The internet is absolutely overflowing with DIY home ideas these days, and though most of them are top-tier, some are...well, let's just say that not everyone loves them. I was reminded of that when I asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the popular home projects they just can't get behind, and their answers were super illuminating. Here are the most surprising ones:
1. "Painted cabinets can look okay in a classic style when the surface is truly paintable, but when they’re old, cheap, ugly cabinets anyway, a thick coat of paint just makes them look even worse. You see this a lot with people trying to fancy-up an old apartment or house to try to get more money out of it."
—Anonymous
2. "Limewashing walls. Am I the only one who thinks it looks sloppy? What happened to just picking a nice paint color and sticking with it? It feels very 'social media' to me, and not something that'll stand the test of time."
3. "My personal interior design pet peeve is people choosing fixtures purely for aesthetic, without the LEAST consideration for the long-term cost or time required for cleaning and maintenance. Things like chandeliers, DIY wall paneling, and gold fixtures are magnets for dust and water droplets. These things are in real luxury homes because the owners of those homes can afford to pay people to clean them — frequently and thoroughly. Luxury fixtures aren't just a flex on being able to afford them; they're also a flex on being able to afford to keep them looking nice."
4. "Stock tank pools. I understand why people like them! They're cheaper and a lot 'nicer' than your standard above-ground pool, but after watching my brother go through the labor-intensive process of DIYing one, I will never, ever recommend someone adding one. His leaked non-stop, and he hardly ever even used the thing; actually, he didn't realize how small all those stock tanks were until he actually used his completed 'pool.' If you hope a stock tank pool will be a family-friendly upgrade, you might be out of luck."
5. "I hate peel-and-stick tile made out of plastic or vinyl stickers."
6. "Wallpapered powder rooms in busy prints. It’s going to look so dated in five years! It also seems less sanitary than painted walls, to be honest."
7. "Open kitchen cabinets! I want a door for no other reason than if the shelves are messy, you can close the cabinet door, and ta-da! No more mess!"
8. "Statement front doors. It's the trend taking over my suburban housing development like a literal plague. To be fair, I think there are certain places where they could be a lovely touch, but suburban, cookie-cutter neighborhoods aren't it. You have all these homes that look like carbon copies of one another...but one has a neon yellow door, the next one a Barbie pink, Nickelodeon green, etc. When I walk my dog every morning, I can't help but chuckle at how ridiculous they all look next to each other."
9. "DIY kitchen cabinets are the worst, and I only know this because I swear it almost made me want to divorce my husband. We thought we were saving all this money by getting DIY-friendly cabinets for our upgraded kitchen, but I'd pay four times as much as we did if I could retroactively save my sanity and spare my marriage all the arguing. We expected it would take a long weekend at most. Nope! Try three weeks of endless weekend and night work. The worst part is that it all looks and feels cheap now that it's installed. I wish we'd just had a professional install real cabinets. Don't let influencers swindle you; if you're upgrading your kitchen, do it correctly!"
—Shelby, 40, Nevada
10. "I'm sorry, but the 'color-wash' trend is absolutely ridiculous to me. I've seen so many wealthy home influencers swooping in to buy massive multi-million dollar homes lately — and then painting all their bedroom walls and ceilings from top to bottom in the darkest, most depressing colors. Buying a sprawling house just to feel like you're sleeping in a cave?! Make it make sense!"
11. "Peel-and-stick wallpaper. It's gotten a lot better in quality over the years, but if you're going to go through all the trouble of wallpapering, get the real stuff with actual adhesive...unless you want it to start peeling immediately, that is."
—Anonymous
12. "Stop painting brick! It looks awful and always looks DIY. There are brick stains you can buy that look much better and will tint the brick a preferred color. Or, do a whitewash. Either looks better than coating brick with a layer of boring white paint."
13. "I currently rent a small flat, and the previous tenants thought it would be a great idea to paint the loo, the tiniest room in the flat, poop brown — and then place mirror tiles all around so that the space would look bigger again. Between the poop color, the contradiction of the dark paint and mirrors, and the fact that they could look at themselves while on the toilet...I don't think these people had a single idea of what they were doing. I had the tiles removed and the room repainted first thing when I moved in."
