I finally got the life I wanted. Then I changed my mind.
“Social media tells me that white walls are the new cool.”
The year is 2021. I lie in bed, admiring my bedroom and what I’ve made of it.
It’s not so much going on. Just my 4-by-6 bed, bedside drawer, wardrobe, fancy-looking shoe rack, and an L-shaped work station, all made out of maple-colored MDF. And then there are my blue satin curtains, which match my bedding. On the wall by my bed are fake petals — some red, some white — glued on in a moment of unbridled DIY genius.
The three-bedroom bungalow is new, and I live in it with my grandparents in Ado-Ekiti, a slow, scenic antithesis of aspirational megacities. We moved in in 2019. At the time, there was hardly any furniture in the house, and my room was bare. Just the walls and my mattress thrown on the floor in a corner.
It has taken me two years to finally set up a room nice enough to show off on the internet when I make my low-budget reels on my low-budget Samsung phone. I’m happy. Proud, even.
Except for one thing.
Social media tells me that white walls are the new cool.
And so, for the next few months I spend in the house before relocating to Lagos for a new job, I am unable to fully appreciate my blessing — because if only my walls were white. Ugh.
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| A typical luxury residential building in design Lagos |
What I loved most about the prospect of getting my own space in Lagos was the freedom to set it up however I wanted. The it girls’ spaces all seemed to have white walls; beige, gray, or brown curtains; beige or gray furniture; elaborate wall-panelled TV units, and plants. And I wanted to be an it girl so badly. (Okay, maybe I had outgrown the obsession with Facebook validation a bit by then, but boy, was I eager to join the Get-Ready-With-Me and A-Day-In-My-Life geng on YouTube.)
It-girl aesthetics aside though, the upper-middle- and upper-class homes I saw online seemed to share the same minimalist design language. And so, somehow, sometime, without realising it, my brain began to associate that aesthetic with success.
But it’s November 2021, and now it’s me, my self-contained apartment in a far-flung corner of Lagos, and my measly ₦75k salary.
The first thing that hits you in this situation is that you can no longer blame the condition of your home on your parents’ finances or tastes. Now you have your own space. Go ahead and paint it immaculate white. Fix the wall panels and floating shelves. Add the decor. Overall best in beauty and aesthetics, show yourself. Except that when you earn ₦75k, your priority is not a trendy room. It is a functional one.
For the first time, I accept — or rather, am forced to accept — that I am, well, quite poor. I scrimp and save and am finally able to fix a wardrobe in my room and buy a plastic chair for my workstation. I survive the mouldy room, the dingy passage, the boring and damp cream walls, the outdated asbestos ceiling, and the rodent infestation for eighteen months before I get another job that quite literally ushers me into the kind of house I once dreamed of.
• • •
“I’ve often wondered how much of our desires are genuinely ours and how much are shaped by the modern influencer culture.”
Earning six times my starting salary in less than two years of relocating to Lagos for my first full-time job sure did a lot to boost my confidence. Including the confidence to get my first “big girl” apartment, a mini-flat on the mainland.
It had previously been occupied by a dear friend and his wife, who had just relocated to Europe. The apartment was already set up with gadgets and furniture — all theirs — that I needed.
Bedroom fully set up. Living room with its gray sofa set, white sheer curtains and thicker gray satin ones, a TV console (with no TV, ironically. Hold this info in your left hand; we’ll circle back to it soon), a split-unit AC. Kitchen with its refrigerator, tabletop gas cooker, and microwave. A front-loader washing machine. All the things I loved or needed but had been too low on the financial rung to afford.
But not anymore. I paid for them all (save for the washing machine, which I replaced with a top-loader), paid the rent as well, and settled seamlessly into my furnished house.
Did I mention the walls were white? And that the ceiling was POP?
The first few days after I moved in, I walked around the apartment dazed. I was most literally living the lifestyle I had aspired to.
What do you mean I have a whole living room?
With an actual couch in it?
You mean I own furniture?
