But the photos aren't just staged. I think they were decluttered and maybe some accessories were brought in but this is the owners' furniture. If you look at all the pictures in the listings, there is too much furniture and stuff for it just to be staged.

So the anonymity or the staged appearance may be taking over everyday life (except for personal clutter/belongings)--Remember the fads of the last decade of doing elaborate tablescapes and fully setting the dining room table for dinner and keeping it that way? Of casually draping a throw so it looked like someone had just cast it aside?

This was started as staging to make the potential buyer feel like the house was going to come to life at any second, but it was annexed into every day decorating.

Is it a bad thing only when we never liked it? One would think, but a lot of people, when discussing the past say "Oh I loved my wallpaper border with the bonneted geese and the hearts, and now I think it is so hideous". Why did you like it then?

This post was edited by palimpsest on Mon, Sep 16, 13 at 11:33

I do think that many, many people, thanks to HGTV think that a staged home is actual interior design. Also, I've read blogs, heard comments, etc., where people say they want their sitting room to look like a "really nice hotel lobby" or they'll say they want their bedroom to look like a resort hotel room.

I don't think the homes in the pictures above are completely staged, but I do think staging has confused the average home owner's expectations, which could be part of the reason why trends are liked one year, but then shunned very quickly.

My personal opinion is that cheap, mass produced items, manufactured because of a popular trend, go out of style as quickly as the trend came in.

"The thing is a lot of traditional design, and a lot of cross-period eclectic design is fairly heavily criticized in design forums, including this one. The traditional gets called "stiff" or "dated" or "grandma", or if it is heavily layered and patterned traditional , "cluttered". Much of the cross-period eclectic (antique and contemporary combined), gets dissed as "too much going on", "too many different styles", "schizophrenic" (A term that itself had a thread complaining about it's use as demeaning to human schizophrenics), and "needs to be edited." "

Since I generally like traditional, heavily layered, patterned, and cross-period eclectic (not that I necessarily have all that or, when I do, get it right), I don't see too much that I would want to see in the future. Same with the color schemes - most look too muddy to me.

One element common to those rooms that might be considered not worth redeeming is the lack of personality, the store-bought accessories intended to "go" with the color scheme, the dullness of those color schemes with the dreaded "pops" of color, the lack of individuality or even quirkiness.

To be fair, though, if these houses are currently on the market, some or all may have been decluttered and depersonalized to be staged. Possibly some have been repainted in what seems to be today's "acceptable" colors. If these are in fact rooms as they are lived in now, perhaps the problem is that people mistakenly adopt what I think of as a staged/house-is-on-the-market look that they see on HGTV and elsewhere as a permanent design look for their house....

Some of the rooms, like the blue and green one, already look as if they're looking back to the 60s, so I'm not sure how to analyze them in the context of the question.

The bathroom looks quite like any number of bathrooms in local suburban magazine ads by bathroom designers or articles about area show houses. I wonder what people in future years will think about vessel sinks.

I think there are 2 things that make us say "no more of that" to something we may once have liked.

1. It becomes not fresh. Once everyone's doing it, it loses its wow factor. Not because there's anything inherently wrong with it, but because it's not new. I have plenty of clothes in my closet that I loved when I bought them a year ago, but now I feel "meh" towards them because I've worn them a dozen times. Same goes for decorating style.

2. We realize it's impractical. Wood floors got covered up by carpet because carpet was lower maintenance. Now people with allergies tear out carpeting and put in wood floors, which today have much more durable finishes. In the same vein, we may nix 2-story ceilings because of heating bills or open display shelving because of too much dusting.

I think either of the above become even more distasteful when they're hard to change once we've tired of them: Tile in mud beds, wallpaper on walls that weren't primed, brick in a color/style that now looks dated. So one way to avoid really hating stuff in the future is to make whatever you do easy to change down the road. :-)

I think marketing/society pushes trends, tying them to our sense of self, praying on our emotional vulnerability. We are always being told we need what's new, what's in, to be cool or worthy, to be accepted by others. I think we've been conditioned with this at a very young age and grow up with it.

On the flip side, marketing/society also tells us that if we follow a trend, like a trend, then we are boring, not an individual, lack true self expression, thus uncool, unworthy, and unaccepted as well.

Do likes change because people grow and change, or because society/marketing tells us we need to change, or both?

