I prefer disappointingly tasteful.

In that book...Dictionary of Lost words...I liked the little girl playing under the table looking at mismatched socks....🧦She found out a LOT about people without speaking to them. Our home decor is a shout-out-situation too.

john3582 I love that! Disappointingly tasteful.

I like "unfortunate" as well.

My sister described me once as being unencumbered by social grace.

I just love when we can say something and make it sound so much nicer than just saying "That's ugly."

@ nicole___ I am enjoying Dictionary of Lost Words. I want to play hooky from work and go read! Have the feeling they might notice when the work doesn't get done. :-(

I am literally laughing out loud at ”unencumbered by social grace” and ”depressingly functional.” I fear that the first often applies to me and the latter sometimes applies to my house.

"unencumbered by social grace," I'll have to remember that one!

"Depressingly functional."

Kind of sums up my feelings about a lot design that is showcased in various magazines and other media/socials (or offered up in mainstream shops).

Loved that book- mostly because I”d never, ever considered how a dictionary was compiled. It was fascinating. Re: decorating - what’s it called when trends are so ubiquitous that it’s downwright depressing to see yet another allgray house? You know, the rooms posted that look as if it’s a black and white photo. Functional? Yes. Not necessarily ugly, but just so common and soulless.

whimsically semi-functional is more my style

I do love the term "depressingly functional"! My husband and I "share" an office, as in we have a room with desks for each of us and I typically use the room for working from home when he's also home and I'm being annoying with meetings. He used the room for studying for a new career but now uses it for tinkering on a hobby: RC cars. I want the office to look tidy and decorative and clean because I often spend hours in there. .He couldn't care less. He decided he needed a place to put his hobby RC cars and brought up a huge white plastic folding table from the basement and set it in the middle of the room with his RC cars arrayed on it. In his mind this was just fine, in my mind it was "depressingly functional" so I ordered some glass front cabinets for him to store his hobby and for me to feel like things are neat and tidy and decorative. They're kind of fun: metal with glass front and a little industrial and funky. Plus I can hang a pretty landscape photo above. I think like mtn I also prefer "whimsically semi-functional".

< Re: decorating - what’s it called when trends are so ubiquitous that it’s downright depressing to see yet another all gray house? >

That's how I feel when I see yet another all beige interior. I am fine with gray, but I do not like beige or excessive use of brown. Gray is at least neutral (i.e., without hue), but beige and brown are orange in hue, despite being low in intensity. It is very easy to add colors that I like to a gray room - not so easy if a room is beige and brown.

I have a few things that are depressingly functional that I cannot bring myself to replace - one is a salad spinner, but at least it stays in a kitchen cabinet, out of sight.

@Olychick, if you want to read another book that has a compilation of a dictionary theme, try The Great Passageby Shion Miura. It is one of my favorite books.

Nothing to add to the discussion - other than The Dictionary Of Lost Words is now on request from my library 😁

@ Lars - I don't care if it is gray, white, beige or whatever trend we are in, but how can so many people all love the same thing?

I look at the neighborhood where my sister built her last home (8 years ago). The first 20-25 homes all looked different and the newer section is filled with white box after white box.

Google maps doesn't have some of the other new ones that have been built, but they all are the same white boxes.

What happened? When did we stop thinking for ourselves and start just blindly doing what we are told is right?

Is that the book that used the word slip about a thousand times? It could be a good drinking game. Everyone does a shot when the word slip shows up. I didnt care for it, sorry to say, although I do like that phrase.