As someone who spends plenty of time indulging in HGTV and working on my illustrious and successful career as a dream home decorator…in The Sims, I feel rightfully qualified to share all of the home design, home architecture, home-anything trends that I desperately need to see erase the dreary and oftentimes sterile trends we see today.
So let’s dive into some home trends I deeply wish would make a strong comeback:
1.Conversation Pits and Sunken Living Rooms
No one on this Earth will ever make me hate a conversation pit. If I could teleport back to the creation of this beautiful architectural design, I would advocate to make it federally mandatory in every household. The love is REAL. I also think they’re incredibly versatile. We often see little square boxes sitting in the middle of the room, with a couch around its perimeter, but I think they can be so much more than that. I also don’t believe your living room is the only room that can be sunken.
By definition, a conversation pit is “a lounge area embedded within the floor of a larger room to create intimate spaces for people to gather.” You can create endless “intimate spaces for people to gather” in a home. Making your family room, kitchen, or even your bedroom “sunken” could be very cool. The entire family room in the house I grew up in was sunken, a whole step down from every room in the house, and connected to the open kitchen. There are so many ways you can incorporate this structural design that doesn’t make your home look like a ’70s love shack. In my opinion, conversation pits and sunken spaces are such a different, versatile, and eye-catching way to open up a space while simultaneously creating an exciting broken floor plan.
Andreas Von Einsiedel / Getty Images
2.Closed Floor Plans
I miss the days when every single room had walls and a purpose: a living room, a family room, the dining room, and the kitchen. You used the living room to socialize with special guests, and it was usually more refined and elegant than your family room, where your family would gather daily to hang out or watch TV. The differences between the dining room and the kitchen are similar as well: The kitchen is where you eat daily, but the dining room is for special occasions like holidays, family gatherings, and so on.
While I think people are starting to see the appeal once again when it comes to closed concepts, we spent so much time acclimating new builds to the rise of the open concept trend; I hope the day comes again when we see closed concepts as the standard of modern home architecture.
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3.Color, Color, Color
The rise of millennial gray and minimalism somehow also meant the loss of color in literally every aspect of public and private architecture and design. Nothing was more painful than watching soo many whimsical places remove all sense of uniqueness and color from their establishments. Everything either turned gray or bright white or beige…WHY?! Even when color is included, long gone are the many colors of the rainbow; it’s usually relatively muted or neutral.
Let’s bring back bold, beautiful, bright colors. Life is hard enough; why do we want it to be so monotoned and dreary in our sanctuaries? Now, I’m not saying anyone has to go and paint every wall in their home neon green, but even just using your furniture, appliances, cabinets, clutter, etc., to bring good old saturated color back into your home can make a huge difference. I hope we see a lot more color in the future, inside and outside homes.
Laurie Rubin / Getty Images
4.Wallpaper and Accent Walls
I’m not sure when wallpaper and accent walls got such a bad rep, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with a bit of wallpaper. I love an accent wall, and I think wallpaper is the perfect way to accomplish gorgeous and exciting patterns that will completely change the vibe of your room without even a lick of fuss or paint. I think we as a society tend to throw away things when someone on the internet calls it “cheap” or “out of style,” but who died and made them Better Homes & Gardens?
If you want to accent a wall, you better accent that wall. If you want to cover a room with floor-to-ceiling wallpaper, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s also a genius way to enhance an apartment or rental you can’t repaint or alter. I’ve even seen people using wallpaper just to accent their storage closets. It’s just a fun way to add a really cool and artistic aspect to your space. I hope more people are open to using wallpaper to accentuate their walls and spaces, and realize the accent wall is not dead!
Vostok / Getty Images
5.Foyers
If you haven’t noticed, I’m a fan of tradition, big statements, and grand things. Nothing screams “grand” more than walking into the front door of a house and stepping into an initial greeting space that isn’t a tight hallway by the door. I love a foyer. In some houses, they’re almost like a roundabout for your home, connecting the main entrance to every other space in the house. It’s also just another added sense of privacy. The foyer allows guests to enter your home without actually being in the middle of your home.
