Home decor

[Trickyvee]

I'm not sure we have a general thread on this so I thought I'd start one. Here's a few trends I remember...

Wood chip wall paper (I still have wood chip in my bedroom from previous owner(s) goodness knows how old it is!)
anaglypta wall paper
pine cladding
brick fire places
wall lights
venetian blinds being taken over by the trend for vertical blinds
pouffes
net curtains
'frilly knicker' blinds

Also in the 90's there was a fashion for putting dado rails around rooms with one colour/paper style above the rail and another below it. Alternatively a wall paper border was used instead of a rail.

And outside...stone cladding and pebble dash!

[stuckinthe80's]

Re: Home decor

Flock wallpaper was very popular in the 70's. Luckily my parents hated it do it wasn't inflicted on me! I remember wall colours in the 80's being either very bold or soft pastels like pillar box red or soft baby pink. Grey was also very popular in the 80's.

[Trickyvee]

Re: Home decor

I missed out on all the coloured wall business growing up as my parents liked all the walls to be white. One year they dared to the living room 'barley white' (hardly a big change) but hated it so much it was gone within a few months. I have a variety of colours on my walls now and my mother reels every time she comes in, saying it looks terrible!

[stuckinthe80's]

Re: Home decor

I remember 'Almond White', 'Bluebell White' and 'Apricot White' being popular in our house!

[Genie]

Re: Home decor

We had some terrible wallpaper at home in the 70s. The bathroom's was white with mallard ducks sitting in bunches of reeds all over it while my parents room had big swirly roses and downstairs had horrible geometric patterns (which went lovely with the floral carpets and the colour block lino.)

Fireplaces were a big thing, if you had a brick one you ripped it out and made a tiled one, if you had a coal one and you wanted to impress, you invested in an electric one with the flickering effect. We always had standard lamps downstairs too.

One craze that went on and on was the draft excluders you shoved along the bottom of the door that looked like fluffy snakes or sausage dogs, the market used to sell their own cheap versions.

Anyone have a fluffy tortoise / turtle footstool / pouffe? Those things were really heavy.

[Trickyvee]

Re: Home decor

One craze that went on and on was the draft excluders you shoved along the bottom of the door that looked like fluffy snakes or sausage dogs, the market used to sell their own cheap versions.

I just bought one of these for last winter and sewed a face on it to make it look like a snake because it was plain

And yes those big standard lamps with ornate flowery shades were popular especially with older folk.

[Richard1978]

Re: Home decor

My parents had anaglypta wall paper in the lounge for years (it was painted over a couple of times) followed by the very 1990s contrasting wallpapers divided by a border.

They also had a brick fireplace with open effect gas fire put in to replace the very 1970s unit which was a real effort to light.

My girlfriend's Mum's house is a bit of a 1970's - 80's timewarp stylewise, with flocked wallpaper, stone fireplace, ploysyrene tiled ceiling, motifed kitchen tiles etc. She is trying to redecorate room by room.

[sf1378]

Re: Home decor

Theres shedloads of work needed doing to update my house....the small room still has the woodchip wallpaper...yuck. All the nice coal fires were taken off by the previous owners - two were blocked up, I removed one and cleaned it and can see the 'N' shape of the original iron fire...shame really. It was only a while back after 26 years of living here I finally noticed my house has 2 sets of chimneys - 2 for the rear of the house (living room and bedroom directly above it) and the dining room and master bedroom directly above...would take a lot of cash to reopen them all, but I may like to have 2 surrounds simply put back in for show-eventually....if I don't have to sell it that is.

The bathroom has polystyrene tiles...and theres some bad brown wallpaper on the staircase walls leading to the attic conversion, that needs a decorator doing as the walls are pretty high up...my sitting room has a light green/shiny wallpaper. I removed the feature walls bit and it was so difficult - even with a steamer the top layer would separate from the layer underneath it which leads to more work....grr.

We've had some pretty bad decos over the years in all our houses....lol

[amethyst]

Re: Home decor

Floral wallpaper everywhere my dad didnt take off the old stuff before re decorating,he would continue to paper over the existing stuffinsulation maybe to keep the wallls warm

[Kaptain_Von]

Re: Home decor

Pine cladding...AAARGH!

In 1984 I rented the 'attic' flat in a house in Weymouth. Most of it was ok, well, the kitchen/diner was and so was the bathroom. the former was a decent size and the latter had a great view of the beach. However, the living room and the bedroom were a bit on the pokey side...and pine clad. Thus, apart from getting out of bed in the morning meant that I ended up in the wardrobe it was like sleeping in a coffin. My friends used to make jokes about the undead when they visited. There were 427 knots around the walls of the bedroom, I counted them.

[amethyst]

Re: Home decor

Pine cladding...AAARGH!

In 1984 I rented the 'attic' flat in a house in Weymouth. Most of it was ok, well, the kitchen/diner was and so was the bathroom. the former was a decent size and the latter had a great view of the beach. However, the living room and the bedroom were a bit on the pokey side...and pine clad. Thus, apart from getting out of bed in the morning meant that I ended up in the wardrobe it was like sleeping in a coffin. My friends used to make jokes about the undead when they visited. There were 427 knots around the walls of the bedroom, I counted them.

We bought our first house where there was cladding right up the chimney breast,it was put up to hide damp because we found it when removed

cladding can still look nice these days in moderation eg bathroom ceilings bath panels looks ok if painted in white

[PC66]

Re: Home decor

Most of the ceilings in my house are clad (bathroom & kitchen excepted), although the wood is stained down to a mid-golden brown shade. I love it, and think it's much better than the modern trend for an entire room, walls and ceiling, to be the same non-descript white (or one of those "White, not quite" shades). Not to mention that it means absolutely minimal maintenance for the ceilings! The living room has paneling all around with matching book shelves at one end, which I find gives a cozy kind of cabin-style study feel to it.

[victorbrunswick]

Re: Home decor

The trends I remember were avocado green everywhere, shag carpeting, macramé wall hangings, decoupaged bullfight posters and heavy Spanish/Mexican-inspired wood and wrought iron furnishings.

[the fox]

All of my 80's memories are pine-clad. i also have vivid memories of avocado bathroom suits, and woodchip or 'Bubble effect' wallpaper.

Cheese plants and rubber plants as accessories.

As for the nineties, i reckon the program 'changing rooms' had a lot to answer for - all that two tone, dado-rail, sponge-effect or rag-rolled pastel Paintwork. With bad laminate flooring and decking all over the garden.

[amethyst]

Re: Home decor

Wood chip wallpaper another thing people used to do to hide cracks or damp

Artex on walls dreadful hard to remove as well