In item #31 I recommended to easlern that he check out the "Interior
 Desecrations" site, which mocks the excesses of 70s-era decor.  It started
 me thinking that the 70s must have been a uniquely tasteless decade.
 Only a few minutes on the subject, though, convinced me that there was
 nothing unique about the decorating excesses of the 70s and that I could
 think of equally awful and dated-looking examples from the 50s, 60s, and
 80s.  I'm having a little more trouble coming up with examples from the
 90s -- perhaps cheese needs a little time to ripen -- but what I wound
 up concluding is that every decade is capable of producing looks that age
 particularly poorly.

 What's worrisome about that conclusion is that at some point the people
 coming up with these designs surely thought they were the height of cool.
 Since I'm in the middle of fitfully, in bits and pieces, renovating an older
 house, and since I would like to avoid that "what was I THINKING?" feeling
 10 years down the road, I'm prompted to ask:

   What decorating trends, now in fashion, are going to look hopelessly
   tacky and outdated 10-20 years from now?  When we set in, two decades
   hence, to mock the decorative excesses of the 00s, which will be the
   juiciest targets?

 Now's your chance to prevent a (decorating) atrocity with no more than
 a little bit of timely advice.  So lend me a clue (hopefully with links
 to a picture) and let me know what lines shouldn't be crossed.  The home
 you save may be my own.

15 responses total.

 > What decorating trends, now in fashion, are going to look hopelessly
 > tacky and outdated 10-20 years from now?

The only honest answer we can give are "we'll tell you in 10-20 years",
because it is an impossible question to answer. I mean, I might say go
with white walls and wood stained trim, but then even unpainted wood was
considered tacky at a time. Same with white walls.

I like to use natural colors and keep things simple and uncluttered. But
really, you should go with that makes you happy...future design snobs be
damned.

Fathead football appliques. Any art with "cyberspace," "information
superhighway," or ones and zeroes on it. Posters in plastic frames. Futons.
Giant flourescent bean bags. I could go on.  :(

Oh man I forgot about the tentacle lamps you see all over at Art Van. And as
much as I hate to say it (because I have a great couch in it), probably
microsuede. BTW this is a fun topic.

 One thing that is considered cool-looking now but that I think may be
 really out of style in 20 years is having a giant flat-screen television
 floating in the middle of a wall.  I'm not sure what will replace it but
 I bet those people with egg-shaped stereo speakers from the 70s thought
 they'd look cool and modern forever, too..

 re #3:  actually, I think practically anything you buy at Art Van is 
 guaranteed to age (style-wise) about twice as fast as normal furniture.

I actually kind of like the floating TV idea. It's ubiquitous, like a
painting. If I had a big floating TV I'd probably put a nice wooden frame
around it.  :)  I think the worst offender TV-wise is the
TV-in-the-refridgerator-door thing. 
God please don't revoke my status as a man for talking about home decorating
on an internet bulletin board.  :(

I think stainless steel appliances won't age well.

 Hmmm..  That's a possibility.  I'll have to consider that when 
 I get to the kitchen..

 By the way, I had no idea I was in the music conference when I entered this
 item; I thought I was in Agora.  Is there any way to move it?

You need an agora fairwitness to link it.

 In the meantime I apologize to the participants of the music conference..

Best way is probably either to mail an aggro fairwitness or post an item or
response (maybe under "system problems" or something.

Post an item/response in aggro requesting that one of them link it, I mean.

aggro?

I'd email katie.

If your old house has some style of its own, you can't go wrong by at 
least respecting it.  A geodesic dome or a Corinthian portico on a 1950s 
ranch house or a 1940s colonial will look ridiculous a lot sooner than 
10-20 years.

If you build an addition, say, it will look a lot better if the roof pitch 
matches the roof pitch of the original house.  New windows should match 
the originals, especially if you don't replace all of them.  If you want 
to completely change the look of the house, do it right and hire an 
architect.

In architecture, details matter.  One of the worst looking places I've 
seen is a new sorority house on Michigan Avenue (east of Delta Street) in 
East Lansing with what are meant to be classical columns in front.  But 
the columns are straight cylinders, the same diameter at the top and at 
the bottom!  Classical columns that look right are tapered.  The sorority 
spent all that money in an attempt to achieve a "classy" look and achieved 
extreme tackiniess, and you don't have to be an architect to be appalled.  
Extra points for the really awful looking variegated fake brick.

Meanwhile, also in East Lansing, a fraternity built a traditional style 
house on East Grand River (just west of Kedzie).  It's more modest in its 
stylistic pretensions but much more successful.  Hmm, use of actual real 
solid bricks might be part of the reason the place looks so good.

I guess the lesson is that fake materials don't age well.

One of the very worst is Dryvit (aka EIFS), styrofoam sprayed with wet 
concrete.  The stuff can be easily formed into any shape, but it's so 
brittle (a thin hard layer over a very soft substrate) that it can be 
smashed by a five year old on a tricycle.  When it burns, it releases 
toxic gases.  When water gets inside (inevitable in a wet climate like 
Michigan), then it gets moldy.  The city of Chicago has banned the stuff, 
but you can see it all over Ann Arbor in new construction.

On one of the historic preservation lists, one of the conservators was 
bemoaning the fact that one of these days, some famous event will make a 
Dryvit building a historic landmark, and some unfortunate curator will be 
faced with the impossible task of making Dryvit last.  On the scale of 
years, it would be about like trying to preserve a sand castle.

On the Quality 16 theater on Jackson Road (west of Wagner), they have some 
understanding of what crowds of kids are likely to do to Dryvit.  The 
lower part of the exterior wall is concrete blocks, and the Dryvit is up 
higher, out of reach.

 My house does have a period-appropriate shape and appearance and it's
 in an older, historic neighborhood.  Those are two things I appreciate
 about it, and I definitely plan to preserve as much of that character
 as possible, while minimizing changes that detract from the original
 spirit & design of the house.

 It's already seen some substantial modifications, but fortunately they
 were (mostly) done tastefully and in keeping with the house's design
 (there's an addition on the back that was just sort of thrown on but
 even it's not that bad.  Have a look at these two pictures of the front
 of the house, one of them date unknown but probably 1930s or 1940s,
 the second one taken shortly after I moved in.  They show some of the
 modification that's taken place between then and now.

 http://www.kpunet.net/~mcnally/Warder-2.jpg
 http://www.dfred.net/~mcnally/617/The_House.JPG

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