What is Your Kitchen Décor Style: Trend or Fad?

What is your kitchen décor style:
0n trend or a fad?
Trends rise more slowly than fads,
and are more organic and enduring.

Kitchen Décor Fads of the Past

Do you remember kitchens

with roosters everywhere?

Or strawberries?

You don’t?

So you’re too young.

Back when we first got married

we’d see strawberry dish cloths, strawberry tea towels, rugs, curtains, wall paper or at least a border, dishes.

Strawberry salt and pepper shakers, strawberry pitchers, clear drinking glasses with painted strawberries.

strawberry kitchen chairs — Yes, sadly, this did happen back in the 80s. I personally made chair covers this frilly. It didn’t just stay in the kitchen, either. We even wrapped our toilets in frills. Photo via Pinterest.

Anywhere you looked,

something shouted strawberries.

Or roosters. Mushrooms. Pillsbury doughboy. Or Coca-Cola.

Everyone had a theme, and the love affair with that theme lasted anywhere from 5 to 10 years.

I actually had one friend beg her family and friends to quit giving her rooster stuff.

(One thing about those passions, it was easy to pick a gift. If all else failed, buy a cookie jar with roosters.)

Kitchen Décor On Trend in the Past.

Today we collect milk-glass or depression glass or ironstone or… name your poison.

But I’m thankful the fad to fill a room with the ultimately garish color of one design is over.

(Maybe because I could never commit to any one theme, and my kitchen ended up a crazy quilt that might respectfully be called eclectic today.)

The one theme that stayed consistent through my life of owning a kitchen

is vintage. Farmhouse. Rustic.

Which happens to be on trend now. And actually has always fit into any kitchen I’ve had, whether it was the dark cabinet, vinyl sheet floor and mauve tones of the 80s or the current trend of painted cabinet, granite counters and wood floors.

tuscan style kitchen 90s era via apartment therapy — Then there were the Tuscan style kitchens of the 90s. Photo via apartment therapy

My “vintage” style evolved from what I loved about the kitchens I visited as a young child.

Minus the chrome and inevitably cracked vinyl chairs and melamine tables with chrome “bumpers” that stayed in kitchens long past the 50s.

chrome and vinyl chairs — Chrome and vinyl chairs like my childhood home. Mom re-covered ours in brown vinyl. Which eventually cracked too. Photo via Amazon

The 60s and 70s didn’t have a particular kitchen furniture style (Although there was the odd kitchen with English pub ceiling beams and shag carpeting). Rather, the colors from that era are iconic. Avocado green refrigerators. Golden yellow dishwashers. We got married in 1982 and the dishtowels gifted to us were predominantly white with green and gold. Small all-over prints of mushrooms or flowers on terry towel.

Which disappointed me, because I was into strawberries and roosters, and my gift givers were still back in the “dark ages.” Sigh.

Design Dilemma- What Should I Do With A 1970's Kitchen? | NIBS — Typical 70s. Same pattern on everything, chestnut brown appliances. But I love the green stool. Photo via nibsblog

Kitchen Décor Fads Today

Think chevrons or chalkboard walls. Pallet projects and mason jars.

These items are iconic, but they are being used now as a fad.

We won’t always use mason jars in décor.

I believe there’s a move toward following trends now,

more than going crazy over fads.

Trends come in more slowly, and stay around longer.

You can fit your favorite style, in my case vintage, into current trends.

Can you see everything strawberries fitting into a kitchen today with granite counter tops, painted cabinets, stainless appliances and wood floors?

The trends (granite, stainless, wood) are organic and durable.

I can see a natural linen tea towel with a red stripe.

Maybe a strawberry motif or quote, but none of the all over designs of the past fads.

We need both trends and fads

It’s okay to fit a fad into a kitchen that’s on trend.

The now popular wooden bead strings are organic and durable,

but they won’t be used in kitchen décor forever.

If the trend moves away from what it is today, (and I don’t see that happening very easily because who’s going to go back to vinyl and melamine)

the fads will always follow

as a way to be creative in a less expensive way than changing the basics of the kitchen.

We need fads to feel current, because we probably can’t afford to move our entire kitchen into the newest trend right away.

In “Anatomy of a Trend” author Henrik Vejlgaard says this about why one thing remains a fad and another becomes a trend:

“There is nothing ‘mysterious’ about it
and it never just happens ‘out of the blue’,
though it may sometimes appear to be so.
That it is a social process means
it’s created by human beings.”