I wonder how many people know it left. Love the iphone case.

Thank goodness. I never went silver, so now I am back in style.

I posted this in the "i love brass" thread in decorating but it deserves a nod here, too:
{{!gwi}}

Well, I hope silver does not go out of style now and both Brass and Silver stay "in"!

I'm still getting rid of brass as I redo this house. I've lived with it way too long.

I think this is one of those things that 90% of the population would never assign an "in" or "out" to.

I may go with brass in the new house I bought since that was what was put their originally in 1963. However, the 1965 hardware in my current house was brushed nickel. I think people have kinda overlooked that brushed nickel or chrome was available all along for commercial hardware (which was all rather modern).

I am thinking more about shape than finish. I want something ergonomic, but I tend to get things caught on residental levers, and commercial levers with the return look heavy and commercial.

"I think this is one of those things that 90% of the population would never assign an "in" or "out" to"

I suspect you are correct but............................

That 90% isn't hanging out here so, I think for the sake of this discussion it is in fact "out"

.........................................

except - as a base metal to be plated by the "in" things.

When we redid our bathroom a couple years ago, we went all brass to match hardware that was already there and in nearby areas of the house...even got a heated towel rack in brass, and had to take a chrome plated toilet trip lever in to have the plate removed because it wasn't available in a brass finish from the factory (oddly enough, the toilet seat hinges *were*, which I always found a little odd). Anyway, everybody thought we were crazy not to change everything to chrome or nickel. Brass was definitely considered waaaaay out of style. We said "so what," and have loved the result. I always get a "nautical" kind of vibe off of brass fixtures, which I think works in a wet area particularly well...

That said, in our kitchen we are going with brushed nickel and stainless on the small amounts of metal that are showing...just in time for brass to come back! I guess we are doomed to always be off trend with our hardware....I think I can live with it.

I think for the sake of the discussion, it is in fact IN, if you look at what manufacturers are starting to offer. Kohler's newest finishes on its priciest if not newest kitchen faucet are polished gold and vibrant brushed bronze, which approximates raw brass. And the Purist bath faucet is now offered in a gold finish as are most of the bath faucets at the upper end of their price points. Since Kohler is an accessible company to most, as opposed to say Sherle Wagner, THG, or PE Guerin, and They have increased offerings in gold or brass (The others never stopped)...I think brass's time has come again, if it ever really left.

The other new finish that is popping up is a matte powder coated black.

I don't have any polished or brushed brass in my current house, so I have no ulterior motive in supporting its reappearance. I think it, like any finish, is simply going to look more "correct" in some places than others no matter what a trend says.

Chrome looks so '60's to me. :) Always has.

I've been hanging around here for about four years. I consider the finish a color rather than "in" or "out". I mean, I know what the styles are, but I don't care! And where I live ORB was so "out" well before I started my kitchen plans, but it's still "in" in many parts of the country. When I'm helping other people, I am much more conservative (unless they ask for out of the box), but when I choose "different" colors, a year later it's in the magazines and two years later it's in the housewares. Just the way it is. :)

There's brass in my new kitchen. Stainless faucets, (chrome in the laundry), but hardware and hood, brackets and screws are all brass. Brass is warm and cozy. I think it's pretty!

And from about a year after I put brass in my new kitchen, people have been saying brass is back, so I must not be the only one. :)

It may be back, but I am not going br*ss!

Waterworks also has new brass offerings. Although I am not ready to do brass faucets ;), I LOVE our unlacquered brass hardware!!! So far only the hinges have been installed but it is worlds away from the 80s style lacquered brass doorknobs I am currently living with. It already has a beautiful patina. . .

Last year I redid all the lighting in my house, 90% in Visual Comfort brass. They have an antiqued finish that looks like unlacquered brass, and I'm a bit worried that it actually is. Unlacquered brass is a cool finish unless it's on an unpolishable chandelier.

The woman that helped me at the Plumbing fixture supply place said that Kohler's introducing faucets, etc in the new brass to appeal to the Middle East homebuilding market...we will see if it takes off here. I do have two brass matching candlestick lamps that belonged to my grandmother. They are solid and really pretty and they are in my attic. I can't part with them and would love to work them in somehow to my decor now...:o)

Since they are offering it in the North America market,though, people will start to use it here. Actually it appears that there is more gold on the North American market than their offerings in the Middle East. They have some very different offering there.

I have brass in my house, but not in my kitchen. My entry light fixture is an aged brass and I looked long and hard for that fixture! ;-) To be fair, it replaced a builder ick-tack brass fixture and a similar style in the breakfast room went even faster. I mean, there is brass and there is brass.

In the new House Beautiful magazine, there is a lot of advertisements and articles with photos of many things with brass. When I was reading it (it just came in the mail yesterday), I remembered this post and made a connection. So...houzz and house beautiful are both saying this !

Sorry, brass has never been out, as far as I'm concerned. I used plenty of (unlacquered) brass here, and the house is now six years old. Old chandeliers carted from previous houses, new Newport Brass, new Jado (gold, but close enough), etc. I think it's warm looking.

Not my thing. As a child of the 80s, I want to avoid all things 80s. Everything has to go in and out or these companies wouldn't be able to sell a thing. I'll stick to the ORB original to my house and the silver tones I love to put in our future kitchen.

Brass is pretty.

Brass will never be "in" to me.... Too many memories of Brasso and my and DH's uniforms before a parade formation! If I had brass hardware, I would scream if I saw any spots, military training dies VERY hard! As a matter of fact, our last house had a brass knocker and brass house numbers on the front door, the first night we moved in, DH and I both wordlessly grabbed the Brasso and got those things bright and shiny before going to bed. I could never have it as a finish in my home, although I think it looks great in OTHER peoples' homes.

