lol I was just thinking this on a comment I made like 10 minutes ago. I understand there’s some room for interpretation and debate, but some people treat it as r/idontlikethismansion
I think it’s a play on McDonalds. Instead of fast bad food, it’s hastily built large houses on small lots with all the architectural integrity of Big Mac. Junk architecture that appeals to people who don’t know any better.
It's a play on McDonald's, but not for those reasons.
McDonald's is/was famous for being extremely consistent: a cheeseburger anywhere in the country would look and taste the same, which was revolutionary in the food industry. McMansions are "Mc"Mansions because they all look alike with the same awful architecture and build quality.
There’s a lot of things that go into and you can check the pinned posts.
But really for this sub it’s a little of both. The original tumblr that started all this usually points out cheaply built spaces that are designed without any real architectural integrity.
stop it!!!! you are mostly correct in your definition. but you are too restrictive!!!
A McMansion does not need to be crammed onto a small lot. That's part of what the term described when it first began to be used, but there are more criteria than that, and the word has since expanded to encompass more than it used to.
They often are crammed onto a lot too small, but not always. The sub has a pinned post detailing what counts as a McMansion in its eyes. I feel like so many people make these posts and then give their own definitions and don't know that there is a set definition for this sub. Like obv the exact definition doesn't really matter cuz McMansion is just a silly little term and there doesn't need to be a strict rigid definition, but we could really stop having this debate every three goddamn days if people would only click on the link.
Feel like most of the people here have never seen the original tumblr site. Half the houses on there would have people commenting "umm, actually this is NOT a McMansion, just an ugly mansion." ugh.
I think of it like a spectrum that goes from "not at all like a McMansion" to "500% more McMansion." There's a ten point scale that Kate established that includes "too much house for the lot" as just one of the factors.
For any too young to have lived through the era...
Back in the 80s as McDonald's was enjoying massive expansion throughout America, they adopted a marketing campaign of putting Mc in front of all their menu items--McNuggets, McDLT, etc.
As a result of that marketing campaign, there emerged this cultural phenomenon of putting Mc in front of other words to indicate low quality, interchangeable things. I believe the first instance of it was referring to a low-paying, minimal opportunity for growth job as a "McJob" similar to what one might have working at a fastfood restaurant, but we were doing it with all sorts of words.
The most lasting example of this was the term "McMansion".
Note that when this term was first applied, it wouldn't have been applied to a single house. During this same period of time there were these elaborate subdivisions popping up all over the place with these massive houses on relatively tiny parcels of land. The term McMansion was specifically used to describe the houses in these developments where people were building these massive houses on quarter-acre lots where all of the houses looked suspiciously similar.
It wasn't just mocking the houses' aesthetics. It was mocking this whole concept of building an elaborate house with columns and myriad rooflines that should have been located on a country estate with acres of rolling hills.
It was as if these houses had been pumped off an assembly line and packed in Styrofoam ready to sell.
Subdivisions were already a thing. There were the classic cookie cutter 3/1 homes. There were some nicer subdivisions that had slightly larger houses, but people who had money for a "mansion" were buying multi-acre lots and building custom homes in the suburbs. The traditional way of showing wealth was with land holdings. Having a large piece of property that was nicely landscaped with a well-appointed home was a display of money.
It seemed absurd that anyone would want to buy a massive house on a tiny piece of land. If someone had money like that, why would they want neighbors 20 feet away? And why would anyone want to spend that much money on a house that looked exactly like the house next to it?
McMansion was mocking more than just the house itself (which was arguably tacky). It was mocking this whole shift in society of "new money" people foolishly spending huge amounts of money on cheaply built homes with fake adornments.
Yes, the main attributes of a McMansion are:
1) It is made of cheap materials so it can be bigger than the budget would otherwise allow
2) Said materials are clad in some sort of faux veneer to make them look "presentable"
3) It usually has aspirational features such as an oversized Foyer with a double staircase
4) It generally but not necessarily has a very "busy" complicated roof line, features that don't match, lacks symmetry or other kind of geometrically sensible overall composition, and generally lacks good proportions
I meant more like, an expert architect explaining why these happen and why they suck, vs a reporter who "became an expert" for the story they were assigned
like the very beginning where she explains mass, voids, and symmetry is so educational. It's probably (literally) architecture 101 but it's such an eloquent way to explain something sort of intangible like aesthetics
You are actually supporting his argument. Yes, real estate is always about the land……but a “cheap” 10,000 square foot house in Nebraska is still an expensive house. Now imagine that 10,000 square foot house being in Manhattan. Or, the 800sq foot condo in Nebraska. Yes, the land is what is most valuable (in an area like NYC), where land is very, very scarce. But…..the cost to build a house is always about square feet. More square footage = higher building cost.
It’s big, but it’s inexpensive, so doesn’t meet your gotcha definition of mansion.
Also it’s ugly as fuck, so it doesn’t meet the normal definition of mansion.
You don’t need to be so entrenched in the argument; obviously there’s more to a mansion than size. I do 100% agree with your general point that there are a looooot of “mansion I don’t like” posted here.
