Like many of you, Thanksgiving has me reminiscing about my childhood years, the most formative of which were smack in the middle of the 1980s. A time that, for me, was defined by "Silver City Pink" Revlon lipstick, my 45 of "Candy Girl" by New Edition and whether or not I got the front seat in the car. But I have been trying to remember what my house looked like back then. What did my friends' houses look like? What home decorating trends were big in Washington, DC, a city that was, by most accounts, aesthetically provincial and stylistically conservative?
I have concluded that the decor I associate with that time diverges quite radically from some common representations of 80s interior design. Other people may recall a slick, edgy style dominated by neon, geometric shapes, black leather, glass and an abundance of mirrors. But my parents and their friends were hardly living the "Less than Zero" lifestyle in Los Angeles or New York. What was cutting edge trendiness in the 80s had very little in common with my 1980s reality.
Still, my memories of the decade do evoke other elements of what we now recognize as quintessential 80s decor. Does the name Laura Ashley ring a bell?
I remember plenty of cabbage rose chintz in my wealthier friends' living rooms. Floral fabrics layered upon floral fabrics. I think I ate dinner at more than 15 Duncan Phyfe-style dining room tables, seated on reproduction Chippendale-style chairs. There was a lot of dark wood, possibly cherry and usually refinished to a glossy sheen. Burgundy and gold were big in some homes. Pastels and mauve were big in others. I remember my suburban friends all had wall-to-wall carpeting and kitchens with bright colorful wallpaper. In my home it was all about Laura Ashley floral patterns. I will never forget my joy upon finally persuading my parents to buy me a Sears canopy bed, replete with screw-on plastic posts. It went so well with my Laura Ashley comforter.
What are your memories of 1980s decor?
FIRST ROW
• 1 House Beautiful.
• 2 The Griswold’s house in National Lampoon’s Vacation. Hooked on Houses.
• 3 A still from the 80s movie Mr Mom via Hooked on Houses.
• 4 An Arizona home in the 80s. More dark wood and dark pastels. From the always amusing and caustic website, Ugly House Photos.
• 5 80s kitchen with ubiquitous laminate countertops and warm-hued wood cabinets. Calfinder.
SECOND ROW
• 6 80s dining room from Hooked on Houses.
• 7 80s kitchen with oak cabinets and that fridge! All the rage in DC kitchens. Carol Raley Interiors.
• 8 A 1985 photo of the living room at Grey Gardens, the famous East Hamptons mansion, once owned by Jacqueline Kennedy’s aunt Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and sold in the late 1970s to Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee. This shot came from Architectural Digest via Grey Gardens News.
• 9 Sally Quinn’s master bedroom at Grey Gardens.
• 10 Talk about a "Bonfire of the Vanities." The living room from popular 80s designers Denning & Fourcade's Paris residence, decorated in the 1980s. Architectural Digest via (In)decorous Taste.
DIY Idea: Concrete Pendant Lamp
Danielle's Charming, Classic Walk-Up
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
White Enamel Flatwa...
On Saying No to Paleo: Why Eating Isn't One Size Fits All
Perfect Summer Cocktail Recipe: Honey Bourbon Lemonade
Memories? My parents' home is still stuck in the '80s/early '90s. Pale pink wall-to-wall, polished cherry Chippendale furniture, brocade fabrics in beige, gold and mauve, an entire mirrored wall in the living room, country cute kitchen and brown-everything family room with wood paneling and a non-working fireplace.
The '80s are my least favorite decade in terms of aesthetics. Everything and everyone was so tacky.
I only caught the second half of the 80s, but there were plenty of stencils, pineapples, Williamsburg blue...and of course, those big, cream, ruffly curtains!
The pictures I looked at in Metropolitan Home magazine were heavy on red and black, with bits of neon. Memphis furniture, which I could not fathom anyone actually buying. Loads of glass block. Everything was described as being "architectural". In the softer designs, loads of dusty rose and teal; Mario Buatta was insanely popular ("the prince of chintz"). I thought it was all rather awful. Very happy my parents had Danish modern teak furniture they bought in Denmark in the late '60s. That stuff still looks great.
huge Nagel prints and a lot of neon. also glass and brass. ugh, really the worst. and on the other end of the spectrum was the country chic look that included all the dark wood and baskets and lots of geese in gingham scarves.
my favorite was the paint splattered mauve, green and peach on laminate furniture...
two words: vertical blinds.
I miss the 80s.
are the photo captions not matching up correctly for anyone else? I'm seeing what must be the Parisian interior as #10, but the caption says it's the griswold's house (I'm guessing that's actually photo #2 or #3)
I grew up with the same, large, dark, antiques my mom still has! The only thing that changed was bedding went from Stør (IKEA knock off of the time in Southern California) geometric, to stark white. I'm thankful I didn't grow up in a chintzy house; Victorian/Eastlake antiques are timeless!
