100 Years of Interior Design Trends that Transformed Our Homes
Take a decade-by-decade look back at the furniture, colors, and styles that filled our homes over the past century.
1920s
The 1920s roared. With World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic over, a sense of optimism and burst of economic prosperity fueled a desire for glamour and luxury in American homes. Art Deco, a look that featured bold silhouettes, rich colors, geometric patterns, luxurious fabrics, and mirrored and metallic finishes, was the age's reigning look.
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The Rise of the Art Decor Aesthetic
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"Art Deco is a pastiche of different styles united by a desire to be modern," says Dr. Anna Ruth Gatlin, assistant professor of interior design at Auburn University. "There was an exuberance of having fought this great war and being done with war forever. The future was bright. People didn't want to look to the past; they wanted to look forward in all aspects of their lives."
Looking forward meant buying furnishings that took their inspiration from new technologies of the era: cars, skyscrapers, jazz, movies, and radio. Industrial design heavily influenced furniture design. "You see a streamlined aesthetic that comes from cars and trains expressed in curvy furniture," Gatlin says. The curvy Parisian club chair—which inspired Pottery Barn's monster hit Manhattan club chair four generations later—is peak Art Deco.
Starburst designs were also popular in upholstery, wallpaper, tiles, and light fixtures. "That's directly related to the idea of radio waves and crackling electricity," Gatlin says.
At the same time, bold geometric patterns inspired by Cubism, the first abstract style of modern art, showed up in rugs and mosaic-tile floors. Wood floors were laid in angular herringbone, chevron, and parquet patterns, giving them a striking abstract look. Stepped forms inspired by skyscrapers showed up in desks, bookcases, and chairs, while new manufacturing techniques made it possible to incorporate chrome and mirrors into furniture, allowing for dramatic shapes and glamorous finishes.
Colors reflected the era's sense of optimism, with deep reds, yellows, blues, and purples often paired with high-shine silver, chrome, or black accents. Strong color contrasts appeared on Art Deco items, inspired by the plush decor of jazz clubs and Fauvism, an early 20th painting movement that emphasized bright colors.
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R : PHOTO: BETTER HOMES & GARDENS
In 1922, King Tut's tomb was discovered in Egypt, and moving pictures brought the images to America. Lotus flowers, scarabs, and cats showed up as motifs in everything from upholstery to rugs to vases and ashtrays.
Bauhaus Beginnings
But 1920s interior design was not all glitz and curves. Bauhaus—the German school of industrial design that decreed form should follow function—was also born in this era.
LEFT: COURTESY OF KNOLL. RIGHT: GETTY IMAGES.
RELATED : Meet the Wassily Chair, an Icon of Modern Design Whose History Dates Back to the 1920s
Yep, minimalism had its beginnings in the age of The Great Gatsby and several icons of modern design, including the Barcelona Chair and Wassily Chair, were created in the 1920s. Bauhaus designers stripped furniture down to its fundamental elements, with everything from tables to teapots reduced to simple geometric forms.
Bauhaus designers wanted to create beautiful objects that could be mass-produced and therefore available to all, not just the rich. That's why they used steel, glass, plywood, and plastic in their creations. While unconventional materials at the time, they fit with the Bauhaus ethos of practicality.
Ultimately, however, the 1920s were all about the bling. "People craved a luxurious component in their lives, whether it was leather upholstered furniture or a Lucite clock," Gatlin says. "The Jazz Age was glamour and glitz."
And just like that, the nation plunged into the Great Depression. In 1929, the stock market crashed, the banking system collapsed, and the party ended. At the height of the Great Depression, nearly 25% of the total workforce was unemployed. Factories were shut down, farms and homes were lost to foreclosure, and wages and productivity plunged to a third of their 1929 peak. Austerity quickly replaced Art Deco glamour. Most people no longer had money to spend on home furnishings, so minimalism became a necessity, not an aesthetic choice.
World War II defined the 1940s. Hitler's forces swept through Europe, Hirohito's through the Pacific, and here at home, our energy, materials, and industrial strength went into the fight. "For the first half of the decade, almost nothing happens in the interior design world because of the war," Gatlin says. Factories stopped creating furniture and consumer goods and began making tanks, bullets, and fighter planes to supply our troops. Even the creation of Fiesta dishware came to a halt so its manufacturer could shift resources to produce china for armed forces.
When the war ended in 1945, a new era began. "The soldiers come home and they're ready to buy a house and start a family," Gatlin says. "There's a huge boom in residential building." While factories retooled from war production, a materials shortage meant new houses were built small and at a low cost. Most homes built in the late 1940s had two bedrooms and averaged just under 1,000 square feet.
Levittown, the nation's first suburban planned community, was built in 1947 atop a potato field on Long Island, N.Y. It was the beginning of the post-war housing boom and the tract house, with Levitt & Sons cranking out 12 houses a day for four years. There were more people who wanted houses than there were houses, so builders found a shortcut: Finish one level of the house, leaving the attic or basement unfinished. This kept costs down, got the houses move-in ready faster, and allowed homeowners to finish the houses themselves as their families grew.
In the 1950s, the future was bright. World War II ended, leaving the United States an economic powerhouse. American wages soared, unemployment fell, and there was money to spend again. And what did many Americans want? Consumer goods, like houses, cars, and furniture. Many also wanted kids, and the baby boom exploded with nearly 37 million children born in the 1950s.
The suburbanization of the nation that started in the late 1940s accelerated as we built housing developments far from city centers, connected by new superhighways. Ranch-style homes and midcentury modern style reigned supreme.