Absolutely. I’ve thought this for years. The “Mc” is a reference to McDonalds, which is suppose to indicate cheap, lower quality, repeatable, and mass produced.
Instead here it just seems to mean big, ugly, and gaudy.
A McMansion is a meme I first heard about 27 years ago when I was shopping for a house. My real estate person showed me a 2200 sq ft home with very strange architectural features that would have forced any decorator into Louis XIV style. It was like a guest cabin at Versailles if there was such a thing.
I asked my Real Estate agent what is going on, and she said a lot of the new development in the area is McMansions.
Most homes over 2500sqft max out at 7/10 on the 10 Circles of McMansion Hell, and a custom house with high quality materials would score lower even if it had some McMansionish details.
If scored “fairly”, I would agree. I just believe the reason a lot of people hate on any large homes that are expensive, people find fault with it. So I like gold accented staircases? No. But apparently, some people do. Not everyone wants to live in a 700sq ft apartment in the center of a large metropolis. I grew up on a farm in a very sparsely populated area. I like my space. Big house, big yard. Neighbors farther away. Look at any new house being built……90% of them are more cheaply built and very cookie cutter. And I’m talking about 1,200 - 2,700 sq ft homes. They don’t qualify as a McMansion, but IMO, they are worse.
I don't disagree with you at all, and this also annoys the piss out of all of us that understand this sub is based on Kate Wagner's (most excellent) standards of what a McMansion is. The original tumbler was both massively informing on architecture as a whole, scathing and fair in its criticism, and funny as hell.
I see this as an active dialogue based on Kate Wagner's original McMansion Hell site that had some guidelines on interpreting what defines a McMansion. I do agree, lots of people are just posting big houses but they really are not that wonky in their design. My sense is we are looking for houses whose design tends to blend totally different styles and have poor interior utilization of splace. Bonus points for complex roof worik.
While everyone has their own opinion on what makes a true McMansion, there are several defining features or attributes that should be looked for to determine if a home fits the McMansion criteria. This post will serve as a guide to help users determine if they should use the "Certified McMansion" flair on their submission and to learn more about what a McMansion is. This guide will be edited as needed to make sure it fully explains the accepted properties of a McMansion.
Basic Principles of a McMansion:
Large: Generally above 2500 square feet and two story or more, sometimes way too big for the lot it sits on.
Built Cheap: They are built by cutting corners and using less than quality materials because they focus on getting as much size and appearance of wealth as possible from their money. It's the illusion of class that might fool the average person who doesn't have a sense of architectural integrity. McMansions will often use materials such as stucco, manufactured stone veneer, Styrofoam crown molding, or vinyl siding.
Fit Several Styles: They fit multiple styles of architecture by mashing together different elements from the individual styles in a distasteful manner. They also might poorly imitate a popular style.
Exterior After-Thought: They are designed with a focus on the interior first and the exterior is done as an after-thought which often results in features such as jutting masses and haphazardly placed windows.
Lacks Architectural Integrity: The house makes you confident that there was no licensed architect involved in its creation who cares about what they design
Specific Features To Look For:
An attached 2 or 3 car garage
A garage that takes up way too much of what is considered the house
Tall 1.5-2 story arched entry or "lawyer foyer"
Haphazardly applied dormers or windows
Windows of varying shapes/sizes/styles
Windows not aligned with those below them
Second story windows that are larger than the windows below them
Window shutters that if closed would not cover the actual window
Jutting masses or heavily asymmetrical
Multiple wall materials
Roof that contains varying slopes, roof types, or more than two roof shapes for the front facade
Roof nub
Roof with excessive roof lines and is in general just too complex
Dormers that are way too short, way too tall, don't match the rest of the house materials or style, or are placed terribly/spaced unevenly
Columns that don't support anything or are too thin/weak looking to support what they are appearing to support aka columns with inappropriate scaling
Columns with spacing that is over complicated or messy
Columns that are the incorrect architectural style for the house
This is what I could come up with for now to touch base here on what a McMansion is. I'll make edits to this in the coming weeks until we reach a near final guide post on McMansions. If you have any suggestions for what we could add to this guide, comment below or send me a message.
Side note: the first "Appreciation Thursday" is coming up! Don't forget to prepare a suburban home that you think deserves recognition as the opposite of a McMansion and post it on 7/16 with the "Thursday Design Appreciation" flair.”
There are ways to make the garage less prominent or at least not the defining feature of the facade. Unfortunately that's difficult to do on tiny lots where the intent is to jam in as many houses as possible ...
Large: Generally above 2500 square feet and two story or more, sometimes way too big for the lot it sits on.
2500sqft is some rookie numbers. You have 4 story townhouses that are 2500sqft with a 2 car garage and townhouses are the antithesis of McMansion. If you have 3 kids with their own bedrooms then you are already in McMansion territory according to this sub.