Wow.
But now it’s August 2023, three months into both my new job and my new home, and the novelty is wearing off. Slowly — and rather sadly — I’m beginning to understand the people who say of certain jobs that peace of mind is better than money. It also dawns on me that living in a modern house does not insulate you from the madness of an overcrowded, rough neighborhood.
Plus, I’m sitting on my couch, but I’m no longer staring into space counting my blessings. When I look right ahead of me, the blank wall above my console stares back at me. Gosh. I don’t have a TV, and now my space looks and feels incomplete.
If you think my obsessing over this — of all things — is absurd, wait till I tell you that I don’t even fancy TVs in the first place!
Even back home with family before I moved to Lagos, I seldom ever sat down to watch a TV show or movie. I only sat in the living room to chit-chat.
So where was this sudden discontent coming from?
I’ve often wondered how much of our desires are genuinely ours and how much are shaped by modern influencer culture.
In the previous house I lived with my grandparents, (before we moved into the three-bedroom bungalow), the passage and bedroom walls were green, and the toilet, bathroom, and kitchen a depressing shade of gray. Back then, I would have been grateful to move into a house where everywhere was cream, bright, and airy.
Except I wasn’t when the time came. I had learned, subconsciously, that cream was ordinary and white was aspirational.
• • •
I have since changed jobs again and moved from my mini-flat on the mainland to a duplex on the island, which I share with a couple of other single, upwardly mobile housemates.
The house, situated in an upscale, upper-middle-class estate, is very modern and pre-furnished with appliances and fixtures I personally can’t afford. The neighborhood looks exactly like what I watched in movies. Paved streets. Multi-storey luxury units (“luxury,” keep that word) mostly painted white. Tiny parking lots with at least two high-end cars squeezed into them.
Now, the gutters give off a rancid smell on hot afternoons and the streets sometimes flood when it rains. But hey, that’s just the Nigerian flavour. Over here, the rich also cry. And again, no one is really spared from the ineptitude of the authorities at every level, whether government or estate management.
But I have it mostly good. Better than I permitted myself to dream, given where I started building from and some of my daunting setbacks.
I take walks around the neighborhood, past fitness enthusiasts returning from the gym, past rambunctious little furry things tugging at their leashes, past clean SUVs, windows rolled up, easing in and out of the estate, taking in the scenery around me and feeling like the main character in an indie film.
Which is quite hypocritical because, until I moved to Lagos, I used to piss on the city’s definition of real estate luxury. I despised the cookie-cutter shoebox designs, flashy finishes, narrow windows, and copy-and-paste interior designs. You could take a picture in your living room and the setting would match that of a dozen others in your neighborhood.
In hindsight, though, I realize that sentiment really wasn’t mine. It was borrowed from an opinionated social commentator whom I adored and religiously followed at the time.
And it’s not that my sentiment has changed today. It’s just that, sometimes, you’ve got to earn the right to hold certain opinions. If you’re too broke to give your room a new coat of paint, maybe conversations about luxury real estate might be above your pay grade. Not because you’re incapable of having an opinion, but because you can never really be certain what you love, or hate, or can tolerate until you have the means to experience it. And there is something humbling about finally having the opportunity, like I did, to experience something you spent years dismissing.
When I got the chance to move into my current neighborhood, I moved in with glee and gratitude and certainly none of that borrowed derision.
• • •
“You didn’t get one because you needed or wanted it. You did because of how not having one might make you look to other people.”
It’s August 2026, and I love and am grateful for the life that I have.
But I think the biggest marker of my growth so far is not that my house looks exactly like what I once dreamed of. It’s that I now have a love-hate relationship with my neighborhood and, finally, I feel like I have earned my opinion. It’s that I can now look at the things I have and decide whether I actually like them.
And I think this — the confidence to be different — is the most underappreciated benefit of financial freedom. The confidence to go against the grain. To snub what the culture packages as cool and decide what cool means to you. Because when you are an impressionable young woman in your mid-twenties, struggling financially and still living with your grandparents, your dreams are often whatever your heavily curated algorithm has sold you. And that is what you strive to replicate. That may become the entirety of your dreams.
