Gen Z loves to love what millennials hate.
Now, they’re rejecting the millennial gray aesthetic and reinvigorating a classic early 2000s vibe: The Tuscan Mom.
The resurgence has recently exploded across TikTok, racking up millions of views as the young professional generation romanticizes oversized, ornately decorated homes that epitomized early-2000s American aspirational living in suburban McMansions. And they’re dressing like Tuscan moms, too.
Think soaring ceilings with wood beams, terracotta walls in deep ochre and sienna, heavy wrought-iron light fixtures, and layered textures. And in terms of fashion, flare jeans, fitted knit tops, silk blouses, oversized sunglasses, and gold jewelry all reign supreme for Tuscan moms.
It’s not an aesthetic they would’ve likely learned from their own mothers. Their daughters would be millennials who went on to reject maximalism, bold colors, and statements, opting for cooler, hushed tones and minimalist fashion and design.
So Gen Z has largely inherited the Tuscan mom look from screens rather than from lived experience, leaning into the vibes of Gaby Solis’ home in the early-2000s mystery-comedy-drama Desperate Housewives or the Cohen house on The O.C.
“It’s very much rooted in McMansion fantasy rather than actual Italian architectural tradition,” Rachel Simpson, senior interior designer at Tampa, Fla.-based Revive Design and Renovation, told Fortune.
But Gen Z’s Tuscan mom era isn’t an exact copy-paste of the early 2000s. They’ve repackaged it as something fresh, experts say.
“The TikTok version is more of an imagined lifestyle that romanticizes that era’s glamour and textural richness but filtered through Gen Z’s lens,” Simpson said. “It’s nostalgic, playful, and aspirational rather than a direct attempt to replicate old-school Tuscan design.”
What exactly makes a Tuscan mom?
The original early-2000s Tuscan style was, by most accounts, unapologetically maximalist. Homes had arched door frames, terracotta floors, faux-finish walls, and dramatic Mediterranean motifs (everything felt Italian—at least what Americans think Italy looks and feels like).
“It was a matter of demonstrating that you had reached a place, and the house was the evidence,” said David Ratmoko, founder of Metro Models, a global modeling agency. “Each surface was weighty and each room proclaimed itself.” Ratmoko is also a photographer, writer, and scholar who has lectured on intercultural communication schools including Yale University and the University of Zurich.
The current iteration of the Tuscan mom aesthetic keeps the warmth, but drops some of the performance, he said.
“Status signal is not of interest to Gen Z,” Ratmoko said. “They desire the texture, the down-to-earth palette, and the sense of a room that was not designed to be photographed on a listing.”
As Simpson put it, the current iteration is less a recreation of the 2000s and more a reinterpretation, pulling the spirit of warmth and texture from that era and remixing it for today.
“TikTok gives it a catchy name and visuals that go viral, but the appeal taps into something real,” she added. “People are craving comfort, texture, and spaces that feel human and soulful after years of minimalist, grayscale interiors.”
The millennial gray backlash
The Tuscan mom trend could be deeply resonant with Gen Z because they’re reacting against years of seeing millennials decorate their homes minimally, with little color or warmth.
When millennials were old enough to have their own spaces, they wanted to take a break from the heavy ornamentation of their childhoods. That started the so-called “millennial gray” era of cool, neutral, and carefully controlled interior design.
“Millennials rejected the warmth and heaviness they grew up with, and Gen Z is rebounding from that because gray became the default, and defaults tend to feel boring,” Upasna Singh, New York-based stylist and designer, told Fortune.
Simpson also said it’s because Gen Z doesn’t view the aesthetic of their predecessors to be particularly exciting.
“Gen Z, having grown up with that gray-washed world, sees it now as bland and inhospitable,” she said.
In other words, the fashion and interior design pendulum has viciously swung back about two decades.
More than a micro-trend
While some trends that cross your TikTok feed are fleeting, experts say the Tuscan mom era is happening in real life, and it’s one that could stick.
“Warm interiors, stone countertops, arched details, and aged wood finishes started showing up in purchasing data well before the TikTok conversation peaked,” Ratmoko says. “The content didn’t create the desire. It called a name to what people were already experiencing.”
In fact, an April 2025 report from the National Association of Realtors showed more homes are being built or redesigned to have more arches, with searches for homes with arched cabinets tripling in the past year, according to late 2o24 data from home remodeling site Houzz.
Another 2024 survey of more than 600 interior design professionals by 1stDibs showed warm muted tones like burnt orange and dark mustard captured 19% of designer interest, while the “once unstoppable” light gray had fallen to just 6%. Vogue also reported in early 2024 “warm rich woods, and quieter patterns for large furniture” were popular once again. Simpson agrees that real purchasing behavior is already shifting.
“Designers and homeowners are already talking about warmer palettes and more tactile materials in real projects,” she said. “Whether people literally recreate a McMansion interior or not, the feeling of that aesthetic—earthy tones, layered finishes, materials that age beautifully—absolutely can influence real purchasing and renovation decisions.”
There’s also a deeper cultural element at play, Ratmoko said, and one that goes beyond just a simple 20-year trend cycle.
“When individuals are overwhelmed by pace and confusion, they turn to spaces that seem stable and unchanging,” he says. “Stone, wood, warm plaster, and heavy curtains convey the message of stability that flat gray walls and minimalism do not. The Tuscan revival is not a nostalgia for the early 2000s. It is a reaction to the present moment.”
