Home Decor
The Best (& Worst) Home Trends of the 2010s, According to You
Farmhouse! Open shelves! Plants? Who knew.
A month ago, a friend directed me to a Reddit thread from earlier this year in which this Redditor posted a question about the home trends we’ll regret in 20 years. It got well over 2000 posts about everything from painted floors to barn doors and...Joanna Gaines—but the discussion around open shelves was particularly heated. “This really is one of the dumbest trends. People tear out top cabinets to put in those shelves and lose a ton of space,” said one Redditor. Oops, I remember thinking, I rather like open shelves.
The last decade has given us a lot of really distinctive (and divisive) home décor trends: the dominance of the all-white kitchen, the rise of the subway tile backsplash, the growth of direct-to-consumer furniture brands, an interest in natural, sustainable materials, and…millennial pink (I’ll admit, I never really got that one—reminds me too much of Pepto Bismol). Some started and ended as passing fads (remember the backward books trend? No? How about this holiday trend?), others graduated to full-blown trends, and some, like midcentury modernism, got so integrated into modern living, we’re not sure when and how we lived without them.
So last week, noting that the decade was passing us by, we posted this question on our community hotline: What home décor trends from the 2010s are you sooo ready to say goodbye to? The opinions came in unfiltered. Turns out people have very strong opinions on what they’d like to leave behind in the 2010s. (Of course, we’ve written about almost all of these, so the joke’s on us.) Here are some of them:
“I can't believe I, the minimalist, am saying this, but I'm ready to let go of all-white walls everywhere!” —Maurine H
"I'm very glad farmhouse chic is dying a slow death." —Pari K.
“I'm so over the Marie Kondo variety of minimalism. I think it creates more destructive consumption patterns in the long run (i.e. discard what you don't need today, realize you need it tomorrow and go out to buy some more).” —Pari K (again)
"Chalkboard walls! They never seem to look as nice in person as they do online. They're messy, messy, MESSY." —Garrett F.
“I’m ready to say goodbye to the use of woven baskets as wall decor! At this point, everyone under the sun has done this trend.” —Aja A.
"This is controversial, I know, but: houseplants (gasp!). I think in the 2020s we'll look back and realize houseplants were just clutter in green, leafy disguise. One or two add life to a room, sure, but I'm ready for the houseplant-on-every-surface thing to stop." —Annie Q.
"Also, I really wouldn’t mind taking a break from air plants. It was too much of a good thing." —Maggie S.
"Concrete used indoors (except maybe as large plant pots)! How awful are those concrete kitchen counters that are rough around the edges and even though sealed, stain so easily! Saw a concrete couch once...can't imagine relaxing there." —Gammy
"I'm very much ready to say goodbye to gallery walls! They were fun for a while, but now I think they're totally overdone and can actually make a space look cluttered if there are too many photos or decor pieces included." —Camryn R.
"As much as an open-concept floor plan makes a space feel bigger, I'm ready to embrace designated rooms again! I think that open concepts are great for entertaining, but designing around a party that happens a few times a year isn't exactly fair to daily life." —Kelly D.
"No more inspirational quotes on things, please!" —Garrett F. (coming back for more)
While we're on it, here are some others we think could use a rest. They were fun while they lasted, but we’re excited to see what’s next:
Open Edison bulbs
Once favored by every Brooklyn hipster, and maybe, me.
Hygge
Nothing against the cozy sentiment, but our overuse of Scandinavian buzzwords could use a break!
Organizing books by color
Let's go back to messy artful stacks of books, please?
All-white interiors
Have you tried maintaining an all-white interior? How's that going?
The fiddle leaf fig tree
As Maggie S. says, "Release it back into the wild."
White subway tiles
Because they have fully run their course. OK, it’s true: we’ve got them all over our office. And they're kinda hard to hate because they're so easy to clean (and they polish up like a diamond). And they're a classic. Arrghhh, fine, we'll keep them.
Written by: Arati Menon
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Living in a space that reflects the people who live in it is also the direction I am going. Clearing up before painting, I am finding bits of of personal treasure that speaks to me and will end up on a wall or shelf in some form so I can see it. Our space, our life. Reminding myself that we are not on show, it is not a statement, it is just our living space.
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