The Latest: Aug 2026

When Bridgett Shepherd realized the black-wall Instagram trend she originally loved was making her bedroom look less spacious, she knew it was time for a decoration do-over. She and her husband saw the room as “cold and uninviting,” in large part because of the black walls and orange floors (which they always hated).“Nothing about the room made us want to hang out in there,” Bridgett says. Thankfully, paint is an easy thing to change!

When Jessica Archibald and her husband Stephen bought their 1909 home, it was “like walking into a ’60s time capsule,” Jessica says. There was an intercom system, built-in radio, Formica countertops, and carpet.“Sixty-year-old carpet on the kitchen floor,” Jessica says. “It doesn’t get more disgusting than that.

Fixer-uppers need a lot of attention — especially over-100-year-old fixer-uppers. So no surprise that when Liz Elliot moved into hers, a Sears kit home in historic Charleston, she and her husband focused on making the essential parts of the house livable and didn’t pay a lot of mind to the guest bedroom.

Cramped quarters can make it hard to want to spend much time in a kitchen. And plenty of factors beyond actual square footage can contribute to that feeling — dark finishes, bulky cabinetry, and blocked windows, for starters.Van Tuyet (@percivalinbloom) had to deal with all three in her townhouse’s kitchen. “The kitchen and dining area felt closed in, which amplified how narrow our townhouse felt,” Van says.

The 1960s gave the world a lot of groovy stuff—think bean bag chairs, Sputnik light fixtures, and funky colors like avocado and mustard. But some of the decor looked a lot better back in the 1960s than it does today.Case in point: Anna Westbury’s dark wood kitchen, original to her 1968 home. Its dark wood cabinets felt imposing, and the clunky fan made the ceiling feel extra low. Anna had already replaced the old beige appliances (win!

Open-concept living rooms, dining rooms, and kitchens have dominated home construction since the ’90s. But when DIYer Molly Miller moved into her new build in 2018, her family actually wanted more separation between the home’s main living areas. Everything was “lumped together in one large space,” and it made it difficult to have a functional kitchen with the limited storage.

A lot of great things came out of the 1990s — and there are plenty of design trends making a comeback that we love to see. But some of the decade’s looks could use a refresher, like the super-brown kitchen in designer Sheryl Sanders’s home.After living in the home for only two months, she knew she needed to do something to modernize the cooking space.Since the old cabinet boxes were solid wood and in great condition, she decided she could get away with just replacing the doors.

Many of us find living room makeover ideas on social media. But Christina Beck and her husband Colin literally found a house on Instagram.“One of our followers knew his mom needed to sell the house she had spent time in growing up for her dad,” explains Christina, who owns the renovation company Vero Home in Cincinnati with Colin.“It hadn’t been updated in at least 35 years and had a lot of deferred maintenance.