14. "This might not be super common everywhere, but here in Ohio, everyone in our neighborhood seals their asphalt driveway every summer. We made that mistake once, and we'll never make it again. Your driveway will end up looking streaky for many, many months, and the worst part is that it'll turn it into a giant ice skating rink during winter months. There's no traction!"
15. "The 'landlord's special' of painting, which is just paint over paint. It looks awful and chips horribly, mostly because the new layer was often added to fix the chipped look of the old one. I also currently live in a place where the floor is painted — hardwood painted like you'd paint your wall — and 0/10 would recommend. Everything shows, it attracts dirt because it isn't sealed like a stain would be, it looks dirty 10 seconds after you clean it, and you have to baby it so you don't damage the paint. I'd rather live in a place with cheap-looking luxury vinyl plank flooring than actual hardwood that's been painted. At least I could mop."
16. "My DIY interior design pet peeve is *specifically* marble contact paper when used to try to make a table or something look expensive. And not just because any contact paper, even if it's made of high-quality vinyl, is not durable at all in a high-use location (like a table or countertop), but because it utterly fails at the goal of making a wood table look or feel like marble. Marble is cold to the touch, virtually always has a beveled edge for practical reasons, and is SUPER heavy. So even if you don't walk up to the table and touch it, you can usually see at a glance that it's not real marble."
17. "Tongue-and-groove ceilings and walls or, god forbid, shiplap! HGTV made everyone think it's a 'quick and easy' DIY project, but it's actually tremendously hard! How do I know? I did it myself! Though I'd love it at first, but now I hate it. The modern farmhouse aesthetic it adds to my house is totally wrong. Huge regret!"
—Sandy, 58, Illinois
18. "The whole gray faux wood floor thing. We moved into a brand-new house and didn't get to pick any of the fixtures because we had to move quickly. Whoever was originally going to buy our house chose those floors. Every single time I look at them, I see a ratty, old wooden fence that has been sitting out in the elements for years. Why would you want your floors to look like a beat-up old deck? If you're going to spend all that money, at least make it look nice. Whenever we can afford to, it will be one of the first things to get changed, but for now, we get to live with bleached deck chic."
19. "All the faux stone! I get that it's easy to install, but no matter where it is — fireplace, house skirting, accent walls — it just looks like stone-shaped plastic to me. It's not very cost-effective, either. In most cases, it's actually more expensive than real stone...minus the install, of course."
—Ryan, 42, Pennsylvania
20. "Speaking as an architect here, for the love of god, too many people think it’s acceptable to roller paint surfaces that should not be painted in the first place. It’s ruining the quality and resale value of the items! I’ve seen DIY videos of folks roller painting their stainless steel appliances or painting their granite or quartz countertops a 'faux wood' texture to look like butcher block. These are good quality items, people! You are actively diminishing their worth, all while simultaneously making them look worse and doing irreparable damage!"
21. "When people buy lovely antique wood furniture and paint it, I get mad enough to chew glass. I promise that 150-year-old carved mahogany does not look better as a gray blob — and that paint will be almost impossible to remove from the carvings. Don’t like the look of old wood furniture? Great news: Ikea exists."
—Anonymous
22. "The geometric 'accent wall' where people use painter's tape to make shapes and then paint each shape a different color. It’s overused and overhyped."
23. "Hot tubs. Even if you're DIYing the installation and buying a 'plug-and-play' version, I can't tell you how much time you'll spend troubleshooting things, fixing broken parts, and getting frustrated with something you hardly ever use. They're the definition of an upgrade that you think will change your life until you actually get one — and then it ends up turning your life into a living hell."
—Matthew, 35, California
24. And finally: "I think we've reached peak Edison string light. They're gorgeous for outdoor dining at a restaurant, but as the light of choice on every home's patio or deck, I'm starting to think they look really tacky. I hate to be this person...but they're not great for animals, either. Those string bulbs are BRIGHT; so bright that they can really affect animals' sleep-wake patterns."
What's the one popular home project that everyone seems to be doing these days — even if you really can't get behind it? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below, or feel free to use this Google form if you'd prefer to stay anonymous.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.