Minimalist home design. POP ceiling. Large TV. Get-Ready-With-Me.
And I did have it all — minus the TV—until I realized, ehh, I really don’t care for any of this.
The extent of this disinterest became clear one time I strolled into Ebeano supermarket to grab a few bars of chocolate but ended up with a full shopping cart (don’t try this at home). Among my irresponsibly impulsive purchases was a beautiful mat I had coveted since January but never actually bought. Now it sat in my room, and I was unsure where to place it.
So I took a picture of the mat and the entire setup, fed it into ChatGPT and asked for suggestions on how to use the mat to elevate my space. My prompt was specific: “Only use the items currently here. Don’t add any new items.” I didn’t need the pressure of buying anything else. I only wanted to maximize what I already had.
To my surprise and mild irritation, all the images generated by AI mounted a TV on my wall. Which was ironic because, by now, it should be clear that not owning a TV is a choice, not a constraint. And I think the fact that, for the past three years, I have repurposed my console into a mini bookshelf speaks to what my priorities and actual interests are.
But AI’s little gaffe made something clear to me. In households, TVs are not just gadgets. They are an expectation. You didn’t get one because you needed or wanted it. You did because of how not having one might make you or your home look to other people.
And even when you lived alone, other people still lived in your head, through the content you consumed and the lives you silently measured yourself against.
And it’s not just TVs.
If you’re reading this, you probably have your own version of this experience, too.
• • •
Today, my definition of beauty and satisfaction in a home starts with a large bookshelf as its focal point.
Paintings, sculptures, and plants. Real plants.
A warm, atmospheric space with character rather than these cold, asylum-white walls that enclose me.
Warm lighting rather than hospital fluorescent or nightclub-blue.
And suddenly, I have a renewed appreciation for my father’s tastes.
He painted our house in color: earthy tones of brown and yellow in the living room, purple (or was it lilac? Or both?) in the passage that led to the bedrooms. His bedroom was wine (with a complementary shade I can’t remember now). My brother’s room was two shades of blue. And mine was two shades of pink — fuchsia and baby pink.
The seventeen-year-old me did not understand my father’s hype about the colors then. The thirty-something me understands and appreciates it now.
I understand what it means to make your home truly yours. To express your interests and personality through it rather than adopt unoriginal, uninspiring designs.
To be honest, I often wonder what I owe this shift in mindset and taste to. My advancing age? Growing self-awareness? Or improving finances (which come with a certain kind of exposure)?
These days, I spend a lot of time watching home tours on Compound Africa, which showcases some of the most thoughtfully designed homes and spaces across the continent. And so even though I’ve always loved nature and art, I still wonder how much of my current desires are genuinely mine.
Do we ever stop being influenced? Or do the things that influence us simply become more refined — and more expensive — as we progress in life?
I don’t know.
A while ago, I decided I would no longer overthink or intellectualize all my decisions and new affinities. If what appealed to me yesterday no longer does today, I’ll simply take it as the phase I am in rather than build a whole identity around the old or new one.
And Lord knows I have been through so many:
The feminist blogger.
The androgynous fashion enthusiast.
The lifestyle content creator and chronic online yapper.
I had my Whoopi Goldberg era, too, when I sported kinky twists/faux locs for two years.
Apparently, I might be in my plant-mom and afro-fashion era right now.
But unlike before, I am no longer anxious about transitioning from one look or lifestyle into another, because, like clay, I am malleable. I am constantly evolving.
I have come to see this quality for the strength that it is . It is not inconsistency, but dynamism. I am constantly discovering myself.
And who knows, after spending years learning what a successful woman’s home was supposed to look like, I may finally have stumbled upon the real luxury: the freedom and confidence to make mine look like no one else’s but my own.
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| Image from my YouVersion Bible app |
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