own sense of space? First, remember that lifestyle shows, magazines and social feeds are meant to be aspirational: they are not the only way to live. They are there to sell products, earn clicks, and generate ratings as entertainment, not mandatory templates on what must be done for a property to become a good home.

Second, unless you are in the immediate market to move, live in the home you WANT, not the one you want to SELL.

Realtors can help owners understand myriad attributes that can influence a home’s value that have nothing to do with paint color, lighting choices or window treatments (all of which are relatively easy to change and bring a good ROI). When you’re thinking about selling, an agent can share local comps about which projects are most likely to bring top dollar (additional bathrooms, remodeled kitchen, finished basement) and which are intriguing but not necessarily investment-worthy (dedicated pet baths, oversized closets, butane fireplace inserts, swimming pools).

Bottom line: create a home that you will enjoy living in for the life you lead now. If you’re in the market to sell in the next year or two and expect you’ll have some sprucing up to do, that’s when you can lean into some of the more popular trends that most buyers are expecting in a great listing.

Until then, enjoy your all-white kitchen with the farmhouse sink and open floorplan and don’t give a second thought to what HGTV producers would say if they turned up with cameras.

For more design trends and tips for getting your home show-ready, be sure to subscribe to The McEnearney Blog.