What's next? shoulder pads, chunky jewelry, power ballads, off shoulder sweaters, leg warmers, reagonomics, big hair..
no thank you!

I don't know why people associate brass with the 1980s.

It has been the standard door hardware in America since they switched over from wrought iron latches, except for a brief period around the turn of the last century with iron and earthenware sets. (And the nicer rooms still usually had brass).

I find the fixation of associating brass with the 1980s rather strange--as if it didn't exist before then.

Thank you palimpsest, I'm confused by that, too.

I think the reason it is associated with the 80's is because there was SO much of it....my condo had brass EVERYTHING including light switch covers....also had brass floor registers, door knobs, and a very brass fireplace door and frame....when we remodeled, I changed the majority of hardware to ORB, but I still have some brass accents....We kept the firescreen painted the frame matte black but kept the handles and framing for the glass panels brass (solid)

I also kept the beautiful brass entry way hardware, which looks lovely against my glossy black door...

My daughter refuses to have one speck of brass in her beautiful home...I'm convinced it was her exposure from my place...lol! She says brass is like kryptonite and she is superwoman...

Yeah, there was a lot of bad brass in the '80's, a lot of it "poor man's gold" or just poor. Remember all that reproduction Americana? Plus, real brass is a living finish which requires care, as NatalieChantal pointed out. But real brass is still pretty.

Poor Pharoah. Dare I say? Chunky jewelry has been in for 4 years. big hair for about 2.5 years, off shoulder looks different this time around (no Flashdance ripped sweatshirt look) but it's been here big time for a year, and leg warmers are the new must have accessory. They're being shown on skinny pins stuffed into boots that are too big for the models. I don't know how that's going to translate to real girls, who tend to be plump and fill the legs of their boots, but a clue is the tall boots with built-in stockinette tops. Legwarmers are also being shown with colored and textured tights, another '80's trope, and folded down over chunky platforms. Arm/hand warmers are also in.

I think the whole argument would have more validity if I didn't see so much "cheap, ugly, builder's grade" brass replaced by more of the same in ORB, brushed nickel or other current flavors. If it is the "cheap builder's" aspect of it that bugs everyone so much don't replace it with an "ORB" knob that is matte brown paint and cost $9.00. Spring for a decent piece of hardware with a decent finish.

That is just dooming yourself to repeat past mistakes.

(ORB throughout my current house)

i really thought long and hard about using ORB...was very worried it would be the 'brass' of the 2000's (as well it might)

but i looked at lots of pics of old homes in the 20's and 30's and saw lots of rubbed bronze finishes on the door hardware....(including my grandmother's house) so i was careful to pick a finish that didn't look like painted brown..my vacation home in the desert sw has ORB handles that are perfect for the SW style home, rustic looking but not 'too much' so....i can't imagine chrome or satin nickle in that house....the other option would be black iron, but alas, i'm satisfied enough with the lovely ORB hardware so not going to change it out in search of 'perfection'

I just put some brass knobs into a built-in in our house and was able to get them at Restoration Hardware for 2.99/each because they're discontinuing their brass lines. I guess they didn't get the memo that it's in! ;)

The copper in brass makes brass germicidal. Depending upon the type and concentration of pathogens and the medium they are in, brass kills these microorganisms within a few minutes to eight hours of contact.

The bactericidal properties of brass have been observed for centuries and were confirmed in the laboratory in 1983. Subsequent experiments by research groups around the world reconfirmed the antimicrobial efficacy of brass, as well as copper and other copper alloys. Extensive structural membrane damage to bacteria was noted after being exposed to copper.

In 2007, U.S. Department of Defense's Telemedicine and Advanced Technologies Research Center (TATRC) began to study the antimicrobial properties of copper alloys, including four brasses (C87610, C69300, C26000, C46400) in a multi-site clinical hospital trial conducted at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (New York City), the Medical University of South Carolina, and the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center (South Carolina). Commonly-touched items, such as bed rails, over-the-bed tray tables, chair arms, nurse's call buttons, IV poles, etc. were retrofitted with antimicrobial copper alloys in certain patient rooms (i.e., the "coppered" rooms) in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Early results disclosed in 2011 indicate that the coppered rooms demonstrated a 97% reduction in surface pathogens versus the non-coppered rooms. This reduction is the same level achieved by "terminal" cleaning regimens conducted after patients vacate their rooms. Furthermore, of critical importance to health care professionals, the preliminary results indicated that patients in the coppered ICU rooms had a 40.4% lower risk of contracting a hospital acquired infection versus patients in non-coppered ICU rooms. The U.S. Department of Defense investigation contract, which is ongoing, will also evaluate the effectiveness of copper alloy touch surfaces to prevent the transfer of microbes to patients and the transfer of microbes from patients to touch surfaces, as well as the potential efficacy of copper-alloy based components to improve indoor air quality.

In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency regulates the registration of antimicrobial products. After extensive antimicrobial testing according to the Agency's stringent test protocols, 355 copper alloys, including many brasses, were found to kill more than 99.9% of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), E. coli O157:H7, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Enterobacter aerogenes, and vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE) within two hours of contact. Normal tarnishing was found to not impair antimicrobial effectiveness.

All the original hardware in our 1966 home is brushed nickel. My baby sister INSISTED that the PO's must have changed it out because "that wasn't available then." Ummm...yes it was. A number of the houses in this neighborhood have brushed nickel. ;^)

Oh wouldn't you know it??? After I replaced all of the brass in my kitchen, light switches etc, it is "back in".....but I still have it two of my bathrooms. It wasn't that I personally did not like it in the kitchen (it went well with my cabinets), but when we put this house on the market, all indications were that it was making it "dated"...although it is only 10 years old....so guess I'll just keep what is left and if the new owners don't like it, "they" can replace it~~