An orange bathroom, a blue stone kitchen and a house fans called too beige. Celebrity colour choices split audiences, and the arguments show where bold works and where it doesn’t.

UK TV presenter Stacey Solomon has shown off a bathroom in shades of grey and orange, and she warned people before they started. “I’m ready for people to hate this… But honestly I love it so so much,” she wrote on Instagram.

Plenty of famous homes have been through the same thing. These are nine that got people talking.

1. Stacey Solomon’s orange bathroom

The room is the upstairs bathroom for her sons in her new Essex home, and she kept its existing tangerine bath set rather than rip it out.

“I have plenty of rooms to be neutral in, but this is the boys’ upstairs bathroom & they LOVE this colour,” she wrote.

Most of the criticism was about the finishing rather than the colour. One commenter pointed out that the towel and toilet roll holders weren’t centred on the stripes. A bold colour shows up every setting-out mistake.

2. Stacey Solomon’s black kitchen

It isn’t her first bold call. At her previous home, Pickle Cottage, she painted the kitchen black, which Hello! said was “not what fans were expecting”.

She said it made the room “so much more homely and actually feels brighter!” A dark kitchen doesn’t have to feel heavy if the light and benchtops are working for it.

3. Kate Hudson’s blue stone kitchen

The actor redid the kitchen in her childhood home in Los Angeles with blue quartzite benchtops and splashback, as a paid partnership with appliance brand Café. She calls it her “Blue Jean Baby”.

Commenters on Architectural Digest’s Instagram split. One wrote “Love her- not loving the design.” Another replied, “In a world where white marble is the standard, why not pick blue marble??”

4. Bobby Flay’s marble bathrooms

The US chef’s Tribeca loft has five bathrooms by designer Olivia Jane Capuano, one of them swirled in green and white stone.

One commenter called it a “Great apartment. Except the bathroom…” Olivia defended the bathrooms’ “distinct and expressive character”. With natural stone, the veining can carry as much colour as paint.

5. Dakota Johnson’s green kitchen

The actor’s Los Angeles kitchen, by design studio Pierce & Ward, has cabinets reported to be Benjamin Moore Alligator Alley.

When Architectural Digest first toured it, the debate was mostly about her rug and a bowl of limes. Years later the green still draws comments, with one fan quoted by Good Housekeeping calling it “Playful, fresh and gorge!”

dakota johnson’s kitchen in the april 2020 issue of architectural digest
Dakota Johnson’s kitchen in the April 2020 issue of Architectural Digest

6. Lily Allen and David Harbour’s “clown house”

The Brooklyn townhouse, shown in an Architectural Digest tour, mixes bold colour room by room. Lily said her children call it “the clown house”…

Plenty of fans loved it. “LILY ALLEN HAS MY DREAM HOUSE,” one wrote.

7. Martha Stewart’s yellow living room

Martha reupholstered the living room at her Maine home, Skylands, from grey-blue in what she called a “creamy pale buttery yellow”.

Instagram commenters said it “looks old and stuffy” and was “not your best work”. She replied that she was surprised by the “harsh judgment” and promised more colour.

8. Reese Witherspoon’s pink powder room

Reese showed off a blush-pink powder room in a paid Kohler partnership, with patterned wallpaper, a pink and grey marble basin and a chequerboard floor. She has called it “the room I’m most proud of”.

Some commenters weren’t convinced. “It looks like a public bathroom,” wrote one. Others called it “what powder room dreams are made of”. In a room that small, pattern piles up quickly.

9. Michelle Keegan and Mark Wright’s beige mansion

This one went the other way. The couple’s Essex home drew complaints for having too little colour, with one follower calling it “All a bit too beige for my liking.”

Defenders replied, “It’s brand new, give them a couple of years.”

What it means at home

Most of the backlash wasn’t really about colour. People objected to stripes that didn’t line up, pattern on pattern in a small room, and finishes fighting each other.

Nobody in New Zealand is going to judge your bathroom in the comments, but whoever buys your house might. A bold paint colour you can repaint is a low-risk experiment. Stone, tile and a new bath set are much harder to undo.