I think calling an object or room design "trendy" or "dated" is placing personal subjective meaning/judgement on it. If looking at it from simply the principles/elements of design there is no "dated" or "trendy" to judge. Nor is there durability, practicality, cost etc.

This post was edited by roobear on Mon, Sep 16, 13 at 12:53

Here is another picture( hot from the mailbox and page one of the PB catalog) that I think is very representational of 2013 and the masses and probably considered good taste.
I like it a lot but it mostly likely will be dated looking.

Trends shown:
Ikat
Tufted Headboard
Gourd Lamp/Drum shade
Channel stitched quilt
Backwards Books! Haha!
Gear furniture

I think that room looks fine, if quite topical. People will be tired of Ikat, i suppose, but it's really a historical fabric: I have a photo of an Ikat dress from the 1790s somewhere, and I've seen it on furniture from the 1960s-80s.

What's interesting is take away the bedspread, and you have the Restoration Hardware look, which is very unpopular in here.

Of course, the neutral palette overall makes it very easy to update to trendy or favorite accent colors.

I think the potential problem with this room in terms of its longevity is that it's definitely "one-stop-shopping". (By its nature it is--since it's a catalog.) I think when people do that (and they do) the combination of everything becomes more obvious in terms of date of origin.

In my uneducated opinion, what will be unappealing in the future that is currently so appealing to many are:

1. The can lights
2. The glass tiles
3. The vessel sinks
4. The open areas where the kitchen is on view to everyone

I am not including anything that can be easily and what I consider inexpensively changed over the years.

Here is an example of what would be considered "current" in our neck of the woods (suburban NYC). This is actually a 2013 listing photo of the home that I grew up in that was built in 1968. I think it is on its 3rd owner since my parents sold in the 80's. To me, the decor has all the charm of a catalog or waiting room. I'd guess it's staged.

{{!gwi}}

This is a 2013 listing of the house directly across the street. The dining room here could just as easily be in the 2013 listing of our old home.

{{!gwi}}

Maybe I'm imagining things, but there seems to be a lot more "sameness" now than when I was growing up. I don't see these rooms as "in bad taste." But they're everywhere.

This post was edited by sas95 on Mon, Sep 16, 13 at 17:15

I don,t have a problem with any of those rooms except the bathroom. They all feature trendy things that are easily changed out when the owner grows tired of it. Whats wrong with that. I for one don,t want to live in a house that nothing changes in for the next twenty years. Living with anything after 7 to 10 years gets kind of boring for alot of people. As the stages of your life changes your home decore should change as well.That cann,t be said of so much of the 70s things. Dark paneling everywhere. Thats a pain to deal with. The same same boring nod at easy upkeep landscaping where it seemed that everyone in town had the same plants and the same ranch home with the same floor planned done over and over and over town after town.

"What's interesting is take away the bedspread, and you have the Restoration Hardware look, which is very unpopular in here."

Actually, I was under the impression that Restoration Hardware is very popular here, and that I'm the outlier, one of the few who doesn't like the look.

It is funny that you say that about that room though, pal. I don't like the room. I suppose I am somewhat consistent in my likes and dislikes! But my negative reaction was simply to all that white, that lack of color. Has anyone mentioned white rooms as another current trend? I see them all the time in magazines, and I am bored with them. I wonder whether they'll last or not.

"In 25 years will we be looking at this and saying 'Is there anything worth redeeming in 2010s style?'"

What a great selection of pictures. They all make me wince. For sure if those are the examples.

I suspect this era, like those all through the last century, will be distilled down into a small set of design cliches, those seen as most irritatingly enduring in retrospect by large numbers of people grow up watching this stuff grow old.

Subway tile will be cemented to millions of parents' walls until the next generation and the one after finally get "rid of that stuff!"

Hardwood floors will be growing old in every room in darn near every house, but I'm guessing it's old wood laminate floors finally taken up decades after they should have been (occasionally given surprise longevity by carpeting and being buried under other floorings) that will be our version of disgusting old olive green shag.

Notably, none of these pictures is of fine design, which is rare. Just as most people today never lived with it or visited it in family homes and assume/like to believe there was no such thing in the 1970s, so that will be the fate of most of the rooms we are so happy with today.

Young and don't believe it? Just wait. :) And try to imagine what your grown kids might have to say about this.

Duplicate.

