Undecorating: How the Undesign Trend Affects Real Estate Sales

Undecorate by Christiane Lemeux

In case you have not noticed it, interior design seems to be awfully sleepy these days. Robb & Stucky is in Chapter 11. The “biggest recession since the Great Depression” killed off¬† at least a dozen shelter magazines, the survivors suffering along on rations of 30 percent fewer advertising pages these last three years, according to the Media Industry Newsletter. Interior designers who do not have a steady clientele of the wealthy at hand are hurting.¬† Now there’s a book to chronicle it all, Undecorate. What we have today is a cultural expression or outcry against coordinated interiors, (Pottery Barn?), with even those who could afford $131,000 for area rugs, a $68,000 antique credenza, guest chairs costing $87,000, a $35,000 commode, and a $1,400 wastebasket like John Thain abstaining. Instead, we have

“a new breed of self-curating, design-smart amateurs spurred to resourcefulness by the recession and assisted by the Internet in finding materials and furnishings at deep discounts. The result is an outpouring of homegrown inventiveness ‚Äî sofas upholstered with burlap coffee sacks, stereo speakers made from Ikea salad bowls, party decorations conscripted as permanent ornamentation.”

Translation: there’s a new freedom to do whatever the doo-doo you wish:

“There’s no longer any good or bad,” said Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, a founder of Apartment Therapy, a home design blog. “That new openness is the story. We’re all swirling around together.”

But how do you “swirl” and still sell your home? Can you really sell a loft with an airsteam inside, as one Chicago couple lives? That may explain why the Chicago real estate market is having such a tough time. If “the central tenet of the undecorate movement is that personal expression matters more than professional polish,” I will say this: no wonder your undecorated house is not selling, and the last time we insisted that personal expression trump discipline, we produced a generation of hot-housed, spoiled children who are having a tough time surviving on their own and cutting the apron strings. Something like 40% of all 2008 grads still live with their parents today.

Maybe what we need is a follow up book to show us how to toughen up design standards: “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Designer”. I called on home stager Karen Eubankto tell me what she thinks about this, um, un-trend:

“It’s not so much that personal expression will hamper the sale. Stagers want your house to have some style and personality. It’s not about painting everything beige, it’s about making the home appeal to the target demographic. If you are selling a University Park home, you are not appealing to someone who wants to be in Lake Highlands. Different demographics require different solutions. A professional stager knows the neighborhood, the buying audience, the lifestyle. While, yes, we are going to take those family photos down, we are not necessarily going to ask you to store the art collection, well unless it’s really depressing. I had to convince a home owner to take down some Hurricane Katrina art. ¬†Yes it was beautiful and ¬†It was moving but so depressing potential buyers would have wanted to slit their wrists.”

We certainly don’t want buyers to slit their wrists! Today’s home seller, says Karen, wants more of a “creative partner” and cost effective solutions — makes sense.

“A lot of people are afraid of the term “Interior Designer”. It makes them think they will spend a lot of money and most of their possessions will be kicked to the curb. The largest home buying segment has grown up on HGTV. They want to be involved. They have style , taste and ideas.They just don’t have the time to execute their ideas or the resources. They also like their possessions and want to work them into the new design. Of course they are extremely budget conscious. Enter the new”Interior Stylist” or Re Designer or the Stage to Sell stager. There are a lot of terms so it can get confusing. We are coming from the photography , t.v. and film industries and the staging industry. The whole idea of Interior Design has been updated ¬†and the way of working with clients has changed. Of course there are loads of fantastic Interior Designers who got with the program years ago and those are the ones with thriving business models today.”