Good thing love transcends bad taste, or a lot more people would live alone.
This occurred to me after I read the latest Roller Report, an annual survey by Kilz, a primer and paint company. This year, Kilz asked more than 1,000 U.S. and Canadian homeowners about gender differences in home design, including what turns men and women off. (Ask me! Dirty shower grout, filthy barbecues, sports jerseys thumb-tacked to the wall, mufflers in the sink!)
Nearly two thirds of men (62 percent) and women (63 percent) said a prospective partner’s decor revealed a lot about their personality and maturity.
The survey took me back to when Dan, my husband, and I started dating. Before my first visit to his place, he rearranged the furniture to hide the carpet stains. The stains were the least of my worries. The carpet was lime green! The rearranging didn’t hide the wood-laminated furniture.
Now, I like wood and I like laminate. But wood laminate should be illegal. He also had a 5-gallon aquarium with one dinky fish! Does anyone else think that’s peculiar?
To be fair, he saw room for improvement at my place, too. I didn’t own a television. To him, that was more than a home-design offense; it was a character flaw, which he “fixed” by installing one immediately. I saw the gesture for what it was: his way to watch sports at my place.
My married girlfriends have also had cohabitation clashes. For years, one friend has been dodging her husband’s wish to frame and hang his Peter Max pillowcases. “He thinks these old, faded pillowcases are art. I just keep hiding them.”
Another friend is less charitable. She got sick of staring at her husband’s college sports trophies and threw them all in a Dumpster. (“Thirty-nine percent of women find sports memorabilia a turn-off,” the survey says.)
“What’s tackier than a trophy?” she asked me. I couldn’t think of anything. However, I might feel different if I’d ever won one. When her husband asked where they went, she said she put them in a box, which was sort of true. “I’m probably going to burn in hell for this,” she confessed.
A third friend married a guy who displayed big-game heads from his hunts. (Now don’t get me started on what I think about hunting. The only opinion I’m giving here is this: When two people merge households, it’s open season on home decorating.) Because she couldn’t converse — let alone sleep — with a buffalo staring at her, she moved these, uhh, trophies, to her husband’s hunting lodge — a man space.
All of this proves my theory: Love is not blind; it just ignores a lot.
Syndicated columnist Marni Jameson is the author of “The House Always Wins” (Da Capo) and of the forthcoming “House of Havoc” (due this February). Contact her through .
Nicer nesting
I called designer Lisa LaPorta, host of HGTV’s “Designed to Sell,” for suggestions on how to change your pad’s decor to woo or please a partner. She offered this advice. Guys: Ditch the pennants and posters, and make room for conversation. “If she walks in and sees school pennants all over your walls, she can reasonably assume you haven’t left college emotionally,” said LaPorta. If you can’t part with your rock ‘n’ roll posters, pick a couple favorites and have them professionally framed so they look more like art. Finally, arrange furniture so it’s not all about the television. “Living areas should encourage interaction, which is difficult when all seating points to one wall. You can always rearrange furniture on game day.”
Gals: Don’t display collections of dolls, jewelry or collages of you having fun with your girlfriends. And get the stuffed animals off your bed. Nothing about that signals that there may be room in your life for a man. Also, tone down the color; two-thirds of men surveyed preferred neutral colors in a home.
Both: For either gender, a little Pottery Barn and a few family photos would be well received. LaPorta had this advice for couples combining households:
Look, don’t tell. Use visual tools to show each other, rather than explain, what you like. Both partners should go through home magazines and tag what they do and don’t like, then compare. You’ll be surprised. “It’s not that men only like black leather sofas with drink holders, and women all want red and pink florals,” LaPorta said. “Couples actually agree on more than they think.”
Be gender neutral. Unless you’re decorating a baby’s room, or a space that’s strictly for him or her, cover walls in colors that are neither strongly masculine nor feminine. Likewise, go gender neutral for big furniture items. That gives a home broader appeal, which can help with resale down the road. Bring in personality and punches of color through art and accessories. That approach is good for the budget — and the relationship.
Find common ground. What if he likes contemporary and she likes French Country? She may never want a stainless steel armoire, and he may not want one in rustic pine, but many transitional pieces are available that will work in either setting.
Here’s hope. Committed guys improve more. While only 50 percent of guys surveyed said they would spend time and money fixing up their homes to impress a new love interest, 81 percent said they would do that to please a current partner.
