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What they say is that a print of the Mona Lisa wouldn't be like the real thing because the eyes wouldn't track you round the room. I have seen the painted replica Mona Lisa (by one of Leonardo's students) at Leonardo's home in Amboise, and the eyes on that did track me round the room (much more effectively because the room wasn't rammed), so I am suspicious that this claim would turn out to be false if you had a high-quality giclee print.
That said, the class of people who want to put large quantities of fine art on their walls but can't afford decent paintings buy modern, signed limited-edition prints and not giclees of Old Masters. I think this is straightforwardly snobbery-driven, but I don't really understand the mechanism (although I realise I have unthinkingly done the same thing decorating my own house).
I think this is a complex class based thing. There are probably seven or eight clearly defined social sub-classes of upper middle class people; the home of two childless widely published academics and the home of an investment banker - big law lawyer couple with three kids and the house of two doctors who live in a second-tier city but consider themselves to be particularly cultured and the home of the chair or chief executive of a major arts or humanities nonprofit and the country home of an insurance executive and a veteran homemaker in local county life descended from the minor gentry will all be vastly different in nevertheless predictable ways.
In general, prints of old masters were for a long time considered somewhat trashy as a hangover from the Trumpian 80s, following which new money Essex types in the UK and white ethnics in the US decorating their homes in sort of gold leaf rococo or baroque pastiche complete with titanic gold-framed prints was considered the thing to distance oneself from if one wanted to be more respectably PMC (even if one was from, or only one generation removed from, the very same background) by the early-mid ‘90s. Today I think that’s changing, since 2018 or so when the Deano and McMansion types had for some years adopted a twisted version of 2000s beige Scandi minimalism the upper-middle class meta has clearly returned to full-on maximalism complete with a lot of (even in dreary London) very dark 19th century living rooms and antique shop clutter.
You have seen through me. We were at the leading edge of the trend when we redecorated our Victorian terrace (rowhouse for Americans) in the original coffee-and-crimson colour scheme in 2017. The stated reason is that the reflections when direct sunlight shines on beige walls cause various autistic family members to have sensory issues.
I think it can work in those late georgian / regency terraces with high ceilings on the first or raised ground floor. And, with enough care taken, in very modern apartment buildings with a nice contrast if they have floor to ceiling glass windows (some people consider this trashy, I will accept their judgment).
Scandi minimalism with off-white colours is a costly signal of cleanliness - it looks awful if cluttered, messy, or grubby. So if you can pull it off either you are very zen about material possessions, or you are very careful about tidiness and can probably afford a SAHM and/or servants.
Victorian maximalism copes much better with mild dirt and mess. (For the OG Victorians, mostly coal smoke - it was impossible to keep anything clean in smog-era London). We have two boys.
Not a fan of Scandi minimalism at all, it reminds me of middle age Dutch iconoclasm. Coffee is just a much nicer colour scheme if you want to actually live in your home (I reserve judgment on crimson, to me if you overdo it you risk your house looking like a bordello).
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