I'm pretty sure we had the dining room set in the 4th picture. Haha.
The captions are mixed up. No. 2 is the Griswolds' house, #3 is Mr. Mom's abode.
They are all beyond yucky!
Oh Lord... that is just plain nauseating!! The 80's were most definitely the decade that taste forgot.
I lived through the 80's once and thank you very much... that once was more than enough!!!
The 80's house I bought had peach and teal decor (including wallpaper) with vertical blinds and light fixtures with at least 150 pieces of glass. I moved there in the 90's, so the decor was long past its prime by the time I got there.
I moved from the Northeast to South Florida in the 80's, like every one else who lived in South Florida. All the transplants couldn't wait to go tropical and adorned their houses with peach and teal and dolphin statues. The few native Floridian homes I went into had nothing of the sort. This theme seemed to be the vision of the northerner's Florida paradise.
My parents' home in the 80s kind of cut right down the middle. Lots of brown (dark beige carpet, similar colored corduroy couch, lots of dark built-ins), light sort-of-floral wallpaper (small flowers, not Laura Ashley-esque), etc.
My bedroom as a child was very similar (but on a middle class scale) to the Grey Gardens master bedroom -- white wrought iron bed, white wicker furniture, floral bed linens and white frilly curtains. Man, I loved that bedroom...
#2 is from Christmas Vacation, not Mr. Mom.
I can now officially say "I am old." I was an adult in the 1980s (although didn't decorate my places like this!).
@ littlegreen: "geese in gingham scarves" Pure genius!!!
Sorry about the messed up links, y'all. Has been rectified.
Those photos definitely remind me of my parents house in the 80s. Love that sweater that Beverly D'Angelo is wearing in Christmas Vacation. I had one with pink hearts when I was in high school!
I remember Memphis furniture. But while my parents transitioning from 70s traditional to 80s modern, I was still loving white wicker and chintz. Actually, I loved Cortland Manor on All My Children! Even as a teenager, I thought it was the epitome of classic, tasteful style. I wonder what I would think today? Would it look like some of the above photos? I'm going to google it right now......
When we were house hunting, the 80's kitchen reared its head more then I could say.
I like this post and would like more retrospectives... Also I guess it's not in the mission statement, but I think posts on non-cutting edge but sort of well-known and even possibly reviled design would be interesting. Like, what is this "memphis furniture" some of you speak of? Or what is identifiably duncan phyfe-style?
My mother's furniture has probably not changed since the 80s. It's way more boring than this, though.
Mass-produced images of white geese and ducks on everything from pot-holders to plates.
The "electric apricot" colour in the bedrooms of my 1982 vintage house.
Bright red formica in the more daring kitchens and bathrooms, circa 1981.
Pastels and glass bricks.
Huge vinyl or leather couches that looked like they were carved out of giant marshmallows.
Framed reproductions of Impressionist paintings.
The thing to remember about the Laura Ashley school of 80s interior design is that it was, in part, a backlash against the plasticky, hard, Logan's Run aesthetic of the 70s, as people stopped looking forward to this depressing artificial future and longed for heritage, natural materials, country lifestyles and soft comfort.
I guessed that the first one was Mark Hampton. What do I win?
Brunch. That was the best thing about the 80s.
I remember my parents 1980s downtown condo in Minneapolis. Actually, other than the vertical blinds, it's back in style again. Lots of neutrals with textures and natural materials. Although, there was quite a bit of wicker. Do people still do wicker? I hope they don't still paint it white, anyways.
My mom got caught up in the country craze, so there were geese, ducks, pigs and cows EVERYWHERE in our home, which had a predominant color scheme of delft blue & rose. There were yards and yards of gathered chintz everywhere. It was just plain ol' wrong on about twelve different levels...
love, love 1st and last rooms, very classic and classy
Miami Vice was a huge part of the aesthetic from what I remember... all those pastels and glass blocks. There *was* actually a way to make it look sort of okay, but the third generation copies of it -- image 6 above -- are pretty horrible. Think Miami's Arquitectonica's Laurinda Spear (this is who I remember from MetHome in the '80s).
In Calgary, where I grew up, it was all about Jeremy Sturgess buildings in strong colours (loud ochres and much-brighter-than-brick reds). The furniture was leather, mostly European. And the MCM furniture which surfaced most was by Alvar Aalto (not Eames!). The lounge chair which speaks to me most of that period was a folding lounge chair by a Japanese designer for B&B Italia... wish I could remember the name. That's where my head was in those days...
