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I can smell this picture. Mildew, thousands of cigarettes, and whatever gas-soaked disaster grandpa has on his basement workbench around the corner. It’s the same era that brought us matching ceramic ash-trays for the coffee table, and bi-centennial themed kitsch like pewter minutemen that are actually cigarette lighters in disguise.
These colours were chosen specifically so we wouldn’t notice the nicotine coating everything.
90% of my furniture comes from them, at least it’s repairable and high quality.
A million times better than what the average person buys nowadays
This was my family room.
I recently bought a house that had used that ‘70s paneling as a sort of wainscoting in the kitchen; the panels had been cut to 4’ and applied in various ways (everything except just fucking nails) around the base of the walls. It had been painted white so it wasn’t quite as hideous as its original state and I didn’t feel like replacing it all, but I did have to repair one section of it that had been badly water-damaged. I was surprised to find that Lowe’s still has that shit in stock so I bought a piece of it and brought it home … and discovered that it wasn’t really like the original stuff. It looked the same but the grooves between the alleged “boards” were not recessed, they were just printed on the surface, so once it was painted it would have just looked like flat board. So I ended up having to rip that shit into fake planks and nail them up separately with small grooves between them. All that work just to simulate '70s hideousness.
Thank god there was no shag carpet in that house.
They used brown everywhere because all the smoking would have eventually made it brown anyway. If they start there they could pretend nothing was wrong.
I was told that the brown and puke green of the 70s were the result of backlash the bright hippie colors of the 60s. Dirty, earthly colors were more “natural” and “organic”. There’s probably truth to both
I recently bought a house that had been previously occupied by smokers. During renovation I had something happen that I’ve never seen before or even heard of. I tried repainting one of the walls without any prep and it seemed like the paint went on fine even a couple of hours later, but when I came back the next morning the paint had all flowed down off the walls onto the floor. As best I can tell, the nicotine and tar on the walls penetrated the partially-dried paint like a solvent and re-liquified it. Fortunately, just wiping the walls down with mineral spirits before painting fixed the problem.
When my aunt was alive and chain smoking her life away, we hesitantly visited wearing our oldest clothes that could be disposed of. There was no opening windows or anything like that, you just sat with your eyes watering and endured for an hour, during which she’d have smoked 7 cigarettes. Finally my eye started to swell from the smoke because I’m so sensitive to it, and my aunt noticed and got mad I hadn’t told her.
In the meantime my ex wandered through to use the bathroom, but he touched one wall and it was dripping nicotine and tar. What an awful habit. I lived through the 70s and 80s, where everyone smoked everywhere all of the time, and there’s nothing like riding with your parents in the car with the windows rolled up and them lighting a fresh one every ten minutes or so.
I’m a school bus driver now and about half of my coworkers smoke. It’s just fucking revolting because they always stink of that shit.
I’ve had that happen with trying to paint oil-stained (as a finish, not like motor oil or something) wood with interior latex. It really doesn’t like this and will let the oil bleed through, cure improperly, anything but go on and look like fresh paint. My guess is the cigarette tars/oils on the walls did the same thing. I read up on this (was years ago) and I think there’s products designed for this (maybe a oil/latex interface primer of some kind). Or you just clean really hard, or use oil-based paint.
use oil-based paint
Oh dear god no. I’d rather have a root canal without anesthetic.
Yep my grandmother, and parents had all that shit. And everyone smoked. It was no surprise of 15 years of second hand smoke if I didn’t become a smoker too. Now 2025 we are all non smokers. Except for my mother she refuses to give it up.
“Earth tones”
I have lived with that carpet. It was horrible and thin.
That carpet was my parent’s basement rug for the majority of my life. Maybe my standards are low, but I thought it was fine. Not excellent but fine.
We had it in a kitchen.
someone putting carpet in a kitchen must be either looking for a bad time or doesn’t give a fuck
It was the 70’s, people were super stupid. And here we are again in 2025 where ‘super stupid’ has returned. No one wants to live with carpet critters.
I kinda like it, feels cozy :)
“Ahh yes, this will hide the cigarette stains.”
Cozy as all hell though. Better than the drab gray cookie-cutter-prison aesthetic for sure.
