Good Taste Is Often Disguised as Expensive Conformity

All photographs by Christopher Horwood Photography

Let me say something slightly dangerous.

A lot of what we call “good taste” is just expensive obedience.

Somewhere along the way, design stopped being about discernment and started being about alignment. Alignment with the showroom. Alignment with the algorithm. Alignment with whatever the high-end developers decided would photograph best this year.

We whisper the word timeless like it’s sacred. But more often than not, timeless simply means safe. Safe enough to resell. Safe enough not to offend. Safe enough to blend into the scroll without raising anyone’s blood pressure.

And somehow, safe became synonymous with good.

If you’ve ever toured new builds or scrolled luxury listings and felt a strange sense of déjà vu, you’re not imagining it. The same floors. The same creamy walls. The same stone with dramatic veining performing for the camera. The same neutral sofa that costs as much as a small used car and somehow still feels emotionally beige.

We are not witnessing coincidence. We are witnessing coordination.

The fashion industry has been running this play for decades. Name brand stores decide what is “in.” A silhouette appears in every window. A certain wash of denim becomes non negotiable. Suddenly we all feel vaguely outdated in perfectly functional clothes. The solution, conveniently, is to buy the new approved version.

Interior design operates on the same cycle, just with bigger invoices and slower regret.

A few influential studios and brands elevate a material. A certain faucet finish becomes aspirational. A specific wood tone is declared the wood tone. Designers repeat it. Influencers amplify it. Developers mass produce it. Soon it becomes shorthand for refinement.

If you question it, you risk being labeled unsophisticated.

But here is the uncomfortable truth. When every high end kitchen looks nearly identical, we are not celebrating taste. We are rewarding conformity at a higher price point.

Luxury does not automatically equal individuality. Sometimes it simply means you bought the most expensive version of what everyone else was told to like.

The word tasteful has become code for socially approved. It implies that someone, somewhere, has already vetted your choices. That you will not embarrass yourself. That you have chosen correctly.

Correctly according to whom?

Often it is the same small circle of brands and publications that benefit from standardization. Uniform taste is easier to market. It is easier to stage. It is easier to sell. It creates a clean pipeline from aspiration to purchase.

It also creates homes that feel eerily interchangeable.

I see this tension constantly in my work. Clients light up when we talk about something unexpected. A saturated color. A vintage piece with history. A detail that feels slightly unhinged in the best way. Then the hesitation creeps in. Is it too much. Is it still good taste.

What they are really asking is whether it will be approved.

And I understand that fear. Renovations are expensive. No one wants to invest in something that dates quickly. But there is a difference between longevity and neutrality. There is a difference between restraint and erasure.

We have also quietly confused resale value with identity. People design homes as if they are staging them for a future buyer they have not met yet. They filter out personality in favor of broad appeal. They choose what will offend the fewest people rather than what will delight themselves.

That is not taste. That is strategy.

Strategy has its place. But if strategy is your only guiding principle, your home becomes a commodity. And commodities, by definition, are interchangeable.

The irony is that true taste has very little to do with copying the most expensive version of a trend. It is about discernment. Proportion. Quality. Context. It is knowing why something works and then applying that knowledge in a way that reflects your own life.

It requires confidence.

Confidence to choose the color that feels right even if it is not circulating in the algorithm this month. Confidence to keep the antique table because it tells a story, even if it does not match the current showroom palette. Confidence to let your house look like it belongs specifically to you.

There is nothing inherently wrong with white oak floors or marble islands. They can be beautiful. But when they become mandatory markers of sophistication, we should pause.

If your home could be swapped with forty thousand others and no one would notice, that is not timelessness. That is uniformity with a luxury price tag.

Good taste is not about obedience. It is not about fear of being wrong. It is not about buying your way into approval.

Good taste is personal. It is thoughtful. It is sometimes a little polarizing.

And frankly, in a sea of expensive sameness, a little bit of you is far more interesting than perfect conformity.

-Juliette