Beauty Is Not in the Eye of the Beholder

Why Good Design Isn’t Just About Taste—and Never Was

You’ve heard it before. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder .”It’s the design equivalent of “let’s agree to disagree.”

It sounds nice. It keeps things safe. And it’s completely wrong.

This phrase has done more to water down our built environment than almost any other idea in modern design. We’ve used it to justify bad proportions, awkward elevations, cheap materials, and entire neighborhoods that look like architectural casseroles.

But here’s the truth:

Beauty is not subjective. It’s legible, tangible, quantifiable. And good design isn’t just a matter of opinion.

We All Know Beauty When We See It

You don’t need an architecture degree to recognize a beautiful building. Just like you don’t need a music degree to know when a song hits a sour note.

• We all admire places that feel settled and serene.

• We all pause for buildings that have rhythm and restraint.

• We all sense when a space makes us feel better—without even knowing why.

That’s not “personal taste.” That’s human intuition.

There’s a reason the world still travels to walk the streets of Paris, Kyoto, Charleston, or Venice. Those cities weren’t designed by vibe. They were shaped by time-tested principles—scale, order, proportion, hierarchy, materiality.

We know what beauty is. We’ve just been told not to trust our gut.

How Did We Get So Confused?

Sometime around the middle of the 19th century, design culture decided that taste was everything. Beauty became taboo—too traditional, too elitist, too subjective.

In came phrases like:

• “It’s just my style.” or "the styles are dead."

• “We wanted to express ourselves.”

• “There’s no wrong way to design.”

Listen, if you want to express yourself, take up finger painting. But if you’re designing a home that will last for generations, maybe we should have a few standards.

The problem isn’t that people have preferences. The problem is when preferences replace principles.

Let’s Talk About Shutters for a Second

Real shutters are sized to cover the window. They have hinges. They serve a function. Fake shutters are too skinny, screwed into the wall, and exist purely to “add interest.”

Which one is beautiful? Which one is trying too hard?

This isn’t about taste. It’s about whether the design makes sense. Beauty isn’t subjective here—it’s visible. You can measure it.

And once you start noticing it, you can’t unsee it.(I’m sorry in advance.)

Beauty Follows Order

Beautiful homes aren’t beautiful by accident. They follow a kind of internal logic:

• The massing is clear.

• The order and hierarchy are readable.

• The materials are used in harmony with their natural physical properties.

• The details are proportioned and scaled to the whole.

And here’s the kicker: That logic holds true whether the home is Classical, Shingle Style, Spanish Colonial, or Mountain Modern.

Beauty isn’t about style. It’s about compositional structure.

It’s not “your opinion” vs. “mine.” It’s whether the thing actually works.

“But I Like It” Isn’t the Same as “It’s Good”

We’ve confused preference with principle.

You might like gummy bears on your pizza. That doesn’t make it a culinary breakthrough. You might like a house with seven gables, a turret, and a barrel arch on a farmhouse. That doesn’t make it timeless.

You’re allowed to like whatever you want .But let’s stop pretending that liking something makes it good design.

What Actually Makes Something Beautiful?

Here’s the real checklist:

1. Simple, unified massing – Not a roofline with ADHD.

2. Order and hierarchy – The front door matters. So do rhythm and scale.

3. Natural materials – Not faux stone glued on like wallpaper.

4. Well-proportioned details – The difference between elegance and caricature.

This isn’t about copying the past. It’s about building with the same intelligence that made the best buildings of the past still feel right today.

Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. It’s in the eye of the trained. Of the careful. Of the architect who knows what they’re looking at.

Let’s Raise the Bar

Here’s what I believe: If we keep saying beauty is subjective, we give ourselves permission to build garbage.

We stop asking what’s worth building. We stop remembering what we once knew how to do.

Beauty is not elitist. It’s not outdated. It should be our aim in architecture.

It’s a birthright. It’s something every community deserves. And it starts with trusting that there are better ways to build.

Let’s raise the standard. Let’s stop designing for likes .Let’s stop pretending that taste is truth.

Let’s get back to beauty.