A 'sad beige' mom defends how she dresses her kids and decorates their rooms. The haters 'don't see everything.'

• Photographer Maddie Berna, 23, posts neutral-colored photos of her kids on Instagram.
• She's caught heat from family members for opting into the "sad beige" kid look.

Photographer Maddie Berna's Instagram grid is awash in subtle hues.

Photos of the 23-year-old mom's two young children in bonnets and knee socks in neutral-colored rooms have attracted over 3,000 Instagram followers who leave reverent comments like, "Such a pretty room for a princess ."

Berna and her children's white- and cream-colored lives partake in a design aesthetic that not everyone is on board with. Coined by TikTok satirist Hayley DeRoche in 2022, "sad beige" is a way of dressing kids and designing their rooms that's more in line with, say, a coastal mansion than a kid apt to get into the finger paints. It's created plenty of detractors across the internet who think childhood should allow for color and mess. (As the Wall Street Journal pointed out in September 2022, there is no evidence that a colorless life stunts developmental milestones. It is merely an aesthetic choice.)

The allure of sad beige comes down to a few factors, the Huffington Post said: it's genderless, it promotes an eco-consciousness that blots out "heaps of bright plastic waste floating in the ocean in perpetuity," and it has a connection to natural materials that are safer for kids.

Berna, for her part, said that her followers don't see the whole picture, and that her kids' lives are dripping in Spider-Man gear and splashy-colored toys outside of her grid.

"People form their opinions by what they see" on social media, Berna told Insider, "and they don't see everything."

The most staunch of "sad beige" social-media supporters might be hiding a more colorful life from the lens, Berna said.

"Even those accounts that are completely all beige and stuff, they do the same thing. They hide all the colorful toys in a cute basket," Berna said. "They have a whole room that they never show you because it might be a colorful playroom."

Her son's room, which she described as having a "vintage feel" with grays and wood, features a blue blanket with trucks on it, posters of "Spider-Man" and "The Mandalorian," and "Star Wars" action figures — those details just don't make it to Instagram.

She doesn't fault anyone for disagreeing with her creative choices, because they don't get a chance to see her life outside of the photo-sharing app. But sometimes she can't ignore the comments from her family.

"The only thing that had gotten to me was mostly family members and worrying about what they would think about my kids always wearing neutrals or the rooms being neutral," she said.

Berna's mother, Ashley Durham, told the Journal that she wishes she could dress her grandchildren in brighter-colored clothing. In response, Berna does allow her children to wear whatever they want outside of the focus of her lens.

Berna herself has tried out different styles over the years — even a brief Boho phase that she's glad to be out of — but found that the neutral tones throughout her home made her feel calmer. The streamlined style is easier for her to keep neat. It's a change of pace from the surroundings she grew up in.

"My room was always very colorful and very messy and it just felt very chaotic all the time," she said of her childhood room. "I never realized until I grew up and my environment helped set my mood."

Now she's teaching that lesson to her children, albeit in a different way than she learned it.

"I don't mind them having their own space and it being how they want it to be," Berna said. "I just want them to know that no matter, it's not just all about color, but it also makes you feel better when it's just clean and well kept."