| Product: |
Ideal Home |
| Date: |
16/01/01 (155 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: None
Disadvantages: Boring, minimalistic homes with nondescript people in them
At one time I would look forward to purchasing this magazine every month. It only cost £1 then and indeed I bought it for many years. The homes portrayed would vary from an average (yes average) terrace or semi to large mansions and even castles and villas. Sometimes the stars homes were featured and on other occasions the homes of normal everyday people were photographed. Each home had something in common though, ie.,character and style.
All this altered about 3/4 years ago when the then editor resigned rather quickly (I feel because of some animosity over the content, although this is pure speculation on my part). For some reason it was decided to change the format of the magazine and it changed from being a home magazine to being a run of the mill women's magazine with features on clothes, make up and cookery pages, non of the things I personally wanted to read when buying a house magazine.
Additionally, the style and design of the magazine changed. The rooms shown became minimalistic, mainly lilac and green. They were also boring and characterless, as seemingly were most of the people living in them if the mundane write ups were anything to go by. Personally I think the editors were trying to cash in on the Changing Rooms phenomenon as many of the rooms illustrated were along the same lines.
Advertisements began to take up more and more space, until eventually there was very little actual magazine content left and the For Sale and Wanted pages which I had particularly enjoyed reading were removed and replaced with what suspiciously looked like being made up letters from so called readers.I say this because most of the experts' replies seemed to contain an advert or two regarding different household items. The Rooms depicted became totally lifeless and I am sure had never been stepped into by any human, apart from the designers and magazine people themselves who had been careful to ensure that the furniture and wallpaper
depicted were prominently advertised.
Sorry Ideal Home editors, but you have definitely lost the plot. Readers are not so easily taken in and to my knowledge droves of your previous readers have turned to other home magazines in disgust.
I personally never buy this magazine now and the only time lately I've browsed through it has been whilst in the doctor's surgery.
If any interior addicts are reading this I would suggest you give 25 Beautiful Homes a try. This is, as the title would suggest, illustrations and write ups of 25 homes and the people in them. I won't go into it in any further detail here as I've written about it in another opinion.
There are no longer any ideal homes in Ideal Home magazine I'm afraid and I would imagine the editors will very shortly find themselves out of work.
Summary:
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