This post was edited by rosie on Tue, Sep 17, 13 at 6:29

Two of the pictures, and I won't say which two, are from $2M houses. Of course that doesn't mean a whole lot in a neighborhood where $500K is entry level. I think you tend to see stronger interiors or fine design where people can actually afford to do interiors in addition to paying the mortgage, and honestly, that's difficult here. The uber rich here tend to either have staid rooms full of family furniture or super flashy nouveau riche interiors with not a whole lot of moderation in between. Of course it's hard to say, really because you don't see the inside of the typical rich houses on house tours, they don't want people they don't know seeing it. I know of some really high end designers that have had to sign agreements that they won't take identifiable photos or try to publish.

Restoration Hardware used to be popular here, but the more recent all gray monochromatic catalogs have spawned a number of negative threads where it seems like some of the posters almost feel "betrayed" by the change. I am not sure that white rooms are much of a trend in a larger sense, there are specific designers who have never done anything else other than rooms that read "white", for decades. As for me, I am not particularly bored by monochromatic rooms, because they are not easy to do well, so it's challenging.

As for the Pottery Barn room, I think it is designed that way to sell the bedding more than anything else, You could keep the room intact and change the bedding and have a whole 'nother page in a different catalog.

I don't know that the next generation will be quite so ready to get rid of things as we have been.

My grandparent's generation had absolutely no reverence at all for any building just because it was old, unless something important happened there. New was always better. Then when they started to preserve historic building of the Colonial and Federal periods here, they destroyed vast tracts of 19th century houses in the process because Victorian was considered nothing more than old fashioned.

Our Parent's generation was the first generation that started to think that maybe keeping interior elements of an old house was better than modernising, and the generation that is maybe 1/2 older than mine continued the trend with starting to understand and preserve things that were more recent. So maybe that trend will continue somewhat.

On these forums I've seen mostly the same attitude as Palimpsest's grandparents'. So many auto-ripouts that I've even briefly wondered if there would be any vintage left to develop from the 1980s-1990s. Then I remember that many people are not all that involved with decor and satisfy themselves with a new chair now and then.

The future? I wonder a lot. With the possibilities new technology brings, we could be on the cusp of a whole new wave of prosperity. On the other hand, the shift of national wealth away from large blocks of population has blighted many futures that will never recover and put a stop to increasing accumulation of personal wealth for many others. This will, of course, impact their children's lives too. Although some are doing well, this is occurring on a scale that will profoundly affect our national character. Although we enjoy seeing what the "top 10%" are spending it on, 10 from 100 leaves 90%. To date this harsh reality has been offset decor-wise, however, by lowered costs of "things" by mostly lowered costs of production, as well as other factors, like China's subsidization of low sale prices.

Add to personal income issues increasing energy costs (will we meet that challenge and how quickly?) and the guaranteed increasing drawdown of our national wealth from dealing with the costs of climate change, which will be enormous, and the next couple of generations might of necessity develop far more conservative (in the conserving sense, as well as the protective) attitudes toward their possessions and money.

On a lighter note, people looking back at our era won't remember homes coated with decades of tobacco smoke residue, so that may encourage a bit more conservation too. No era in the history of man has ever been as clean as ours.

Call me stupid....but I'm not getting it. Y'all seem to, but I don't.

I look at those pics and I struggle to find what would even define a style as being "so 2010s". Maybe ikat and drum shades because of their ubiquity today...but when I look at most of those rooms, I don't see anything so unique as to tie it to an era.

In my way of thinking, the styles that identified something as being of a particular era were because of cultural events or technology or material changes that created something new for its time...something that didn't or couldn't exist before...or perhaps as a backlash to what had occurred earlier. And, as a result of that invention will forever be linked to the time of its creation. For example, the psychedelic colors of the 60s that were inspired by LSD, the plastic and formica furniture of the 50s and 60s because plastics didn't exist in decent reproducible quality before, the impact of the onset of air travel and understanding of aerodynamics on the streamlined looks of the 30s and 40s or the arts and crafts backlash to the concerns about an industrialized, factory-produced society where individual design and creativity was lost. Even the lava light was a new creation (1963) and will forever be linked to it's time so it can only return as retro. And you can see when technology also forces the end of an era...like the death of the huge entertainment centers as TVs went flat.

So when I look at the rooms Pal posted, I have to stop and ask first what is it that defines it of this era? And in many of the rooms, I find very little....maybe the oversized light fixtures, the vessel sink, the sofa with the chaise built in. But a lot of the rest of the rooms seems already retro to various eras...ceiling fans, shag carpet, polka dot wall, burnt orange sofas, hanging bottle lights, flat stone faced fireplaces, metal-legged wood furniture, small mosaic tiles....nothing not seen before.

So will the era go down with nothing unique to say? Is the uniqueness in the combination of retro styles? Or is it simply too soon in the decade? The early 60s really represented 50s style...the early 70s, really represented late 60s style. Perhaps we have yet to find the new cultural/technological/material invention that will define the 2010s?

Maybe when we look back on these rooms, one thing we'll see is a lack of technology that will date them. Seeing the newer technology going in electrical, security, etc. going into houses now, starting to be sold at big box stores, it makes me curious. In 25 years will we be updating the technology of a home as much as the style, or more? Could homes become like smart phones and computers needing to update them every year to the newest technology or software?

One of the problems that I see of the era is that very little defines it except transitional blandness.

Modernism was the last great stylistic innovation that was an outgrowth of technology (molded plywood, fiberglass and injection molded plastics) and the latest innovation in that period, in the 1970s, was injection moulded foam, like the all-foam Togo sofa.

The Post-Modernist movement, which came after, was more of a commentary. They designed some pieces of furniture that were useless or that at least looked useless.

There really hasn't been anything new and different in appearance since then--modernism continues and "industrial" counts as something, although it mostly references late Victorian and Deco Period machines.

Every other stylistic change seems to involve shifts in transitional forms of furniture or strange amalgamations of historical styles tacked together in an overscaled size to fit the expanding American with a greatroom.

If there was something specific or dynamic that drove changes in fashion, like modernism did after the war, it might make more sense to label things as current or dated. But to me it seems like the changes in fashion are just different colors on the same old transitional furniture.

edited for spelling and grammar

This post was edited by palimpsest on Tue, Sep 17, 13 at 15:01

One definition of 2010âÂÂs is that it mostly ditched the color beige; mentally people were experimenting with more color for a possible brighter outlook in their real estate.

"when I look at most of those rooms, I don't see anything so unique as to tie it to an era."

Annie - the ubiquity might actually BE a key part of identifying the era? There may be fewer new means of manufacture (rubbers, plastics, etc; microfiber comes to mind), but the mode of manufacture -- the global blanketing -- is clearly of the turn of this century.

Also, to my eye: the cheapness of the materials. Virtually every piece of upholstery in ALL of those pictures have the same sawn-off-shaker Chinese rubberwood legs stained some version of brown. The upholstering style itself is very basic, with little in the way of relief: few buttons, fringe, intricate foldings. No skirts.
Ditto microfiber.
Ditto plastic faux-wood trim painted white and either bent in angles impossible to real wood or liberally applied with no consideration of proportion.

Rounded drywall corners! In the Southwest I might call this a legitimate reference to local vernacular, but in Philly it's just another postmodern affectation. Sure, they did some of this during the Memphis period, but I have seldom seen a house built in the past 15 years without them.

The columns. Two-story foyers.

Restoration Hardware Silver Sage, streams and lakes and oceans of it. (Its recent grayer reincarnation doesn't fool me! Still part of the same era.)

The use of chandeliers in the worst possible places for cleaning them: kitchens, bathrooms.

Brushed nickel and/or 'Oil Rubbed Bronze' fixtures and fittings.

Dumbed-down Steampunk. File this with Silver Sage and "deconstruction".

But in essence it's all metonymic, isn't it? Just as we see

I suspect future generations will see

From the early 2000âÂÂs to just recently this would have been a typical mid-range to upper mid-range living room in my neck of the woods (northern P.B.C Fl.) Lots of beige, beige-y tile, bland or beige walls and maybe one or two bland accent colors! Realtors were instructing home sellers to do everything in safe beige for resale. To me everything was generic looking. Builders were doing everything in beige. Once 2010 came along I started seeing more color and it has been getting better on that front. In my area IâÂÂm seeing a move away from microfiber too. I am happy to see more pattern and color and a move to at least be more experimental in 2013.

This post was edited by jterrilynn on Tue, Sep 17, 13 at 15:01

Double Post

This post was edited by geokid on Tue, Sep 17, 13 at 17:49

Me too, SO glad to see "even" chintz discussed as a possibility and others chiming in to say they like it! Phew!

It's hard to see a current era from the future when one's living in the middle of it. We had a "colonial revival" back in, what, the 1940s? Put that heavy, chunky, fancied-up version of "colonial" next to the real thing and it'd look like a 180-pound woman dressed from Woolworth hoping to be mistaken for Cyd Charisse (just saw her in an old movie). It was warm and cozy, though, and those happily in love with it didn't put it next to the real thing, they loved it for what it was. These days it's still almost synonymous with bad taste, you know, copper molds on the walls, wallpaper with colonial hunters walking home with turkeys over their shoulders?

If you look, though, in spite of its "transitional blandless" this past era will be as easily identified for itself and not the eras borrowed from as 1940s colonial from 1740s.

Some things that will jump out will be
Lack of pattern.
Rigid-looking furniture with 90-degree corners.
A rather unisex look.
As referred to before, a rather impersonal, hotel/resort look.
Rigid window treatments and general lack of lightweight curtains.
Floating all the furniture possible, no matter how small a room.
Lack of clutter.
Hardwood floors and disappearance of broadloom.
General lightness, or rather a lack of darkness. (Wood paneling will "prove" it's not from this era.)
All the hints of midcentury, like
Greens with just a touch of "poison" to them.
Of course, the columns Circuspeanut mentioned. How could I have forgotten them?!
And...? 'cause that's just a start.

There's plenty. Every bit as much as the typical 1970-80s pictures that pop to mind when those times are mentioned. Giant-geometric metallic wallpaper anyone? :)

Faux antlers, I believe, will be the bonneted geese of 2010.

I wish I would have said that, roarah! Completely agree.

(Aside: I have no idea what happened with my post just above. I thought was deleting a double post.)

Lol! Oh yes, those faux antlers. Count me in for agreeing with that one too.

Another thing that I've noticed. When stores start to market a whole line of Christmas decorations to match certain home decor colors, instead of being red and green, then you know those colors have become cliched and probably could be considered trademark to the era. I remember back in the eighties when my former college room mate had a Christmas tree totally done with blue and mauve decorations. It looked more like Easter.

I see the same thing being done with blues, grays, and "spa" colors now.

Pal, the rooms you posted have no personality in design or decor. I have always liked the bedroom wall color, even before it was popular. I'd rather see bottle lamps on the tables than hanging. The room feels empty.

The polka dots belong in a nursery or playroom. The line of can lights around the room are distracting and not practical.

That bathroom is ghastly, and belongs in Vegas. Pairs of accessories are not always needed.

The next three are not functional rooms for living. There are no side tables or lamps next to upholstered pieces. Can anyone say AA, although the room itself is my favorite (minus the alcohol) if forced to pick.

I don't think there is anything in these rooms that will get passed down to the next generation, kept by current owner for more than 10 years (or wears out sooner due to poor quality) or not remodeled by the next owner. They are all trend driven designed rooms. There's no thinking out of the box or individuality in any of them.

There is a gluttony of bad designs, poor taste and sadly executed ideas in the world, and the internet and television bring too much of it to our attention.

This post was edited by allison0704 on Wed, Sep 18, 13 at 8:08

And advertising. Look in any of the lower end decorating magazines hanging on by the skin of their skinnied down teeth, and the rooms in the articles are made up of product. Admire it in the room, go buy it.

For the past handful of years I'd been getting 2 or 3 a year of the $10 subscriptions courtesy of preschool fundraisers, but the enjoyment arrival of a new decorating magazine once brought became boredom and irritation. I'd know what's in there before I did my 10-second flip through. I buy a mouse pad or some such thing now.

But, the inundation of this marketing from every direcction, including inundation with cheap, and often charming, goods, is definitely creating the 2013 look in many homes.

I went through a mid 1960's House Beautiful magazine recently, 75% of it was product advertising, some of the ads were full living room sets that you could buy, all the furniture and accessories. They were highlighting the convenience of buying it all at once for a great price.

I've found that, with the exception of a few specifically placed ads, much of the advertising content stylistically has very little to do with the editorial content, I think it is still this way. It may have been worse in the past because there was no internet.

I recently bought a 1964 House Beautiful because it featured an article on a house that I looked at, and I couldn't really believe it, seeing the house now. (I posted pictures here of the comparison). Anyway, there was an ad to buy a spider monkey for $12 in the House Beautiful, in addition to the ads for "glamorous" cheap fake mother of pearl and gold switch plates and plastic bath accessory sets. I doubt they would ever be in a house featured editorially.

Circuspeanut said it best: It looks cheap. I've avoided saying that, but it is true--and the sad thing is, they probably spent a lot of money on it.

But I'll go a step further. The buildings themselves look cheap. I saw a gigantic Texas house on HOUZZ, with photographs that showed the angles of the walls--each one about four inches thick and dozens of feet long. Instead of gigantic square footage built with the least amount of quality, I would want to see proportionality between the thickness of walls, and the finish of the walls--plaster, anyone?--and the length and height of the walls. It all looks like a Hollywood set. You just sense the inadequacy of the building itself. To go further, it is extremely hard to decorate such great spaces without great budgets.

But, within all of these comments, I have to say that there are "trends" that I thought were beautiful, even though I don't happen to own them. My sister-in-law has the most gorgeous powder room--glazed black chintz walls, an amazingly beautiful crystal vessel sink, bronze dore faucets. That little room is the real deal, and will look fabulous in 100 years, too.

Unless I missed it, I don't think I commented before. How very unlike me!

Anyway, I think the only way to avoid being trendy, which is the gist here IMHO, is to choose things that are unlikely to become rampant. To do that, one must seek out the unusual. Things are usually unusual because:

1. They are handmade one-of-a-kind
2. They are antique and so less-of-a-kind
3. They were sourced somewhere far afield (eg internationally) and so are less-of-a-kind
4. They are too costly for widespread use.

All that said, not sure we have answers to Pal's great questions. Why do we stop liking something because it is common? Why do we dislike time capsules (some of them).

I suppose if we think of decor, like fashion, as semaphore, we are trying to express ourselves and put ourselves in a pecking order. If our choices become too common to allow that, they fail us.

For many of us here MNT, I think we are a creative group. You are right about unique rather than mass. Always feeding our visuals with new and different, but also what appeals to lifestyle. I have gone for a trend, but it changes i fairly quick to do my own thing. Perhaps in a form of the trend, but my take and individuality. Oddly, some "trends" land in my home far ahead of time. Also, as an artist, I need to move around and keep my senses happy. Duplicates in groves divert my interest.

I'm not sure I agree that the quest for the unusual is a way to avoid trendiness. In fact I'd say that often the desire for something different is what drives trends.

Different furniture styles still serve the same function. Chairs will have a seat.....beds will be mostly horizontal....tables will have a flat surface. When furnishings are created in truly unique shapes, colors or materials they can lose functionality--- a beautiful and unusual chair that is uncomfortable, for example. Really good design is about the mix, IMO. Most of us have more or less the same things available to us, in varying levels of price and quality, but it is the way we choose to combine the shapes, colors, textures and functions that makes a room liveable and good looking. It might still look dated 30 years hence because materials update due to market changes, environmental pressures or new technology. Even shapes update to accommodate our bodies and the changing way we live--- if you've been in a medieval castle you've seen adult thrones that looked like they were sized for modern children. Nothing will look "current" forever, but things can still look good for the context in which they were designed.

I will never be able to afford expensive so I've always gone for thrift shop chic as a way to be unique...but....so has a very hefty percentage of my youngish urban counterparts. So I realize my taste will appear super, super dated in the future.

To me, this apartment therapy 2013 small cool winner has a luscious apartment, very tasteful! But, this is the hallmark of young 2013 style for me -- retro eclectic, drum shades, reclaimed wood, restrained palette, touch of Hollywood regency. I like it now, and because I'm getting older and my tastes are calcifying, I'll probably like it in 30 years. But in 30 years my kids will probably be zooming around on their hover boards wondering why I like all that old junk instead of 3d printed intricate lace sofas.

I guess it depends on how you interpret the word "unusual", KSWL.

Take your basement. If you were on trend, you might put in a very dark walnut wood floor. But you chose something unusual; it was hard to locate and not inexpensive. I can't imagine any given future year when someone would look at your brick floor and say "that is soooo 2010s!" I think it is a perfect example of what I am talking about.

Robo, You can either throw money or time and talent at it, right? The latter is more interesting if one can pull it off. I love AT; they are real homes and so much more useful then shelter mags. BTW "calcifying" is funny!

Point taken--- but ....maybe I am starting a trend? Or more likely, if our house is dug up in a post apocalyptic archaeological dig someone will ask what kind of nitwit put in brick floors :-)

I guess I don't see that floor as so unusual, though. My MIL's inside entry is brick (small town Alabama) and my own mother is the one who suggested brick for our floor. Both ladies are in their eighties!

C'mon now, K, you KNOW it's unusual; how long did it take to find!

I think my word "unusual" is too vague, perhaps. I don't mean whacky, as in "I am going to cover my floor in duck feathers".

This post was edited by mtnrdredux on Tue, Mar 11, 14 at 11:34

I actually think that, while the quest for something different may Start a trend, the quest for UNIFORMITY is what drives it. You want it because you see it enough that by having it you somehow conform to a group you want to be identified with.

A Pal post. sigh.

I don't think any of them look bad! They aren't all to my taste, but I don't find any of them offensive.

Of the photos above what strikes me as likely to appear dated or of this age: all the rooms have painted trim. I predict new homeowners in 2050 will be eagerly stripping away paint, hoping not to be disappointed by finding paint grade lumber...
I had to smile when upthread Madeyna noted distaste for living with things more than 7-10 years as it is "boring" and that home decor should change over the stages of your life. I've had many of my favorite pieces of furniture and accessories over 30 years and most over 20-25. For me my beloved items will never be boring....what attracted me then still interests me. And horrors! Much is oak, generally quartersawn. None were trendy but chosen for practicality, functionality, and aesthetics; nearly everything has a prior history. Most were quality pieces of their day, and were woven together to form a tapestry complimenting my life which I intend to surround myself until the end of my time.

A post fit for Brothers Frazier and Nials.

DEE...I thought the same thing.

> I have a photo of an Ikat dress from the 1790s somewhere,

Yeah, Marie Antoinette loved, loved, loved Ikat, so even before the 1790s. (See Marie Antoinette: L'Impossible bonheur by Huisman and Jallus, for example. They have illustrations of photos of the book she used to mark out which dresses she would wear each day, with fabric samples of each. Lots of Ikat.)

Peegee, you and I must be twins separated at birth...

I think weedyacres has said it best.

1. It's no longer unique. You see it everywhere. Or you grew up with it everywhere.

2. It's not practical.

I would add #3, you didn't really like it in the first place, but felt you had to follow the trend.

How often do we see people asking a forum to choose their decor options? Even on something that's high end and expensive? If you don't love it enough to know what you want, why are you buying the expensive option? (And I'm not saying "here's my choice, am I nuts?" But "here are 4 completely different options of granite, which one should I buy?") Guaranteed, if you don't love it when you buy it, you're going to HATE it when fashion changes and other people don't love it anymore.

I think we also need to separate our attitude about home decor from clothing fashion. I loved coloured jeans when I was a teenager. I love that it's a trend that's back. If I was still wearing the ones I had as a teenager 10 years later, I'd have been giving strangers a bad impression of myself. An impression of someone who doesn't pay attention to the world around her, or doesn't care enough about herself to not wear worn out jeans. But when it comes to home decor, if I want to keep my reclaimed wood headboard 15 years from now, who cares? I don't remember the last time anyone other than my husband or my cleaning lady saw my headboard. And I LOVE it. I built it myself 5 years ago. (So I am having a good giggle that they are so common now.)

Even in more public areas of the home, people who are seeing it are already your friends and family. If they don't have a good impression of you, they don't need to be invited over. And they don't need to see your fireplace more than once a week.

I wish Pal would throw us a bone and start some of these interesting discussions again.
And Bronwynsmom, too, while I'm at it.
I realize that real life takes precedence, so this forum may be extremely back-burner for them right now.
But I miss reading their stuff.
Just saying.

I feel like odd man out, as the only room that I would 'keep' 20 years from now would be that bathroom!

I suspect the double-height rooms will be strongly identified with this period. Also the flush, unadorned fireplaces, and of course, the recessed cans.

I love all kinds of architecture and interior design, including so-called 'dated' features -- I mean that's what makes design interesting. Otherwise, everyone has the same playlist.

My take: The bedroom is just dull. The room with polka dots is suitable for HGTV. The room with roman shades looks like a mid-market hotel suite - it's not awful, but it is bland.

With the exception of the green wall color, I like the room with shutters. The built-ins below the windows and the narrow built-in for the TV make the room very functional. The TV wall will undoubtedly be reworked over time, but it is a natural focal point for the seating, and it works well, IMO.