My wife won't try to stop me from any particular speaker purchase based on their looks, but she does care how a speaker looks and so do I. My listening room is the front living room of the house and I had originally chosen a decor based on brown and black because most audio equipment tended to come in those colors. It worked, as just about every speaker I ever put in there - usually brown wood, black grill - seemed to fit in pretty seamlessly instead of being an eye-sore.
When I renovated the room to do home theater duty as well, I kept that theme.
The main motivating factor for why I've been searching for a possible replacement for my Thiel 3.7s which are visually too room dominating due to their size (in our small room). And my wife is picky, doesn't like equipment in general, and often thinks speakers look "weird." (Though doesn't hate the Thiels).
I purchased Harbeth SLH5 Plus speakers to try out, both because they were significantly smaller than the Thiels and I thought as a bonus my wife would be good with their more subtle, traditional speaker-look.
And they were in a gorgeous rosewood finish too.
Turned out to my surprise my wife hated the looks of the Harbeth! Thought they were totally ugly in our room and said she much preferred the look of the Thiels. I thought she was right. It was just an issue of style-matching. The room is furnished in a contemporary feel, and the speakers have to be brought out well into the room. The Harbeths just stuck out like a sore thumb, both in their hard edged boxy shape and their orange-red finish, nice as it was, didn't match with anything. The big Thiels are more sleek, rounded, modern design that actually manage to blend in and look more subtle in the room, despite their size.
The fact I felt the Harbeths (as excellent as they were!) couldn't hold a candle to the Thiels sound-wise made it an easy decision to sell them quickly and move on in my search. I"m about to try a smaller version of the Thiels (2.7) and perhaps some others.
