The editor of House & Home explained the realities to an appliance executive: “FHA now tends to give a lower valuation where color is used. He has the biggest stake in the use of safe colors, for he has the most to lose by a color choice that might lower the re-sale marketability of the house.” The Federal Housing Authority, which oversaw mortgage lending to veterans under the GI Bill of Rights, took a conservative stance. “The builder can take his profit and run once he has found a buyer who likes the colors he has chosen, but the mortgage lender must live with the house for 20 or 30 years through many changes of ownership. The “streamlined” kitchen - one with modernistic cabinets, chrome-trimmed counters, and color appliances - was still too unusual for cautious money men. Today only one house out of six is built for a known buyer, and even that one house in six will probably be re-sold to an unknown buyer within five years.” Color selection, always a risky business, was complicated by the anticipation of mobility.īankers and appraisers had to deem a house suitable to be resold before they would lend money to the builder or the homeowner. “Today,” according to a report from a conference on color in interior decoration sponsored by the builders’ magazine House & Home in 1955, “most people buy their homes ready made, just as they buy their clothes ready made or their cars ready made. Developers knew that the frazzled house hunter, exhausted after an endless Sunday afternoon of open houses, would remember “the one with the red and white kitchen.” But the populations of these new communities were less stable than the builders would have liked, and the rapid turnover affected how houses were designed. The largest market for color appliances was to be found in new suburban developments such as the three Levittowns (one on Long Island, one in Pennsylvania, and one in New Jersey). She wanted “electrical appliances not only for their utilitarian value but for their contribution to her kitchen’s livability.” Unlike her “old-homebody” mother, the postwar appliance customer decorated to express “her creativity and individuality,” stated a 1951 report on women and electrical appliances by Ernest Dichter’s Institute for Motivational Research. Dichter, who had probed the minds of consumers for hundreds of companies, recommended a “psychological strategy.” Color, he suggested, was a psychological tool that could reach deep into the mind and unlock the consumer’s nascent or unrealized desires. Unlike her “old-homebody” mother, she decorated to express “her creativity and individuality.” She wanted “electrical appliances not only for their utilitarian value but for their contribution to her kitchen’s livability,” and she expected “the style of the refrigerator or washing machine ‘to harmonize with the rest of the kitchen’s décor.’” The manufacturers’ challenge was to turn a utilitarian product into a fashion accessory. with a barrage of publicity.” The postwar appliance customer had most likely worked in an office, a store, or a factory during the war, and knew her own mind. different from one another,” making it hard to “capture the consumer’s heart by assaulting it. “The General Electric refrigerators, Kelvinator, and Frigidaire are not. Jones Advertising Agency by Ernest Dichter’s Institute for Motivational Research. “Let’s face it,” said a 1951 report on women and electrical appliances compiled for the Ralph H. This article is excerpted from Regina Lee Blaszczyk’s book “ The Color Revolution.” When a major trade association for the paint industry reported the rising popularity of kitchens in canary yellow and chartreuse, the household equipment industry took notice. Rumors circulated that the colorful models accounted for one-third of the Chambers Company’s sales. In 1949, the Chambers Company, a small Indiana stove factory, startled everyone by offering stoves in red, black, blue, gray, yellow, and green. But the colorization of big-ticket durable goods for the home had been stymied by the Depression and by World War II. In the 1920s, Macy’s Color in the Kitchen promotion had popularized pots and pans in bright hues, and Kohler Color Ware had made some headway in the bathroom. Howard Ketcham’s work on the Bell Model 500, a direct response to this taste, was paralleled by the appliance industry’s move toward color. The bright postwar landscape, with its color-conditioned schools, its two-tone Chevys, and its orange-roofed Howard Johnson’s restaurants, whetted the appetite for more color in the home. BeeLine Reader uses subtle color gradients to help you read more efficiently.
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