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Favorite decor trends of the 90's?

7 years ago




Did you love the decor of the 90's? Do you watch "Friends" and covet their New York apartment with that "flea market chic" look? What do you really remember from this era and what do you miss?


Share your experience! (photos encouraged)


Comments (28)

  • 7 years ago

    in The 90s I had overstuffed upholstered furniture and hunter green walls. My furniture is more in scale these days and colors are lighter, but otherwise my style hasn’t changed much and I still have most of the stuff I bought then, antiques and traditional pieces. I was most attracted to English Country style then, don’t know if it was generally popular at the time.

  • PRO
    7 years ago

    The English Country style was more 1980's. Somehow, I remember Tuscan being a 90's look.

  • 7 years ago

    Well in that case, my last house had a Tuscan influenced kitchen and I didn’t like it. Brown, brown and more brown. I thought Tuscan was more 2000s. Wasn’t Shabby Chic 90s? A pretty look, I think, if done well but It would have meant painting all of my stuff white, lol. Glad I didn’t embrace it.

  • 7 years ago

    Liked a really good nature wall mural (like this one) -- for my bedroom.

    Disliked and still dislike white painted kitchen cabinets ... IF wood is in the budget.

    Disliked and still dislike clutter and shabby and sloppy, specifically including but not limited to that disliked and still dislike drapes/curtains dragging on the floor. That's not shabby "chick" -- that's just sloppy, as if someone is too lazy to measure correctly and/or too lazy to return those drapes/curtains that are too long back to the store and/or too lazy or too stupid to know how to hem them to the appropriate length -- with the appropriate length usually being just at the floor but not dragging on it provided there is no heat/ac register to keep it above for air flow purposes.

  • 7 years ago

    My design memories of the 90s are hazy. I was a grad student with crappy second hand furniture, then rented a room furnished with the same crappy second hand furniture, then I moved in with my future husband.

    I still have one of the hunter green bath towels he had when I moved in with him. Burgundy and hunter green was okay, I guess.

  • 7 years ago

    I remember the 90s as having ridiculously oversized furniture. For instance, a chair might be nearly as wide as a loveseat because the arms were so wide. I seem to remember tons of throw pillows. Or was that just in the bedroom? I always wondered where people put all those pillows when they wanted to sleep. Natural pine and blonde wood in general were favored. Beige or very pastel colored walls and white kitchens were the norm. I believe accent walls in a vibrant color (often red) were incorporated to fight design boredom.

    Other than the oversized furniture I don't dislike the trends and fads of the 90s. Each decade had trends that were overdone till we became sick of seeing them. My furnishings are things I like in colors I like. Who am I to critique your design sense? If you are happy with your home, that is what counts.

  • 7 years ago

    I loved the 80es and 90es! My kids were born well two of them right at the very beginning of the 80es and our oldest in 1978. So ya now some of it was horrible but decor wise awesome!

  • 7 years ago

    Oh and beige has never or will ever be part of my house! Ugly ugly ugly!

  • 7 years ago

    I remember in the very late 80s and early to mid 90's that mauve carpet was fresh looking and pretty practical. I got it in my new build in 1990 and loved it for about the next 10 years when it suddenly became pretty old. But it was a very workable, practical color.

  • 7 years ago

    let's not forget sponge painting (not my photo)

  • 7 years ago

    ohhhh and the balloon valance. They had to be really really big so we stuffed them with plastic grocery store bags (again, not my photo)

  • 7 years ago

    My house is 1991, we bought it in 1997. So my house and lots of my furniture are 1990's. I love my staircase, and curling up in my oversized armchair.

  • 7 years ago

    Hardwood floors, stainless steel appliances,honey oak cabinetry, floating shelves on the wall for decor, burr bur carpeting, COLOR lots of COLOR. I am only a fan of the oak and floating shelves in that list. I did sponge paint many a wall back in the day. SOOO much easier than wall paper. This is the decade re-purposing came into its own and I am a fan.

  • 7 years ago

    Some of these fads must be regional on the timing. I saw the blue geese craze in the 1980s, burgundy and hunter green and balloon valances in the 1990s. I don't recall stainless steel appliances until after 2000, so Arcy, perhaps you live in a fashion forward area.

  • 7 years ago

    There was a lot of good 90s:

    Marcel Wanders

    Knoll

    Vladimir Kagan

    Late Postmodernism mixed with studio furniture


    The return of Neoclassicism

    Donghia


    Reintroduction of William Morris

    expansion of Thos. Moser

    Fornasetti Rosenthal plates

    Deconstructionism

  • 7 years ago

    I don't remember much of the 90s, I was a little busy moving states, new job, 3 new homes (none of which got decorated), got married, had a baby. The only thing I recall is how hard it was to buy decor for the baby: everything baby was Jewel tones but I wanted primaries. I went with the Jewel yellow and added the blues I could find. I do recall the pouf valances, which I rather liked back then.

  • 7 years ago

    These things are regional. The dusty colors of the 80s were a shift from the earthtones of the later 70s but also an integration of post modernist colors. The goose thing was a leftover of the faux Victorian of the 1970s.

    But the burgundy and Hunter jewel tone phase was in full force by the mid 80s in some areas because of the Reagans. That was dying off in the higher end of the market by the late 80s.

