Mildly Infuriating

For large chains in the suburbs this is totally normal. They're basically warehouses in a sea of parking lots filled with shelves and racks. Sometimes there's carpeted areas in between the tile walkways or displays that go up high enough that it feels enclosed. For smaller or more urban stores, you don't see this kind of construction.

You're in a Walmart.

They claim to be cheaper so they can have that drabby distopian look.

In the good parts of town, they look nicer. In the poor parts of town they're legit worse than that.

Fwiw, I'll pay the extra dollar per shopping cart for the superior look of a target. Target is generally cleaner and crisper looking. As always there are exceptions to that rule.

The "unfinished" ceilings are common in warehouse stores. It is largely a feature of practicality. Since electrical, water and ventilation typical run overhead and needs to be serviced occasionally, putting drop ceiling tiles up would make them difficult to work with, particularly when you need a scissor lift (rather than a ladder) to reach the utility lines. But it also has some benefits like higher lighting fixtures which means less direct/more ambient lighting, fewer places for pests to roam in the building or dust to build up, etc. It may just be that I'm used to it, but it doesn't bother me as an aesthetic. Drop ceiling is more common in smaller stores.

Not sure what you mean by the drab colors. The floor looks like it could be whiter and probably needs a polish, but the blues look nice enough to me. There's not much to decorate though as most of the story is wide open with very few surfaces that aren't covered in products for sale.

Oh yeah, this is super standard. Honestly I had to scroll down to find what was even notable to you about this picture. I live in a major city and basically every store I go in to looks identical to this.

That's not run down, that's a warehouse. Is it falling apart? Is the flooring worn? Are the walls cracking? Ceilings leaking? That's what run down means, not whatever your weird complaint is about the decor and color scheme is.

This is totally normal for Walmart to look like. It's basically a warehouse with extra steps.

Ceiling design is intentional, it's cheap and it maintains temperature much better than a drop ceiling or whatever else you'd want up there.

Walmart normally has skylights too to let in natural light but I can't see any in the pic. That looks like a poorly maintained Walmart.

Can you show us what you think they should look like?

Coz I’ve seen Americans, Australians, and Europeans call this normal looking. So I’d love to see what you think isn’t.

That's just a default Walmart, unironically.

That ceiling is supposed to be that way. The insulation is on top of the roof deck, and the lack of a suspended ceiling gives it a more open feel. That's why they painted all of the roof structure white (it also allows them to use less power for lighting). Walmart has a lot of problems, but store design isn't one (although retail layout is, IMO).

We have a few of these warehouse type shops in the UK, Costco, Matalan, that sort of thing, it's not styled like a high street shop would be.

that's pretty common for big box stores. they're put up cheaply and the buildings are only rated to last 15 years in some cases.

It's a Wal-Mart so yeah, that's normal.