Bring back carpet, earth tones, and separated rooms please 😭 I want a good hidey hole to curl up in.
Cozy but hard as hell to clean. The patterns are meant to make that not particularly obvious until it gets really bad, but if dust is a health concern it gets to be a bit much.
For a while the fashion was shag carpet with a random splotchy pattern in earth tones. Yes, it did a good job of hiding the dirt, but it was too good at that. I can remember hearing the cat throw up in the other room, going in to clean it up and not being able to find it until, after searching for ages, stepping in it.
why is it harder to clean than any current material?
Soap and water and a brush, that’s it.
Is this one of those things where sarcasm doesn’t carry over the Internet, or…?
do you mean you can’t tell if it’s clean?
When I moved into my house it had a concrete coloured lino floor in the kitchen, you could never tell if that thing was clean or not. Is that bit of brown part of the design, or is it a crushed bran flake? So you’d get the Hoover out and it would turn out to be part of the bloody design.
This was an attempt to emulate the rich, wood-paneled, dark, rich luxury of old money.
I visited Konopiste castle in the Czech Republic that had a moat with a bear living in it. Inside, most of the place was covered in beautiful walnut. Hand carved patterning, and filigree. It was actually beautiful. And the ceilings were like 20 feet tall. A bunch of animal busts, linens, and furs. They even had the real white and blue fine China that Boomers are so obsessed with.
I remember thinking as I walked through there: “Wow, this is what it’s supposed to look like”
I like dark wood but it does make rooms looks smaller if it is all dark colours
I always love the picture showing the different ways to contrast walls/ceiling/floor colors to push different feelings. Found it, or at least something similar to what I remember.
elimination of wood, cotton, and wool as materials and fast fashion/plastic fashion means that classical fabric (or finish, or furniture) looks have been forced out, so that race-to-the-bottom Chinese goods can replace them.
now you buy a $1900 couch made of cardboard and foam. And every wall is “agreeable gray”.
This is also a response to the 1950s:
And 1960s:
The other thing about these designs is that people tend to keep stuff for as long as it still works or looks good. So, while the kinds of photos you’d find of a “modern living room” in a magazine in the 1970s would look a certain way:
An actual living room would include furniture and decor from the 1950s and 1960s because it was still fine and didn’t need to be replaced yet. IMO the image in this post looks to have a lot of 1960s in it to me.
People think of the 90s as being the era of neon, and while it’s true that you might see a neon living room on Miami Vice, most people’s living rooms in the 1990s were still orange and brown because the furniture and rugs from the 1970s were still good.
now you buy a $1900 couch made of cardboard and foam.
When I was converting my school bus into a motorhome, I acquired (luckily for free) two pieces from one of those massive $4000 sectional couch things. I took them apart to rebuild them in a way that would fit in the bus, and HOLY SHIT are those things made cheaply. No cardboard, but the flat parts were made from leftover bits of chipped OSB, the sloped backs were formed from randomly-applied scraps of that nylon webbing they used to use on folding lawn chairs, and the frame was made from wood that you wouldn’t even want to use for firewood. All of this was covered with decent-quality fabric and the cushions and pillows used OK foam, so a normal customer who wasn’t deconstructing the thing would never know about the awfulness underneath.
Back in the 70’s brown was considered neutral, neither oppressive or energetic, selected to not stand out.
Also, everything would be that colour soon anyway, on account of the cigarettes
Yes! This is vital context – in every photo taken by/with my grandparents, every single person was smoking.
As a young child, that is exactly how I felt about that style. I knew I really hated it. There was no openness to rooms and everything felt drab. It was a style that felt outdated even before I knew what “outdated” even meant.
The smell is the biggest thing I remember. The wood paneling and those types of carpets always had that smell. Well, it was either that smell or the lingering odor of old cigarette smoke and spilled scotch.
By the time I started becoming truly self-aware, the 90’s hit and I was awakened with a blast of neon colors. (My brain doesn’t want to remember anything much from the late 80’s other than my Velcro shoes and jean jacket.)
Rooms don’t need to be open. My parents have an open concept modern home in Texas and it sucks. You can’t hear the TV if someone is soing anything in the kitchen, but anyone upstairs hears EVERYTHING that goes on downstairs. Having dedicated spaces for different activities is nice
