5 Design Trends that are Over
Whether we admit it or not, some trends are just over. This doesn’t mean you have to quit them, we like to remind our clients that if you like something that’s trendy just don’t overdo it. Keep as much of your home as timeless as possible and add in the trends to give you the look you like without going overboard and creating costly projects for yourself later or diminishing your return on a home sale. Here’s our list of 5 trends that we decided are over for this year.
Painted Accent Walls. Remember when new home builders and apartment leasing agents touted the accent wall as a value add for move in? I can’t tell you how many cabernet red walls adorn many dining areas in my town whenever we look at homes for sale. Don’t do it. The painted accent wall is out. What’s in is a wallpaper accent wall to give a room personality and depth without the overwhelming one color painted wall. So think peel and stick if you don’t want to overcommit to this new trend. Take it from us. Wallpaper. Is. Not. Easy. To. Remove. Remember the Home Alone house? That’s what my current home looked like when we move in and it took weeks of steaming and peeling and thousands of dollars to get it all down correctly and some costly drywall repairs. Wallpaper can add lots of character just choose wisely and if you know you like to change up your home often, go semi-permanent with peel and stick.
Too Much Industrial. Those industrial light fixtures throughout a home, industrial gears and wooden replicas of a bygone era are out. This doesn’t mean it all needs to go, we’re big fans of industrial lighting in the appropriate rooms like laundry rooms, mud rooms, boy’s bedrooms and garages. We are also hardcore antiquers so we do like elements of history throughout a home’s decor as long as it’s real and not a made for Home Goods knockoff. That being said, we all fall prey to the shelf fillers that retailers make us believe we need so we’re not going to stop being friends over a made in China wooden gear on a iron stand if we see one the next time we come over.
Edison Bulbs. My husband is going to have to have a minute when he reads this. This trend hit hard about 10 years ago and retailers kept it current for a while. Now trends are turning to a more timeless chandelier bulb and clean white lighting. The muted yellow light is over. So refresh as needed.
Granite on Granite. This one is tough to navigate. Most of the new homes built in our area used granite in the kitchens for countertops and backsplash tile. Often competing granites could be found on laundry room counters, fireplace surrounds, bathroom countertops and kitchens. When my Mom bought a Lennar home in the mid 90’s in Marina Bay, a community in the East Bay of San Francisco, granite was considered a kitchen upgrade and more coveted than the builder basic tile. We don’t advocate ripping out kitchens and bathrooms every 5 years since that’s neither cost effective or environmentally responsible so some of us have to live amicably with our granite and find ways to make it less of a home don’t. We recommend replacing backsplash tile with a more current look to offset the granite and bring new life to the kitchen. In other rooms styling can instantly diminish the granite overkill and distract the eye from the sea of granite. If granite becomes just too unbearable we recommend shopping for timeless natural materials to replace them with like soapstone and marble. Yes, they require more upkeep, and yes we swear they are worth it.
Heavy Tuscan. While we won’t ever get tired of Mediterranean design and architecture it’s time to pull those heavy adorned Tuscan inspired draperies down and let the light in. Since many homes in our area were built during the upswing of the Tuscan trend, we have come up with many ways we like to downplay their heavy austere presence with modern clean updates to lighten and open them up. Just painting the walls in many of these homes with a cleaner white can drastically lift the heavy quality of the dingy beige paint of years past. We also recommend updating lighting and window treatments to give the home new more modern defined accents.
As always we never want to offend anyone with our design aesthetic so we can agree to disagree if someone just can’t let go of one or more of these trends. We like to recommend alternatives for ways to work around the heavier trends and most often our clients can’t believe they waited so long to make the changes we recommend.
What are some other trends that are over this year? We want to hear from you so leave us a comment and we might feature them in a later post.
