Slightly OT but building design is difficult to please the majority. What some people think of as aesthetically pleasing others think bland
I've built various styles of houses, and they've generally been Brick and tile or slate. After an initial application all of these below have been designed by the conservation officer who can have very different ideas of what he wants to see as part of the street scene.
This was an identical pair of 4 bedroom houses(apologies for the fuzzy pic), they could not have any detail that reflected or copied the 2 houses either side, on the riht was a large 19th Century Farmhouse, and on the left a Grade 2 listed cottage from the late 1600/early 1700's. As they spanned 2 centuries and had a mixture of detailed brickwork, render, timber boarding , slate and peg tiles there isn't a lot left you can build that doesn't show something in either finish or detail. Both houses could not be a mirror image but had to be identical.
This was built where an old pig sty had been and so had to reflect the buildings previous agricultural look, hence the black boarding, the brick choice roof etc was all the officers choice.
This one was difficult as it is opposite the oldest known building in town, the look is attributed to the conservation officer including the railings which he especially wanted as he said they " Add character to the existing street scene" they brought the total of houses with railings in the street to 2. I probably would have fitted them anyway but it was his insistance on round topped which I fought (and lost) as they had only been used on the church school in town with private houses having something more elaborate, (spikes)
And finally there is this one, a shop to house conversion where the shop front has to stay so one wall of the kitchen will be glass ( no issues with overlooking as the internal floor height is some 450mm higher than the pavement). Again designed by the conservation officer after protracted negotiations, it is adjacent to the one above so I did know the application would take as long as it did.
These 4 planning consents were in 3 different LPA's over 5 years in 2 different counties. A couple have been described as "a bit plain" but generally they're described in a complimentary way. They've been popular at sale and I could have sold them all several times over so maybe the conservation officer was right.