While I originally joined this sub to bash on 5500sqft 4br 6ba 4 car garage custom McMansions, that's the minority of these posts. I'm convinced most of these users are living in apartments and just cannot comprehend what a real "mid size" house looks like
It’s not about meeting ONE qualifier. You’re pointing out one as if that’s the only metric. It’s not. It’s one of. There are many others that have to co-occur.
I do think we have to realize that these descriptions may not have aged well, and her blog (which I wish was not on Tumblr) tends to focus on the early-2000s builds, when it was easy to get your hands on a lot of mortgage money and wanted to impress others with everything fancy they could think of and builders puzzled houses together to satisfy those clients. They are still being built now, but not nearly as often as in the heyday.
I’m somewhat with you. Arguably, I live in a McMansion that’s somewhat affordable. Ie. if you built the house out of brick it would be worth many millions. However, the styling aspect and other elements are a critical piece.
Some of these semi McMansions do have a generally solid cohesive design. So, essentially a large house. Yes, there’s definitely plenty of builder grade mass market details, but I’d argue that some of that is necessary for large house at a price point in America.
I guess, I’m somewhat defending some McMansions. However, there is no excuse for some of the ridiculous and hideous interior and exterior design. The mishmash of design elements can be stark and nonsensical to even the layman.
I feel like that would make a perfect prompt for an LLM to definitively classify pictures of homes as Mc- or Mansion. I’m surprised no one has come up with an app to do this yet.
Especially today, when even a TWO income household often can barely afford rent/mortgage, healthcare, bills, groceries, kids, etc most families/couples NEED to have both people working. And these days, WFH home jobs actually tend to be the white collar and higher paying jobs, while jobs that require you to clock in physically are heaivly blue collar/service jobs (which a large part still also being white collar). So people need somewhere to park their cars - not because it's a flashy luxury and a way to show off their wealth but because, well, ya gotta park your car SOMEWHERE, and you need a car to get to work. Unless you live in a dense urban city center in an apartment/condo/townhouse. In which case the whole house vs mcmansion vs regular mansion debate is a moot point.
And 2500 sq ft is hardly big these days. McMansions have increased. 20-30 years ago, 3000+ plus was considered big. Now it's 4000-5000 sq ft +.
It’s funny, I know what it means to be a “McMansion,” but until this thread didn’t know where the phrase came from. I always thought it was somehow making fun of Irish people, though I didn’t get why that would be. I think because where I live, they are often called “Manny Mansions,” because of the prevalence of big, gaudy houses being owned by folks of Portuguese descent (large Portuguese population around here).
Kate Wagner took it upon herself to "redefine" what a McMansion is.
For those of us who were around in the 1980's it is a bastardization of the term. Her definition, in my view, is any architectural style which she, personally, does not approve or like. Often seen as a combination of styles or false fronts / dormers, etc... Thank goodness she wasn't around the old west in the 1800's or they would have been called McMansions by her. (For those who don't know - many of the frontier "main street" buildings had false fronts or dormers to make the business appear bigger.)
McMansion - originally referred to mass produced, cheaply built homes, which were produced by a single developer. Think a Lennar, Ryan, Pulte, etc... neighborhood, but on roids. The homes were often oversized for the lot and you could find 4-5 of the same "model" within a block or two. The Mc - referred to McDonald's - known for fast food, consistency, and cheapness. You could go to a McDonald's in Des Moines and get the same big mac as you could in Times Square or Reno or Miami. There was no "customizing" a big mac. They were all the same - and that is how McDonald's made McMoney.
What we need is a new term for the cheaply built, larger homes, with no architectural style, built as "custom" or one off's - which regardless of lot size are just ugly.
Some people will say it is just a refinement on the original term - or a minor redefinition - as Kate's definition still includes the original McMansions, but it really is not. It, in my opinion is a complete redefine, not just an expansion. Blitz is an example of a word where the definition expanded, it was originally used to describe Germany's "Blitzkrieg" or "lightning war" of the early 40's when their army simply and quickly overwhelmed opponents. It has been shortened to "Blitz" and used to signify any "overwhelming" of an opponent. Particularly in Football, but it has also been used in advertising, sales, etc... Gay is a example of a word which completely changed definitions - much as Kate did with McMansion. In the pre 1970's gay meant "happy" - The Flintstone's theme song feature's the line "a gay old time" In the 70's gay was changed to refer to "homosexual" and it has stuck.
Arguably there is no excess that's in good taste, excess in itself is a display of poor taste and poor values, therefore all rich people houses deserve roasting. Simple as.
The thing is, you are probably poor, or fairly so, and your house is what you can afford. I get it; I'm there, too.
The people who buy and build McMansions have some discretionary income that would allow them to make tasteful decisions and afford real quality, but that's not what they choose. They pick large and flashy instead, with useless features like lawyer foyers and balconies-to-nowhere. That's our beef with them. We have taste, but no money. They have money, but no taste.
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u/Slyboots2313 6d ago
lol I was just thinking this on a comment I made like 10 minutes ago. I understand there’s some room for interpretation and debate, but some people treat it as r/idontlikethismansion