While we have so many unanswered questions about Friends, queries about the colour of Monica's apartment have never been the issue.
And yet, now that set designer John Shaffner has explained exactly why the New York apartment looked the way it did — and why the walls were such a daring shade of purple — we're completely intrigued.
Speaking to Great Big Story about his thought process behind the set design, and how he really had to fight the rest of the crew in order to give Monica's apartment a lilac hue, Shaffner commented, "Nobody likes change until I painted the little model [apartment] purple."
"Color is really important in establishing the show identity," he added. "When you switch to Friends, you see that it is purple and you stay tuned."
So Shaffner decided on the bold lilac hue because it stood out and helped to differentiate the show from other sitcoms. It's certainly a risk that paid off.
Shaffner was then asked how he decided to include the mysterious door in Monica's apartment from the very beginning, despite the fact it wasn't opened until season eight when it was opened, revealing Monica's hoarder side.
"One of the responsibilities of a production designer is to look into the future," he said, noting that he didn't know of Monica's secret habits when they first started out.
"If you can, anyway. We put a door all the way up this hallway and we really didn't say where it went to. I said, 'Why don't we just wait and see where the story is taken?'"
Watch Shaffner talk about the set design of Friends below:
