To use your wardrobe to guide your decor, [designer Ann] Lowengart advises thinking beyond the colors you wear most often, since, for many people, those may be black and neutrals. Instead, consider which pieces “light you up,” she says. Maybe you gravitate toward turquoise accessories, or a purple scarf. Then consider that color in the context of the room. If a bright purple living room seems too loud, perhaps a more muted version — such as lavender or mauve — could work instead....
The key to coating a room in a bold color, says Lowengart, is to use a high-gloss enamel paint... She bedecked a library in Los Altos, Calif., in rich blues... Against the monochrome palette, dozens of books, organized by color, stand out....
Nobody over there seems interested in my issue: Here's a chance to try to figure out how that horrendous 1970s interior decoration — documented here by James Lileks — ever took hold, because it's happening again. Some of the WaPo commenters are just expressing pleasure in seeing some color after so much neutrality and minimalism. But others are taking up the tiny issue of organizing books by color.
How many interior decorating precepts does the average person know? Not many, I'll bet. But sometimes one thing gets believed in. The rule against organizing books by color is like the rule against split infinitives, I think. It's over-announced and over-enforced by people who don't have much feeling for the overall enterprise.
From the comments at WaPo:
1. "I think the rooms look vibrant - but I wouldn't organize my books by color!"2. "You beat me to it. How does a person even find a book to reference? Unless they are only for decoration, never meant to be read. That would be quite pretentious." (What would be "quite pretentious"?)
3. "At least the spines are facing out! New designer trend is to have them all facing the wall. Beyond stupid."
4. "It probably depends on how our memories work and how visual we are. I have mostly organized my books by color (and series with multiple colors are together on a separate shelf); when I think about a book, I picture the cover and it is strongly associated with the color of the edge, so I know what area of the shelf to look for it. In fact, I'm more likely to remember the color than the title or the author."
5. "Books organized by color is another way of saying, 'I haven't read any of these and I couldn't find any particular title if my life depended on it, but don't books make cool accessories?!'"
6. "As a former librarian who, at home, arranges my books in colour for the aesthetic, I totally disagree! I can always find what I'm looking for. But then, because I love using libraries, I have only one, modest-sized bookcase!"
7. "I was going to say no serious bibliophile organises boosk by colour. Its one sure way to recognise pretension and someone who never actually reads them" [sic].
Posts
67 comments:
Who owns books anymore?
Which reminds me, have you seen RFK Jr give interviews in front of his bookcase? It's a dense, interesting backdrop.
The WaPo must be intentionally trolling their readers. That room is ugly. I don't know how anyone would think it was a new look. The rug is nice. The couch, on the other hand, looks like it's been around since the 70's. The other bench is cute though. The lamps are hideous as well as the art.
And then to add the bit about color coordinating books? Has to be a troll.
"How many interior decorating precepts does the average person know? Not many, I'll bet."
I know that a modern home requires a fetish room and vegan leather harness for when non-resident members of the polycule visit. All the cool kids have one, and I wouldn't be caught dead without mine.
Get it while it's hot. Roche-Bobois sale for the trendiest, ending July 23.
Seeing is believing:
https://www.roche-bobois.com/en-US/
"How many interior decorating precepts does the average person know? Not many, I'll bet." Not many in my case, but here's one rule:
Always consider how the room would appear during a hangover
you are not allowed to have bright orange as your favorite color. sheesh!
btw- use soft neutrals or monochrome to add your fav colors is not new, nor is it only the 70s.
Also - I recall the 70's didn't look as hip as the photo above.
It was shag carpet, avocado green appliances, burnt oranges and yellows, dark browns. I submit dark browns were to the 70's what gray is to the circa nows.
Waiting to find out what price you have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice.
The clothing fashion world right now is as bad or worse than the 70s.
All that room lacks is a Warhol-scale portrait of the Orange President!
That room looks impractical for reading. The lamps -- especially that orange toadstool -- look to be feeble light-producers. And where are the windows?!
Luckily, I know exactly what would fix up that room, replacing that plant in the corner. A non-functioning avocado green fridge. As art. And Kramercore extra storage.
that's Beautiful! does it come in say, an avocado green?
Rule makers are the trend makers. The same people who are hired to determine what colors will be popular any given year.
I just found out that now we have behavioral psychics on the payroll.
We used to pay attention to what the fancy interior designers were doing,,, or the big name architects were trail blazing.
Now it's all in a can at your local walmart.
"How could 1970s interior decoration have happened?"
Drugs.
The 70’s had to be the nadir for aesthetics from fashion to architecture to auto design..
We moved into a new house in 1973 and while my mom had traditional colors in the living room and dining room the den and bedrooms had a lot of orange and olive.
The rule against organizing books by color is like the rule against split infinitives, I think. It's over-announced and over-enforced by people who don't have much feeling for the overall enterprise.
I see what you did there. (For anyone who didn't catch it I've chosen to boldly highlight the relevant parts)
Ameoba shaped plywood art is back.
De gustibus non disputandum.
A big library makes moving really expensive
My father remarried a much younger woman during this time. She redid the house to the styles of the time. Emerald green shag carpet with gold wallpaper and drapes with orange accents. One bathroom also had a lighter green shag carpet, with a faux brick wall painted red and vinyl wallpaper with blue butterflies. That was a time of possibilities, not all good.
Never mind organizing books but their color, what the hell kind of library only contains "dozens of books"?
Something else from the 70s.
When trumpets were mellow
And every gal only had one fellow
No need to remember when
'Cause everything old is new again
Dancin' at church, Long Island jazzy parties
Waiter bring us some more Bacardi
We'll order now what they ordered then
'Cause everything old is new agian
Get out your white suit, your tap shoes and tails
Let's go backwards when forward fails
And movie stars you thought were alone then
Now are framed beside your bed
Don't throw the pa-ast away
You might need it some rainy day
Dreams can come true again
When everything old is new again
Get out your white suit, your tap shoes and tails
Put it on backwards when forward fails
Better leave Greta Garbo alone
Be a movie star on your own
And do-on't throw the past away
You might need it some other rainy day
Dreams can come true again
When everything old is new again
When everything old i-is new-ew a-again
I might fa-all in love wi-ith you again
The current regime is beginning to feel a bit Joe Gideon.
A spicy hypothesis:
Because we now live in a semi-nomadic society in which government policy is forever forcing vast swathes of the population to move five miles down the highway in search of "better schools", aesthetics have given way to the more practical points on minimizing your losses when forced to sell your home.
The monochrom monstrosity isn't good, but the reason American homes are "sterile white" and "endless grey" is because what's the point of putting a personal touch on things when you'll have to get it back ready for market before the decade is out.
This affects every aesthetic from the home kitchen, to the disinterest in long term planning, funding, and implementing public space in a town your kids won't live in.
A concrete jungle forever on the move.
As of 2019, residents in the Great Lakes were most likely to remain in their homestate, while mountain/PNW were the least. This doesn't take into account intra-state migrations in the quest for better schools of course, but nonetheless we could test the hypothesis if we knew how many non-white,non-grey rooms were in both states, say as a portion of the 60-180k income bracket.
My theory is that the use of color in 1970s interior design and clothing was due to the advent of color television. Because not everyone had color televisions, the sets of TV shows had to look great in both color and black and white, which required more vibrancy and contrast and than for color TV alone.
Bought a house once, where the wallpaper was foil triangles of purple and orange, and the island in the kitchen was carpeted on the sides in violet shag carpet, as was the floor, even in the kitchen. After we bought the house, we ripped up the carpet and found very nice hardwood floors throughout, but man it took a bit of time to get it so that we were not embarrassed to have any but the closest friends over.
It’s not a room I’d have in my house, but I do have an orange Navajo rug I inherited from a deceased cousin that I will find a place to display as a wall-hanging, perhaps with a color-coordinated sofa below it. My house, my rules. F*** the New York Times.
Also Martha Stewart hadn't arrived yet.
I agree with Biden's tax payer funded hooker on the dark brown equals gray.
Our family room had fake dark wood paneling over all four walls. So gross. But apparently, really in style in the 70's. The problem is that I grew up in the 80's, family room still living in the 70's until around 2000.
I like the blue library but its too dark for reading. Organizing your books by color is idiotic. If have hundreds, you need to organize by subect and then by author. We have one bookcase for history, one for fiction etc.
As for "no one has books anymore". Kindle is great, except you're just LEASING the book from Amazon. They can censor/delete it anytime they wish. Look up their TOS. The other problem with computer books is its hard to hard to flip through and find what you need. Books can easily skimmed.
"It's a dense, interesting backdrop."
And not to be trusted.
BTW, I'll take take 70s interior decorations over bell-bottoms, men's long hair, and "Groovy Mustaches", any day of the week. I can't remember how much 70s reality matched the movies, but its incredible how UGLY most 70s American movies are. The cars are ugly, the clothes are ugly, and the haridos are ugly.
There's 60s nostalgia. IS there any 70s nostalgia?
That room. It looks like the habitat of one of those Burgess/Kubrick droogs.
Cartoon background artists are far more trustworthy than any interior decorator. How did that ever become a vocation? People who pay decorators are either too fucking lazy or too fucking simple.
"Who owns books anymore?"
Ha! When I moved 18 months ago, I donated close to 20 grocery bags of books to the local thrift shop near me in Manhattan. (They sell books in all their stores, and they also have a dedicated bookstore downtown, made up, I believe, substantially by donated books.)
And yet, I still had a tad over 50 boxes of books that came with us, and the bookshelves to hold these keepers take up two whole walls in our home, (in two areas of the house).
"The WaPo must be intentionally trolling their readers."
Nope. I received an email this week from one of the furnishing stores from which we bought furniture for our new home, and it featured a hideous living room couch that had a similar garish 70s patterning and acid colors...including this same screaming orange.
There's 60s nostalgia. IS there any 70s nostalgia?
NO, there is ONLY 80s nostalgia people that think they liked the 90's are confused about decades.
Even in the 60s, people hoped and wished and dreamed of and for the 80's
Everything (EVERY Thing) that was was ever good took place in the 1980's
During the 80s the world was at Peace (thanks RR! but More Importantly; Thanx SAC!)
Music was good! Hair was BIG! gasoline was Super Expensive (it was $1.33/gal :)
Girls still dieted, but had large breasts; guys had jobs, and WANTED a wife
The Best Days on Earth are Behind US.. Get used to it
Robert Cook, are you slipping into book hoarding territory?
"BTW, I'll take take 70s interior decorations over bell-bottoms, men's long hair, and "Groovy Mustaches", any day of the week. I can't remember how much 70s reality matched the movies, but its incredible how UGLY most 70s American movies are. The cars are ugly, the clothes are ugly, and the haridos are ugly."
I was born in the 80s and looking at pics of my parents, their friends, people from the 60s and 70s generally growing up, and even to this day I cannot get over the fantastically hideous hirsute ugliness of that era. When men started to cut their hair again in the 80s, the 70s kept its hairy claws in fashion sense so that instead of things returning to normal every guy ended up looking like a creepo Jeffrey Dahmer Hollywood extras casting reject. I'm flabbergasted to this day that women ever found the BeeGees look or the pornstache attractive. I bring this up everytime as an example of female aesthetic taste being non-existent at best and manufactured at worst.
The only attractive men in the 1980s were those in the Pro-Wrestling community. The Nature Boy comes to mind as the most attractive man of all time...I'm blessed I look so much like him.
If you want some 70s nostalgia that will send you skittering to the W.C., try "The Persuaders" an alleged TV series about the adventures of an oil-and-water partnership between an English aristocrat (Roger Moore) and a self-made American millionaire (Tony Curtis). There are enough double-knit open-collar shirts, pastel neckerchiefs, and pus-yellow bellbottoms to hang Lord Hill of Luton from the Eiffel Tower.
Ha! When I moved 18 months ago, I donated close to 20 grocery bags of books to the local thrift shop near me in Manhattan.
All that massive weight of paper, and it didn't leave a dent.
"Because we now live in a semi-nomadic society in which government policy is forever forcing vast swathes of the population to move five miles down the highway in search of 'better schools'"....
Is any of the above actually true?
Birches said...
"Our family room had fake dark wood paneling over all four walls. So gross. But apparently, really in style in the 70's. The problem is that I grew up in the 80's, family room still living in the 70's until around 2000."
A buddy of mine grew up in a house his dad bought in the mid 70s and completely rehabbed it himself in the latest trends, right down to the faux paneling and avacado appliances. My buddy's brother bought the house in the early 2000s and it still looked exactly the same as when they were kids.
Jeff did his own total rehab and I'm sure this 1910s two story wood frame house still has red-ish/orange-ish Mediterranean stippled walls done with sponges/sandpaper, and sage green bedrooms. And probably a butterfly chair or two as well.
Which reminds me, have you seen RFK Jr give interviews in front of his bookcase? It's a dense, interesting backdrop.
All of the behind-the-person stuff that arose during the Covid quarantines was/is very heavily curated - do not assume that the books in RFK Jr.'s bookcase belong to him, were read by him, or were even selected by him.
"Is any of the above actually true"
Well, if you are denier of the laws of economics, I guess you can pretend that none of it is true. But if you are a parent who cares about his children's educations, then it can feel an awful lot like you are being forced to move.
I recognize the wall hangings from the 60s. Marimekko fabrics. My sister had a couple. After she married a Yamasaki architect, the hangings spent the remainder of their life stashed in their attic.
Time Travel?
https://preloved.marimekko.com/
I like this room, but not the lamps and the little hexagon end table. But this is cleaner and brighter than the 70's rooms I remember. I remember more dingy colors, like burnt orange and harvest gold and yellow-brown and a lot more darkness and fake surfaces.
We moved into a 1920s house in the 1990's, and had to undo a lot of 1970s badness. Scrape the acoustic tile off the plaster ceilings, and pull the fake wood paneling off the plastered walls. Pull the shag carpeting off the 1920s tile. We used to talk about it like we were at EPCOT talking about "The family of the future"
The '90s was the last great decade. In the '90s you could go to a movie with friends and either be entertained or not, but you knew you weren't going to be preached to by people who simply knew better than you did what you ought to be watching and how you should live your lives.
I get the feeling now that after every meeting where something affecting us and our culture is decided, from which books to publish to what features should be on our phone, like for instance a switch to turn off the microphone and camera, instead of summing it up with "They're gonna love it!", they sum it up with "Well, what choice do they have?"
"Robert Cook, are you slipping into book hoarding territory?"
I might tend that way on my own, but my wife is clear that I need to dispose of books as I buy new ones and run out of bookshelf space. I do have books that I could let go with little pain...if I have to.
Add Goldie and Judy painted up and dancing in bikinis and you could recreate one of the better Laugh-In episodes.
"Well, if you are denier of the laws of economics, I guess you can pretend that none of it is true. But if you are a parent who cares about his children's educations, then it can feel an awful lot like you are being forced to move."
This doesn't answer my question.
In the 50s we had a collection of books bought at a house sale. Beautifully leather bound collection titled The Great Books of Western Literature, by volume number. The pages were all entirely blank.
These hideous things are made even worse by how they end up hanging around long, LONG after their sell-by date (viz. the funny stories in the thread about moving into houses with shag carpet everywhere or fake wood paneling). One thing that always gets left out is that, for most middle-class people, the ugliest '70s interior decor ended up in mid-century-modern houses (because who could afford to buy a newly built house in the '70s?), and that was a REALLY bad combination. I have never warmed to mid-century-modern (even though I can intellectually appreciate some of the simple lines and uncluttered aesthetic when it is done well), because in my experience (and those of many people who grew up working- or lower-middle class in the '70s), the mid-century stuff is always scuffed up, dented, broken, and packed full of repulsive '70s decor that it was never meant to hold. When we finally got to the '80s, everything that must have seemed glamorous in the '70s looked just plain dirty--and it still does.
The 70s interiors were looking to hook up the space age with psychedelics.
There’s some of that going on again.
"How many interior decorating precepts does the average person know? Not many, I'll bet."
I have it easy - my partner is a trained interior designer, likely with tetrachromatic vision (whose first husband was bichromatic (color blind)). Yesterday, I was buying extra height door stoppers, and suggested the white ones, because of the white doors. Nope. I was informed that the doors were off white, almost egg shell. The light yellow door stops tie the doors better to the goldish carpet. Or some such. I learned to not second guess her when it comes to design a decade or two ago (unless I am intentionally harassing her). She is always right there (unlike much else in our lives). Her houses invariably knock your socks off, and several have been In Architectural Digest.
Getting back to the design at the top: No! No! No!
Or at least if you wanted to live in that room. It would get old very quickly. The orange color isn’t the least bit restful. Keep in mind that the orange is near the middle of the overlapping visual range between two sets of cones - so both fire with this sort of color. That’s why emergency vehicles tend to be painted red or yellow, and the orange is a mixture of both. And the design is too vivid, too bold. Reminds me of her DIL, who painted every wall a different color. Some of the bedroom walls were painted in vivid colors. Partner warned them that they would have to repaint in a year, because no one could sleep with those walls. She was right, of course. DIL thinks that it makes her look artistic. Ha! Just the opposite. It looks more like someone whose idea on being artistic includes paint by numbers.
I love going to estate sales in SF because you often run into situations as described by Prof. M. Drout. Compact, pre-war row houses where the clean lines of mid-century modern furniture would fit beautifully and not cause the spaces to feel cluttered or overcrowded. Instead, to a one, the decor skips right into 60s mod family room/den or 70s bad TV sitcom style complete with ugly shag carpeting and hippy-dippy wall hangings. In some cases, I've seen kitchen set-ups unchanged from the 40s, complete with white enamel counters and cabinets, and the gas stove still has a large flue protruding from the back and curving out through the wall behind it.
That picture looks like it could be from an Eastern European apartment any time from the 70s to about 5 years ago. Maybe the Russians are interfering again.
"How many interior decorating precepts does the average person know? Not many, I'll bet."
I have it easy - my partner is a trained interior designer, likely with tetrachromatic vision (whose first husband was bichromatic (color blind)). Yesterday, I was buying extra height door stoppers, and suggested the white ones, because of the white doors. Nope. I was informed that the doors were off white, almost egg shell. The light yellow door stops tie the doors better to the goldish carpet. Or some such. I learned to not second guess her when it comes to design a decade or two ago (unless I am intentionally harassing her). She is always right there (unlike much else in our lives). Her houses invariably knock your socks off, and several have been In Architectural Digest.
Getting back to the design at the top: No! No! No!
Or at least if you wanted to live in that room. It would get old very quickly. The orange color isn’t the least bit restful. Keep in mind that the orange is near the middle of the overlapping visual range between two sets of cones - so both fire with this sort of color. That’s why emergency vehicles tend to be painted red or yellow, and the orange is a mixture of both. And the design is too vivid, too bold. Reminds me of her DIL, who painted every wall a different color. Some of the bedroom walls were painted in vivid colors. Partner warned them that they would have to repaint in a year, because no one could sleep with those walls. She was right, of course. DIL thinks that it makes her look artistic. Ha! Just the opposite. It looks more like someone whose idea on being artistic includes paint by numbers.
The post WW2 mid century modern look was taken even further, eventually sputtering out in a series of brown, orange, gold, and apricot shag carpetings as the 1980s began.
I really like this room - bright, clean, uncluttered. I would lower the art display on the back wall so it’s midway between the ceiling and the couch. I love the brass alligator on the lower shelf on the right sofa table. (I hope it’s an alligator) And the blue bowl is perfect. And straighten that tall white lamp shade! The swan like pottery on the lower left side - very 70s. The orange mushroom lamp - perfect for Barbieheimer. I would add some white and off white vases of varying sizes to the coffee table maybe with some green fronds or maybe no green fronds. I’d also like to lower the painting on the side wall but I don’t think that’s possible. Lots of this kind of stuff showing up at estate sales and Facebook marketplace. I say welcome back 70s. Also that marimekko site - fantastic.
I don’t mind books arranged according to color. I draw the line at books placed on shelves backward. That way your shelves are a soothing beige color - ridiculous. But funny, so maybe I don’t mind that either.
Thank you Quaestor for mentioning The Persuaders. I’ve never seen it but I see it’s available on Amazon Prime. Another great show (as far as decor is concerned) is Matt Houston - Texas millionaire/private detective (early 80s): “Once atop the Houston, Inc. skyscraper, viewers would see the “only in the '80s” office complex. The main room sported a full service bar, a small dining table and a hot tub! (Yes!) Then an arc-shaped couch with a green velvet coffee table would suddenly convert into [an Apple3] computer workstation.” I especially like the office for the fake plastic greenery that used to be so popular. Highly entertaining interior decorating choices.
Yes it does, Robert; you just don’t want to see it, so you don’t.
What is this "organizing" that you speak of?
Hunter Biden's Tax etc. said, " I submit dark browns were to the 70's what gray is to the circa nows."
That's how I remember it. Bonus points for dark brown "Mediterranean" style wood with wrought-iron accents and gloomy amber bottle-glass lamps and panels. It was so so bad--even though I was a kid in the seventies, I knew it was all wrong and that somewhere there were houses with sunlight and cheerful colors.
Robert Cook said...
"Because we now live in a semi-nomadic society in which government policy is forever forcing vast swathes of the population to move five miles down the highway in search of 'better schools'"....
Is any of the above actually true?
well, there's a reddit Just for it
“Reminds me of her DIL, who painted every wall a different color. Some of the bedroom walls were painted in vivid colors. Partner warned them that they would have to repaint in a year, because no one could sleep with those walls. She was right, of course. DIL thinks that it makes her look artistic. Ha! Just the opposite. It looks more like someone whose idea on being artistic includes paint by numbers.”
Showed the photo to my partner (the interior designer). She agreed with me 100% (not that I am that smart - just well trained). Her son was complaining about not being able to sleep. Her mother asked about the walls. His wife (said DIL above) had painted it orange. Mother advised him to paint it ASAP. DIL went out of town, and her son repainted. He presented it to her when she returned as a surprise gift. It worked. He could sleep again. Orange is one of least restful colors.
Bruce Hayden! You have made my day and solved a mystery for me when you commented: "The orange color isn’t the least bit restful. Keep in mind that the orange is near the middle of the overlapping visual range between two sets of cones - so both fire with this sort of color."
I have always felt uncomfortable with the color orange, and am positively unnerved by colors that are on the border between red and orange. People look at me like I'm mental when I try to tell them that it's almost painful for me to look at these red-oranges. I get a ping-ponging effect in my eyes and brain and keep thinking, "Is it red? Is it orange? I can't tell---aaaggh! It's shifting around on me!"
Plenty of horrific examples from James Lileks: https://lileks.com/institute/interiors/index.html
Post a Comment