Mind you, most people had their homes done up in either forest green and burgundy or awful pastels, many with those dreadful geese wearing scarves. The Princess Diana love affair with Laura Ashley and English chintzes just didn't work out west, and so you didn't see much of it.
(my parents fortunately had teak casework and nice '70s sectionals)
Oh god this describes my parents house to a T. It's so scary. I mean, I know *they* love burgundy, hunter green, navy, and wood everything, but I never realized how much I hate it.
And the worst part is their fireplace. I like fireplaces, they are great, fine. But for some god awful reason, my parents chose this frosted brick for every third brick. It seriously looks like cinnamon bun glaze. It's atrocious.
I think the room pictured in the last image is still classic and lovely, and I don't find the stills of the Griswolds' house atrocious either. I was a child in the 1980s and remember plenty of trends from that time which I find hideous now, but it was certainly not all awful and, just like today, there were people who did country style tastefully and others who didn't.
The chintz & wallpaper & Phony-Colonial McMansions were just as relevant and indicative of the times as the Met Home/Ruthless People interiors - it was all a different take on a nationalistic push for nostalgia.
Thats what the Reagan Years were all about for this country: Americans were attempting to recreate their perception of what the country used to be before all the "Bad Things" happened - before the Kennedy Assassination, before Vietnam, before the Oil Crisis and Watergate and before Iran: Effectively the 1980's were a massive, decade-long push backwards - and this was reflected by our interiors.
Some folk's nostalgia was an extension of the bright-and-shiny 50's Diner esthetic, some were comforted by the Midwestern Country Farmhouse while others sought a connection to East Coast Old Money (conveniently enough, on sale at Macy's with a Ralph Lauren label)
@bepsf: So true. So very true.
mauves..stencils...and many geese..but my hair looked great at allll times!..;) (that 30 yrs ago hair...sigh...)
Oh man, am I missing my white wicker bedroom furniture and floral heart wallpaper border right now.
I'll never forget my childhood 80s kitchen...oak cabinets with dramatic grain, cream ceramic tile with 1/2 inch black grout, wheat-themed vinyl on the floor, balloon valance on the window in a canada goose print. Awesome.
My teenage sister had Nagel EVERYWHERE.
Oh, and the teal carpet. God I miss that house.
My mum still has all the furniture my parents bought in the 80s. including the couch hand made in Belgium which has brown upholestry.I wonder if others coming into the house think the couch looks old and gross, but no one has ever said anything other than compliment the room. Personally I love it, and the furniture which is all dark woods, they all go together to give the house a cool 1940s vibe. I guess my parents did the 80s well.
No one mentioned "The Couch" that everyone in middle-class America had: Dark Country blue woven fabric with teeny squares of tan woven in. Regardless of the style of couch your mom had, that was the fabric she chose (and so did every one else's moms) because it went with the country blue borders, the country blue counter tops and the country blue ruffled curtains.
Le Sigh....
My parents moved into their current house in 1989 when I was a young'n. It was built that year so it was on the tail-end of most '80s trends. It's actually aged quite well and been remodeled/redecorated periodically. However, it still has the vestigial glass block shower in the master bath (with brass fixtures and huge mirrors).
We were a pastel family: seafoam living room, teal family room, peach game room, mauve master bedroom, all with super-white carpet that was so thick you left footprints in it. The furniture was mostly traditional looking stuff done in pastel colors.
Some other recollections from friends'/neighbors' houses:
- Neighbors who were very into the Asian trend: their living room had black lacquer furniture and silk wall hangings and the bathrooms had black sinks and toilets.
- Family friends whose dining room walls were padded and upholstered with Laura Ashley-type floral fabric (and the same fabric covered the dining room chairs).
- Everyone's formal living room seemed to have dark-stained coffered wood paneling (though ours didn't).
- Neighbors with a master bath with an enormous Roman tub in the dead center of the room.
- Southwest/Navajo/Arizona-looking decor (which in Houston was somewhat of a stretch given the climate and surroundings).
- Driveways paved with those really tiny pebbles that you never wanted to walk on without wearing shoes.
- A very wealthy friend whose late-'80s home had a staircase with clear plexiglass balusters and handrails and steps covered in super-thick black carpet.
Another thing -- wallpaper and carpet in bathrooms. The wallpaper would start to peel after a few years because of the steam from the shower and the carpet would inevitably get wet and have to be replaced (at least that's what happened with us). I never understood it and am glad I have yet to see that in any recent constructions.
Wow. You guys had a totally different 1980s. My image of the decade is the Lower East Side punk look. As far from Laura Ashley suburbia as you can imagine.
There is a term used to describe a 1970s or 1980s decor that was tacky, usually included crushed velvet, and was based on a movie title. Can someone help me out in remembering it?