    The early 90s were already shifting into beige and early mid century revival or a continuation of the overscaled but without the jewel tones.

  • 7 years ago

    When the bigger nicer woodwork began I really liked it - having lived in a 60's and 70's home with skimpy trim work. I also liked the use of antiques - remember when you were not supposed to paint anything and ruin the old patina? Now people chalk paint everything. I liked decorative painting - because I can do it, and it was easier to change out than wallpaper. Something I still see today - glass front cabinets and plate rails - pulled from the past and worked into modern kitchens.

    I liked the natural materials - started in the 80's, but the 70's had so much faux plastic stuff - like faux wood paneling. I remember going up to a wall in a living room and it had plastic "rock" added in the 70's - so getting back to natural materials was something I appreciated. That is one reason I don't like it when people paint nicer fireplaces brick or stone gray - things from the earth - got to be pretty and a little more timeless then gray.

    I looked at some 90's This Old House yesterday and found many of the things we like today got started in that decade - like a kitchen with under cabinet lighting. There were two kitchens with blond oak cabinets - oh dear. Next time a poster wants to now the wall color to go with blond oak, the answer is dusty rose or hunter green:)

    The 1999 season had a lovely kitchen with what looked like soapstone counters (could have been leathered granite) and white subway tile backsplash. That home also featured a TV over the fireplace - and here I've been blaming the Property Brothers for that one:)

    1993 - the London house - notice the apron front sink - and people say they are a fad - been popular in Europe for a few hundred years:


    1999 Billerica House:

    Stone counters with subway tile backsplash. These shelves and stove vent look like similar to what people are doing now. The chickens over the stove are a little bit old fashion:


    I like the floor detail - cut into the flooring:


    The TV over the fireplace - with a system to hide it behind panels. How about those swag curtains? Notice the woodwork is white:



  • 7 years ago

    I loved the oversized furniture of the 90s. It was really comfortable I liked the colors better than the cool grays and whites that people seem to favor now. I miss wood cabinets. I despise painted ones.

  • 7 years ago

    I remember how disappointed I was when a friend of my parents updated her mid seventies sophisticated master bedroom with a whole set of jewel toned paisley coordinates from JC Penney's in the very late 80s or early 90s.

    The thing is that I did not dislike the pattern or colors so much, but they just didn't seem right for the rest of the house in color or quality. They would have been fine in a lot of rooms (and I don't remember exactly what the bedroom had looked like if I had ever seen it), but the living room retained it's high-mid 70s late modernist/art deco-revival-ish decor: matching striped silk tuxedo sofas with a very low lacquer coffee table piled with Steuben glass, a dozen abstract watercolors in a series and moorish arch shutters with fabric. (It even retained the gigantic vase of bleached white dried grasses).


  • 7 years ago

    Favorite 90's trend is warm colors. I still have my warm colors and have never been tempted to switch them out for gray.

  • 7 years ago

    Scandinavian style. Light colored wood floors and furniture. That's what I miss. I didn't get into the crazy color usage a la Christopher Lowell, but I do miss his show.

  • 7 years ago

    I miss real wood furniture with a nice finish instead of cheap wood faked to look rustic. Also I miss the case good companies that used to manufacture in the U.S. but are now in Asia. Most of them moved in the 90s.

  • 7 years ago

    Funny, as noted above big chickens and roosters, sponged painted walls

  • 7 years ago

    "southwest" colors! Remember them? Turquoise, especially. That was probably more of a carry over from the 80's.

    And, then there was fake "americana" with lots of blue and chickens and those expensive baskets that so many were buying with the fabric liners. What a scam those baskets were!

    Then there were scarf valances for the window that were tied up in large poofs and draperies that pooled onto the floor. And, faux finishes on everything!


  • 7 years ago

    Sponge paint.

    Proudly displaying the cordless brick sized telephone, with the caller ID next to it.

    The gold picture frame around the peephole.

    Vintage framed liquor posters everywhere.

    A cabinet next to the TV with VHS tapes neatly displayed.


  • 7 years ago

    Nineties for me were very different. Two thirds of them were about hands off and dorm furniture. I obviously went to other people houses sometimes(either as a dear guest or a house cleaner-that depended)) but somehow didn't pick that's there fashion or something. Everybody seemed to do whatever they considered beautiful.I I do remember new light lilac sofas of one of my aunts-I was very surprized there's lilac leather))

    I do remember an amazing kitchen and living of our landlady of the house where we lived later, separate entrance to a tiny apartment-it was homey and cozy as hell, warm as her personality. As I understand now she loved antiquing. She also taught us how to make olive oil from olives-we had olive trees on the street-but we didn't succeed. Unlike her-she had a magic touch in everything

    . In short, I remember things that somehow impressed me. Or made me wonder. Or surprised me. And there was enough things new to me back then-obviously as I moved countries and cultures and climates.

    Later when we started to rent, and had to slowly purchase at least some things, I already discovered my affinity for combinations of wood plus color. Then, I liked unstained maple-and a bit of teal)) Or light cherry-and cream. I liked visually light furniture. I didn't like overly futuristic things, or I don't know, whatever I didn't like then I don't like now either. Of course I made couple mistakes too. Taught me well though-still laughing when I remember them))

    I mostly miss this element of discovery.