You stay home. You look at the dining room chairs. You notice they're dingy. You think about paint. Valerie Muller, senior vice president and director for print services at MediaCom in New York, the media agency owned by the Grey Global Group, said Americans are thinking more about their homes than in previous decades.
Advertisers love that environment.
And advertising pages and revenue at most of the shelter magazines are up. The continued success of the shelter magazines may have something to do with the fact that like fashion magazines they are mostly about fantasy. Even in a magazine that purports to offer practical decorating solutions, like Hearst's House Beautiful, there are lavish photo spreads of impossibly tidy and luxurious rooms the likes of which most Americans will never set foot in, let alone be able to afford to decorate. They are totally unrelated to the lives anybody leads. No one is that neat.