Ideal Home Magazine? An exercise in condecension (Ideal Home)

Name: hotluca

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Product:	Ideal Home
Date:	21/09/00 (1115 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Aspirational, a clever person could extract and adapt some ideas from the lofty homes shown

Disadvantages: Out of touch with the 'average' home dweller

I am an avid homes and lifestyles mag reader mainly because I live in a hole that needs basically rebuilding, not just inspiration, and we can but dream, and also because I have an hour and a half journey on the Tube every day, and long since tired of Cosmo et al telling me things I didn't want to know about people and places I didn't care about.

I purchased Ideal Homes today in a moment of magazine famine, having been trying to wean myself off the damned expensive things for weeks. Having 'read it' from cover to cover three times I gleaned one useful bit of info out of it, and found myself fuming at the thought of people spending £12k on a blooming bathroom.

Ideal Homes is formulaic in its approach - basically, keep every issue the same and hope the readers don't notice. They trot out the same old colour wheel approach 'mix colours at the opposite side of the spectrum for complete vomit induction or choose colours next to each other for complete visual catatonia' and the like.

Other opinions on this magazine pointed out that the homes shown were always mansion types (and for this issue let's find someone who lives in a monster listed farmhouse that the developers did up for them as a favour...)and never never never lowly souls like me who live in a crap 30s semi.

Their whole editorial approach seems to be holier than thou and personally irks me. It also gives me the hump that you can find yourself reading what seemed like a genuine article about ovens and suddenly you realise that it's an ad for a posh cooker manufacturer. Not that IH are alone in this crime, it just felt bad.

There are too many adverts, the articles are more suited to Country Life than your mass market home enthusiast, and they need a drastic change of formula.

The final addition of insult to injury was their first mini article asking you which cover you would have preferred on the magazine. Perhap
s they want some new art directors if they can't make their own mind up?

Summary: