Design swings between warm earth and cool sky. The '60s were about artificial colors. The '70s brought in serious earth tones and the dreaded Mediterranean Revival furniture with four-inch thick plastic appliques all over it. The '80s were all sleek again, then we had Tuscan and Moroccan and British colonial golds and greens and oranges again the 90s. The OTK is very cold in color, and on it swings.

I hated avocado green even at the time. It's just a vile color, and I still think so when I see people going gaga over it today for other uses.

>And that sunny yellow you can sometimes find--that is still wonderful.

Yes, I love those! I wish they'd come back, along with turquoise.

I thought that "Mediterranean" furniture was hideous at the time, and I was like six. Now all it reminds me of is 70s porn.

Though my parents never had avocado appliances (they had brown), I lived through those years. I'm not a design expert of the transitions from one style to another but I if my memory is accurate, we went from very dark cabinets in the 70's to oak and white in the 80's. Huge transition from dark to light, where the muted tones no longer fit with the cabinetary as much. Manufacturers weren't selling them, so the line was discontinued making them appear daughty in the country/white kitchens.

IMO it's not just about the appliance color but the woods/tile/colors around it that make or break it. The retro colors I've seen are very bright and far from the muted colors of the 70's appliances.

I think it's a product of the time you grew up in.

I'd far rather have avocado than mauve.

For me green can be a beautiful color. I have green walls and carpeting in my house. I occasionally wear green. But I would never ever drive a green car. Why? To me it doesn't fit my "car" personality. I laugh because it makes no sense but I do know that green used cars are cheaper than other colors. Not sure how I would feel about cooking on a green stove.

I'm really enjoying reading all the responses. Everyone has an interesting take on it.

cawaps, thanks - Coppertone was my range and hood color. It really wasn't that bad. I just hated the ugly coil burners.

marcolo, your right. I'm a little younger than 50 and have never seen them in person. Oh and you had to mention the plastic mediterranean. I remember as a child my parents buying their first brand new bedroom set in that style. It got passed to me and two dressers still live on in a family cabin. I really didn't like that at all. It was the plastic. I remember thinking "why can't my parents buy real furniture?"

Sounds like most think that the 1970's in general had very ugly design. Maybe some of our experts here could tackle that subject.

LOL, Bmore! It took me a looong time to be able to like anything close to olive, but I can like certain shades now.

My first apartment in 1984 had the original turquoise appliances. I'd never seen any like it, but they did exist!

Our first home had a 1970s all gold kitchen...Except the previous owners tried to "play it down" by adding a wall paper border and paint in dusty rose and gray blue. I wouldn't be any more excited about those colors and mauve than the avocado.

Bmore brings up a good point that decor in that time seemed to go with one color and do it everywhere. My BIL and SIL had a rambler with the 70s orange and almost black, dark brown cabs and woodwork... Paneling, too, I believe. But the carpet was black and orange, the countertops were solid orange (red-orange...no tangerine there!), and orange printed vinyl in the kitchen. I think the appliances might have been brown.

For me, it's more than just the appliances. We had a 1968 history exhibit here in St. Paul and I could not bear any of it. Too many memories of the Vietnam era.

When PBS runs those nostalgic music shows from the same period, I burst into tears.

It was an ugly shade of green! For me, that's the bottom line. Harvest gold wasn't much better...but the cinnamon color wasn't bad and seems to be making a comeback as a variation of the new 'copperish' color. Not as shiny as copper, but still nice with wood tones and warm colors :)

Sounds like most think that the 1970's in general had very ugly design.

Mass market design was pretty ugly in the '70s for a simple reason. It was all about the mainstream trying to absorb the '60s counterculture. That's how you got middle-aged men with a paunch stuffed into tight-fitting shiny Qiana shirts sporting perms that made their heads look like the backside of a poodle. They wanted to be a little revolutionary and edgy, but not too much. Recipe for disaster.

What a trip down memory lane! The kitchen I grew up in had the harvest gold refrigerator, wall oven, and sink. It also had avocado green textured vinyl flooring and coordinating wallpaper. The adjoining living room had avocado green shag carpeting and wood paneling. I don't remember my parents being wild about it when we moved in, but with four of us kids, there wasn't money to do anything about it until years later.

>Bmore brings up a good point that decor in that time seemed to go with one color and do it everywhere.

You know, I remember the toilets being avocado green too!

>I remember the toilets being avocado green too!

Yep, the first apartment I rented had matching avocado green in kitchen and bath. There's nothing quite like an avocado green tub. It still makes me slightly queasy to think of it after all these years.

My parents built their house around 1975. Dark paneling downstairs with blue-black-brown-white shag carpet(!); harvest gold appliances and countertops, dark walnut cabinets, and brown patterned carpet in the kitchen; harvest gold tub, toilet, sink and possibly also gold tiles with brown cabinets in the main bath; gold shag carpet in the upstairs living room; blue shag in my brother's room; red, gold and white shag in my room. The only decent carpet in the house was the low-nap green in the master bedroom. Bit by bit things were updated, thank goodness.

So as debrak said above, what went wrong in the 70s?? As a kid I hated the colors. I've recently come to love brown and green in some shades, and I will admit to having a soft spot for harvest gold appliances (like in my last sun-filled apartment). The whole package though..whoof. And actually, now that I like green I figured I'd like the green appliances now found in antique stores...but they're an ugly, muddy shade of green, like over-cooked green beans. Just can't do it.

A reminder to anyone who's forgotten of just how bad these things are:

Though if you click on the link to the Ugly House photos, I actually kinda like some of the funky wall papers, and the green carpet underneath the green appliance photo may be the same as my parents' old bedroom carpet (which was primarily my favorite because it made nice grass to play My Little Ponies ;)).

Here is a link that might be useful: Ugly House Photos >> 1970s

we still have an energy guzzling avocado green fridge in our basement that seems to work better than any the 3 new fridges we\ve gone through over two decades upstairs. It looks pretty good with the light birch slab cabinets and grey counter. It really needs to be changed out for energy star, but my husband is resistant since it works so well.

Check out this time line of Kohler kitchen colors through the decades.

marcolo, you are so right. Even as a kid growing up in the 1970s, I thought a lot of trendy things then were actually tacky. Older things looked so much more elegant. I also remember liking the cars from the early and mid-1960s much more than the 1970s era cars like the Pinto.

Avocado green appliances make me nostalgic. I grew up with them, along with shag green carpet, and I have fond memories in that house. I'm not sure I'd seek them out for my new house, but if it became trendy again I'd consider it. I'm not a huge fan of SS, but I guess that's what we're getting because I can't find anything I like better. fd

And in case anyone else hasn't seen some of the colors that were mentioned above (I hadn't), this link has some copper, brown, blue and yellow appliances that are definitely preferable to the avocado.

Ugly House Photos >> 1960s

And the 1950s has a cool white range and a pink wall oven:

Ugly House Photos >> The Quality of Yesteryear

The tract I grew up in was built in 1963, and the new owners were given a choice of turquoise, harvest gold, avocado, or coppertone appliances. Thank goodness my parents chose coppertone. My first and last set of appliances were harvest gold hand-me downs. Not that bad since I had the whole shebang, including the sink. My grandmother chose them to go with her orange and gold flowered kitchen wallpaper :) I would love to see some colorful appliances (or cars) these days. Everything is so bland. Where are the yellow cars and refridgerators?

Renee

I liked the avocado green appliances! When I met my now xdh he was building a house. We got married the month it was finished... green sink, fridge, corningware cook top. about 2 yrs later we had a dw put in - avocado green!

The walls WERE paneling! rough sawn cedar wood panels (and cedar panels and cedarshake shingles on the outside). It was an A-Frame in a woods on a small 'bluff' overlooking a creek. The wood floors didn't work out (bad builder) so within about 2 yrs when our baby was starting to crawl we put in carpeting - green in the LR and a brown and gold in the Kitchen. Didn't find one I liked w/the green in it so went with what I liked even if it didn't match.

About 14 yrs later when I moved into town (divorced) I bought my sister's harvest gold stove and fridge from her and put in my house in town. I had blue and gold kitchen carpet in there. It was carpet specifically for the kitchen. I loved it. I still like both of the kitchen carpets i had. Raised 4 kids with it on the floors.

I don't hate the green, I just wanted something different when I moved and loved the gold. I kept it til in the mid 90's moved when I lived in my last rental house. Then moved in with a co-worker while I got my land and moved out into the country again (different place, different state). Now I have an almond fridge w/harvest gold sink - lol! and avocado bathroom sink/tub/toilet! for the last 14 yrs.

Soon to move again - will take my almond (more a bisque)fridge w/me and have a bisque sink and stove for there.

I still don't hate avocado tho I'd rather not have a lot of it. I wear a lot of green. the pants I have on now are about that color! I'd probably take it in an appliance over SS too.

Jessica, I kinda like that. Eek. THAT kitchen is rather tastefully put together. The countertop makes it work!

Reading this thread sent my husband and me down memory lane to our first house, built mid-'60s, bought by us in 1972. We were so proud of our avocado green refrigerator (remember the edges were a slightly darker shade). Of course it was simply fabulous with the green shag carpet in the living room next to the kitchen! But when I wanted a change, there was no need to buy a new frig - no, sir, my husband bought the appliance painting kit, this time the dark brown. There were two paint cans in the kit, and of course one can was the slightly darker shade for around the edges of the doors. He was so proud of his finished product and all the neighbors came in to admire it and wonder whether they, too, could pull off such a feat. The intricately pattered brown and yellow vinyl floor and the bright yellow Formica countertops all worked together like a 1970s dream!

fori, it is a rather understated kitchen, at least! ;)

Maybe one of the next DAT threads can be on how to make avocado appliances look good?

desertsteph, didn't you find it hard to clean kitchen carpet? I remember when my parents first got vinyl; it was so fun to slide around on the floor in socks!

Wow, what an interesting thread.

I'm fascinated by the suggestion that the whole, um, "political ambiance" of the time matters too. I think that must be right at some level, I think social pressures and customs must influence design. No question the 70's were a time of interesting political upheaval. I'm not sure how that translates to design. Except then there's also this suggestion that whatever it was of that time that's linked to the avocado, well most (many? some?) of us only saw the avocado *After* the fact and associate it with something passe' -- *what* that's passe', well - dunno.

So some of the distaste associated with the avocado appliances is 'transferred', if you will, distaste for the times. Hmmmmm..... I thought I was reading that in agglomeration of a bunch of posts. Hope I haven't totally missed the nail there.

Because one thing is, I know there was a lot of interesting design going on in the 60's and 70's. Design Research for one, and I can think of a lot of really good designs from then. Somehow, this is the "bad" design from then, and it's very flamboyant. or muddy; whatever. It's very obtrusive.

I'm not really up on history very well, but when is the "middle class" said to have been in full swing in this country? I'm thinking these times were sort of the apex, or near to it?

Anyway, those colors are immensely evocative and not just of the specific kitchens they graced. I buy the argument that they're surrogates for a time, place and social situation.

The problem with the 70s, speaking as one who was there, was that it was the first time that the industry seriously forced a single color scheme on everyone. Everything was earth toned, and if you didn't want orange, brown, avocado, and gold, too bad for you. It was just a hideous drab dark look and it was everywhere.

Those who deride the ducks and colonial blue and rose and gray that followed don't understand what a relief it was to get away from the hideous '70s and their dark pseudo Mediterranean interiors.

It's not so much political, I think. I was in college in the early '70s and by '74 all the more violent upheaval was pretty much over and things like streaking were making news (well, and watergate, but that was a political scandal, not a social upheaval). But we still had to deal with avocado green bath towels--I still have two (at least they were made to last).

I still think that the extreme earth-tone or avocadoism, followed by the pastel ducks Holly Hobbyism were mass culture phenomena that did Not reflect *good taste at the time either.They were exaggerated middle and low culture expressions of the trends.

Right, pal, but if you were in the middle class financially it was hard to avoid. When you went into even a kitchen supply store, everything available was in those colors. I remember desperately searching for years for things like a red teakettle. Couldn't be done, for the longest time.

I grew up in a house with white appliances, and never had anything but white till stainless came on the market, but I love the retro and modern colored appliances, any color, especially avocado, I think they're cool. I do not covet much, but gsciencechick's aqua Big Chill is up there, it's just so, umm, chill.

However, my LR is painted BM Pine Grove (think what would happen if avocado and coppertone mated) and my entry is painted BM Medieval Times (mating of harvest gold and avocado), so I come by my avocado love honestly.

sandyponder

When we bought our first house in 1980 it had avocado appliances and I thought they were pretty nice (seriously). This from a girl that had grown up in an old faRmhouse with the above mentioned kitchen carpet.

I did get new butcher block countertops to replace the orange, in that house and I really thought I was living high then.

It's all a matter of perspective sometimes, lol.

O.T. to writersblock...I heaved out my drab green bath towels years ago but in cleaning a closet recently here I found a gone missing orange hand towel. Oh, and a roll of adhesive shelf paper in giant orange flowers. My mother thought I liked orange and she always gave me such things. Orange candles, orange placemats, orange ashtrays (remember those?). That was the ultimate accent color. Personally, I liked the gold and still do.
___

If you remember the winter/spring/summer/fall color analysis fad that we used for clothing selection, I'm a spring. The color palette that was so very fashionable in the old colored appliance days of the 1930s-1940s was summer (pastel pinks, turquoises, seafoam greens) or winter (black and white) and the 60s-70s was either winter (stark contrasts of b&w with Schiaparelli pink and chartreuse) or fall (oranges, browns, dull greens). The spring palette of clear colors has had a longtime struggle with fashion. Apparently it's not as common as the others in the biological world of the U.S. and I suspect that there are just fewer customers for it. The DAT Yellow thread may address the void. Go gold! Go mustard!

As for middle class, I think those who had aspirations and who wanted to declare "we've made it!" bought the trendy things like colored appliances. But there were also the stodgy stick-with-white people who raised me who knew that white would always be practical and would return to fashion, at least utilitarian fashion. That was also the middle class but it was the conservative middle class not the blatant one. We drove Fords.

I do hold market pressure to some fault in decorating evils. I didn't understand how much we are influenced by that until I started to see what I always thought of as my parents "art" be sold in junk stores ($1 to $10).

I am somewhat afraid of picking something popular and somewhat resigned to it.

(@jessicaml - uglyhouse isn't a sufficient warning. That was like every bad home decorating ad campaign rolled up in a page. Loved every thrilling picture.)

Most people who make fun of avocado green appliances never had them or used them when they were new. If you are younger than fifty, the only time you ever saw them in person was when they were already dated. If you ever did see them in person.

Pretty much agree. Everyone wanted a Brady Bunch kitchen in the 70's. An Alice in the kitchen would have been nice too. It was a mix of avocado,orange and stainless. Our first house had harvest gold appliances,orange counter tops, and a stainless cook-top on the stove.

I still have some old Sunset kitchen books from that era. All the "new stuff" everyone has orgasms over today was around then. Except for solid surface and engineered stone products. The rolls-outs, the stainless, all there.

At the time everyone wanted to get rid of grandma's gas range and go electric. People wanted streamlined kitchens that they weren't slaves to cleaning. Women weren't willing to spend their whole day there. They discovered there was life outside the kitchen.

Many of the styles people covet today were things grandma would have been thrilled to get rid of.

>>>Why everyone hates avocado green appliances?>>>

Because no one has renamed them as "Mediterranean Sage" or "Scandinavian Forest" yet.

LOL!

Appliance colors will definitely date a kitchen...avocado, harvest gold, coppertone in the 60's and 70's, almond in the 80's. Wonder if 20 years from now someone will look at my kitchen and say "stainless appliances--that is so 2,000's."

When we moved into our 5 year old house in California in 1959 the appliances were turqoise...I don't remember having them very long. Mom's least favorite color was green, so we would have never had avocado. She was a practical gal--always had white appliances and white dishes ("they go with everything"). When I got out on my own I rebelled and bought patterned dishes for years....but with my new kitchen, I bought white dishes...why? because "they go with everything." We DO turn into our mothers!

Those who deride the ducks and colonial blue and rose and gray that followed don't understand what a relief it was to get away from the hideous '70s and their dark pseudo Mediterranean interiors.

I grew up and into adulthood with the dark and dingy 'earth tones' of the 70s and hated them, then started married life with the Colonial shades and just wasn't much fonder of those. Agreed they were better, but a step up from awful can still be bad. ;-) At least they allowed the use of cleaner and brighter creams and whites, and a bit more variety... Not so heavy.

I have to say that I'm not sure we ever had colored appliances in my parents' home, as we weren't monied enough to have trendy. But I just moved into them later on. --Actually, I'm pretty sure the portable dishwasher we had in my later childhood that rolled in from it's inconvenient spot in the family or laundry room and attached to the faucet was gold or avocado...Even with a butcherblock top... Woohoo!

Florantha, my personal color palette is "Winter," so the colors in both of those trends are my worst.

Marcolo- LOL! Can you provide pictures (especially of the hair style) or should we just google the '70s show? :)

I am under 50, so I certainly fit in the classification of one who never used them or even saw them when they were new. I agree that part of the backlash is the combination of mass-production and adoption, over use of a single color in one space, and frequently cheap (looking) materials. Additionally the other colors and materials typically used in combination with these (avocado green, harvest gold, brown) colors were within the same family of dark browns, golds, and muddy greens.

For me personally, I have never really loved the quintessential 1970s "earth" colors in any form: clothing, paint, furniture, appliances, automobiles, etc. I generally dislike gold and brown. The avocado green of the 1970s is very "muddy" as someone described it, having a lot of brown. I distinctly recall my aunt and uncle's house being entirely brown, gold, and orange. I remember wondering (hopefully just to myself - I was quite young) why did they ever pick such ugly colors for the whole house that didn't even look good together?

I recently ripped out two harvest gold bathrooms. One had a harvest gold tub and toilet with speckled harvest gold and white wall tile, but had been "updated" with a cheap vanity, cream paint, and cream vinyl flooring. The other was worse with harvest gold toilet and sink in a dark brown oak cabinet with dark brown splotchy laminate counter and brown vinyl flooring. Personally I find gold fairly unpleasant as a color. I prefer softer pastel yellows and bright sunny yellows. But for me, the combination of the dark brown and gold was reminiscent of exactly what goes on when sitting on a harvest gold toilet. I wish I had pictures of the bathrooms in their heyday when they had wallpaper and original vinyl flooring.

Even today, I find myself bothered by rooms overwhelmed with certain colors. For example, I realize that soft beiges and browns are currently considered "neutrals" but I strongly dislike color palettes that are almost exclusively these colors. I am even bothered by kitchens that seem to have (brown) wood cabinets, brown or beige counters, beige floors, etc, even though I realize they are popular and many people love this "warm" look. While I might enjoy a kitchen filled with Viking cobalt colored appliances, I wouldn't combine that with blue cabinets or blue floors and blue counters. Yet that seemed common with the avocado greens and harvest golds of the 1970s.

"remember the edges were a slightly darker shade"

yes! maybe that's why many think of it as 'dingy'.

kitchen carpet - no problem keeping it clean - just like other carpet. call the dog if you drop food... vacuum and steam clean. My neighbor and I would rent a steam cleaner about every 3 months and clean our carpets. her dh went to get it and we returned it.

and if I'm remembering correctly, sandyponder's kitchen is on my 'favorites' list of gw kitchens!

"What a trip down memory lane!"

More like a repeat of a nightmare.

The last avocado appliance I had to deal with was a massive 48 inch electric stove.
Despite its huge size, it had only the requisite four burners (in two sizes) and a lot of wasted space around them.
Someone must have thought that having a place to land hot pans without a trivet (late 1950s early Formica counter with metal edging) on the stove top was worth the loss of counter space for other uses.

It died a horrible death at the scrap yard, along with the matching refrigerator.

My mother-in-law still has an avocado slide in electric range and matching (recirculating) hood...I actually think it looks pretty cool, to tell the truth. Sadly, their avocado refrigerator broke and was replaced a number of years ago.

Its a very late 60's/early 70's kind of look, and it makes me think of macrame owls, but that is partly why I like it. I understand that most people have a strange hatred for design of that era, but honestly - I would take it over most of the 80's, any day.

What I always wonder is why people hate these appliances with a passion, but they like Le Creuset cookware which has a very similar aesthetic - especially some of the classic colors like flame.

I didn't mind the macrame, the plants or the brick and wood...just the green, gold orange theme. Not my favorite colors. However, if they had gone with leaf greens and morning glory blue...I could dig it! :)

I still maintain that avocado has simply become a shorthand for a lot of people, and so everyone knows you're supposed to hate it even if they've never seen it. Otherwise, why target the '70s so exclusively?

I never saw a refrigerator as ugly as this.
{{!gwi}}

> Appliance colors will definitely date a kitchen...avocado, harvest gold,
> coppertone in the 60's and 70's, almond in the 80's. Wonder if 20 years
> from now someone will look at my kitchen and say
> "stainless appliances--that is so 2,000's."

Absolutely. I haven't the faintest doubt in my mind. I don't think they'll be hated like the avocado, but they'll feel old fashioned. Luckily appliances are the easiest to swap out.

My parents were never trendy enough to have avocado appliances in the '70s, but we had a harvest gold refrigerator. However, from buying their house in the 60's (at which point everything in it was from the '50s) to today my parents have only ever swapped appliances, repainted and changed flooring and countertops in their kitchen, and it still looks OK. Their master bath, however, was completely covered in redwood paneling in the '70s (turning it into a dark cave), and then completely changed again to white walls and tiles 15 years later.

Does anyone Not think the combination of pea soup, spring, and forest greens in the Gardenweb heads is hideous?

Perhaps the header should be the topic of the next DAT.

It's the fuschia 'go' button that really irks me up there, Pal. I could handle the header with a burnt orange accent.

What I always wonder is why people hate these appliances with a passion, but they like Le Creuset cookware which has a very similar aesthetic - especially some of the classic colors like flame.

I strongly dislike those, too... For the reason that they immediately remind me of those awful old colors, especially with the color gradation. I always figured those who bought them were at least 10 years younger than my almost 52 years, so didn't remember the relief of living past them. They have so many more beautiful colors to choose from! Still not a fan of the color fade, and the price. ;-)

My MIL bought a house built in the 50s with pink appliances.

Do you think pink was better than avocado green? I DUNNO.... I think pink is up there in the appliance color disasters of Americana.

Ah, I think the petal pink appliances were beautiful.

I wouldn't put pink in my kitchen, but the pink appliances were at least a nice shade of pink.

I guess I just dislike the colors of the 70s. And much of the styling.

I also dislike many of the popular dusty colors from the 30s, but love most of the design elements from that period. Now THAT was a nasty shade of pink. (Of course it didn't end up on appliances.)