How did we become so scared of colour in our own homes?

Mint

14-07-2025

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My sons and I have this rhetorical banter… One of us will ask: 'Who is the most difficult person to know?" To which, one of us responds: 'Myself". When people ask me what I do, I often say I write about design, but what I actually write about, is homes. What makes a home the way it is? Why do we shape it the way we do? How do we think about it more deeply? As my mind sifts through the many spaces I've seen these past few weeks and conversations I've had about the topic of home, the conclusion that I've come to is that many folks are unaware of themselves as they begin making homes. It is a performance, our home. So many different types of performance. Performative authenticity. Performative minimalism.
My sons and I have this rhetorical banter… One of us will ask: 'Who is the most difficult person to know?" To which, one of us responds: 'Myself". When people ask me what I do, I often say I write about design, but what I actually write about, is homes. What makes a home the way it is? Why do we shape it the way we do? How do we think about it more deeply? As my mind sifts through the many spaces I've seen these past few weeks and conversations I've had about the topic of home, the conclusion that I've come to is that many folks are unaware of themselves as they begin making homes. It is a performance, our home. So many different types of performance. Performative authenticity. Performative minimalism.
I just sat through two days of research on the subject of Indian homes. A cascade of information about consumer segments and the sorts of homes people are making across various income groups and cities in the country. In the case of the vast majority of probably 100-plus residences surveyed, I'd say people had done far too much to their dwellings and mostly, and maybe unintentionally, as an act of exhibition. If you don't know yourself, at a very fundamental level, then it's very difficult to make a home that is more than just an illusion.
But then we live in a culture that almost demands a performance, because people living authentically is often just inconvenient. Performance of loyalty, of spirituality, of decorum, of cultured-ness, of piety, of filial adoration. Since the group is considered more important than the individual, most of us are forced into some form of acting, even in our own homes. I come from a conservative Christian background but my home is filled with the iconography of other spiritual and religious inclinations, because some of our best craft capabilities are representations of religion, whether its terracotta figurines, Kalighat paintings or Islamic mirror etchings. Several of my family members would not approve of the imbalance of religious representation or the aesthetics of some of my artworks. And if I were so inclined to be sensitive to their feelings then I'd have to remove at least some of my most precious collectibles, particularly a fierce wall-mounted sculpture Aflame, a fiercely red, gold-ornamented tantric representation of the 14th century Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded, by the art collective WOLF Jaipur. So I understand the diplomatic urge for theatricality. I am only beginning to comprehend and accept my own design, decor and art urges, and if I now live without pretension it is because I find it easier to withstand others' disapproval than decorate my own home on someone else's terms.
When I see prevalent trends in decor, the place that particularly stands emblematic of our discomfort with ourselves is the living room. That space which people create very specifically for symbolic if quiet communication to their guests. Across a vast spectrum of Indian homes, people are covering up their living room walls with PVC wall panels, wallpaper stickers, tiles, faux wooden fluted panels, veneers, wainscotting, even stone. To paint, it seems, is no longer enough.
Though the act of decorating this way is meant to be another tool of personalisation, what such exaggerations achieve is something more complicated. For one thing, these types of additions reduce the size and scale of a space. It also makes for extraordinary complications if there's any water damage or other problems behind the cladding. Many of these off-the-shelf, online-available decor accessories promise to protect your walls, and help people express some level of individualisation. The only problem is, if a lot of people are doing the same exaggerated thing, then everything quickly becomes tired facsimiles mimicking one another.
If you're sitting in a space that's been clad with plywood and veneers wall to wall, and perhaps very little furniture in the room, it doesn't make it a minimalist room, it is the performance of minimalism.
Living rooms that look like they're stages, allegorical settings for domestic theatre. I've been trying to understand the mindset that gives rise to this feeling that a portion of the room needs to be covered with more material—particularly with unsustainable material. I use words like theatrics and performative-ness quite deliberately. Because with these over-material filled spaces that only convey that we have the resources to use them, we're either performing to the market, which has convinced us we need them, or to the trendsetters, who make us believe this level of customisation is necessary or beautiful. If you're sitting in a space that's been clad with plywood and veneers wall to wall, and perhaps very little furniture in the room, it doesn't make it a minimalist room, it is the performance of minimalism. The alternative, when we're picky with the nature of the materials we use, the economic use of materials itself—that frugality is more meaningful than performing minimalism by using an industrial and unsustainable material.
How did we become so scared of walls and paint colour? There's a simplicity and basic-ness to colour and its rendering as a painted material. It is ubiquitous, it is uncomplicated, a fundamental element even, but it is also a frightening, culturally loaded, creative material. To go beyond neutrals is difficult; few do it well. Kerala, the capital of colour-drenched homes, is now largely a neutral hue-loving state. Peruse the pages of the Malayalam design weekly Veedu, and you'll see a surfeit of gabled roofs over white-painted quiet walls. The hegemony of neutrals is complete. Colour is a political and classist tool; we've succumbed to Western readings about colour, without even realising it. I was reminded of these structures and its teachings when I saw the coverage of the video where New York mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani is doing the most banal thing: eating biryani with his hands. In a lot of the world, including places such as Indonesia, people eat with their hands. Yet, that simple dining etiquette evokes a discussion. Colour is as unusual a political tool as food. We imbibe learnings that we're not even aware of. Traditional Indian aesthetics used colour in the most ingenious ways. One of the chief reasons I love south Indian clay figurines is because of their radical, confident use of colour. The colour-blocking is crazy and brilliantly contemporary. Few designers today are able to achieve that sort of range and hue-partnership in a space. Also read: Workspace evolution: Gen Z inspires new office design trends
The reliance on new-tech products that pretend to look like various types of wood, is meant to save us from difficult choices. But the conditions of most Indian cities are such that the more complicated the home becomes, the more difficult its long-term survival. Say with cladding, there's moisture and the evil that it will unleash, the visible traces of dust, and it becomes that much more complicated to change your mind—unlike a wall with colour; if you want to change it then you change it. We change with time, with homes, with experiences, the people we are today are not the same as the ones we'll see in the mirror in a few years. Our homes have to be able to imbibe that. But that means we need to understand who we are at any point in time, to understand also what we are doing to the overall landscape, to our environment.
What are your essentials? What do you need? Where do you want to begin? How will your space accommodate the many versions of you? These are the most important questions to begin with, when you're starting the work on a home. If you don't attempt to answer those then you'll end up helming yourself in with elements you don't actually need.
Manju Sara Rajan is an editor, arts manager and author who divides her time between Kottayam and Bengaluru. Topics You May Be Interested In