Much to my surprise, I’m learning that most modern families prefer a less formal mudroom in the back of their home instead of a formal foyer in front. I say, why not have both? Can two things not be true at the same time? Of course, having a dedicated space where your kids can kick off their dirty shoes and throw their backpacks down is helpful, but having a formal space at the front door (where your kids will also throw their muddy shoes) is just as important. While it seems that foyers have unfortunately been seen as a waste of space over the years, I think people are really missing out on just how transformative these spaces can be in design and practice.
Jamesbrey / Getty Images
6.Tuscan Kitchens
Ahh, this is what dreams of the early 2000s were made of. I know we’ve traded in the darker, richer, possibly more closed spaces for the brighter and airier, but I still love the idea of cooking in a little dark Italian villa. Not to mention, any home design trend that reminds me of Carmela and Tony Soprano’s house will always be a winner in my book.
I think it’s important to realize that the way we may have been introduced to the concept of Tuscan kitchens is probably different from what it should look like in its purest form. Anything can be taken to the point of tackiness, but not every Tuscan kitchen has to look as if you’ve just stepped into your neighborhood Olive Garden. You can take aspects from the idea and create an entirely new thing. Maybe you love the style but hate the darkness; who says you can’t change the color tone and still keep the aesthetic? I would love it if these came back in a totally new and modernized way. Every kid who grew up in the 2000s has a story about their time in a Tuscan kitchen, and I think every generation deserves that feeling.
Denguy / Getty Images
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7.Arches
While I’m not convinced these will ever go out of style, arches are quite hit or miss; you either love or hate them, and there seems to be no in-between. I’m here to say that arches do not have to be reserved for your Mediterranean trips or historical homes; they can thrive beautifully in any space you want. Thankfully, in recent years, we’ve been moving away from the idea of stark, harsh, straight lines and embracing more natural curvature, opening up a space for a significant resurgence of arches.
My favorite part about this design is how many different ways it can be used. Arches are wayyy more than just architectural features. They can completely transform your space in more ways than just creating an illusion of more expansive, bigger spaces or acting as a doorway. They can be used as focal points in any room of your house, and you can incorporate arched mirrors, arched windows, and even arched cabinets into your rooms. They’re just a fantastic way to introduce a sense of luxury, glamour, and elegance into your space. As they continue to become more sought after, I hope we see a massive rise in the use of arches in unique ways in homes.
Boris Sv / Getty Images
8.Vintage and Repurposed Furniture
I love the trend of people ditching fast furniture, moving more toward finding vintage pieces, and repurposing old furniture. In recent years, younger generations have been increasingly concerned about the environment (rightfully so), and it has sparked this trend of finding creative ways to help take some pressure off of Mother Earth.
Aside from the environmental positives, using vintage and repurposed furniture allows us to bring back many of the trends I mentioned on this list: color, quirkiness, uniqueness, and authentic charm. Not to mention, most vintage pieces are far less expensive than fast-furniture places, and you’re more likely to have a piece that’s special to your home and can’t be seen just anywhere. I also love that every piece of vintage or repurposed piece of furniture has a story attached to it, a journey it’s been on, and places it will go. I hope that in the future, we will continue to embrace the idea that “secondhand” is not a dirty word.
Taikrixel / Getty Images/iStockphoto
9.Glass Bricks
Plenty of things can be good in moderation, so bear with me. I know the idea of glass bricks probably takes you back to every god-awful office space built in the ’80s, but I think, when used correctly, it could add something cool and vintage to your home. I really love the idea of using glass bricks as a window, especially in your bathroom. As I’ve said before, we as a society tend to take things to the extreme of gaudy, but it doesn’t always have to be like that.
I think glass bricks are versatile. You can use them to add a cool structural, non-load-bearing wall to your home, allowing natural light to pool into your room. You can also create the same idea within a wall that already exists without it being an actual window, adding more privacy and bringing that natural light in. I think glass bricks have a lot of potential and can be used in many spaces, even outdoors, to add visual appeal, a different aesthetic, and a cool architectural detail to your home.
Boris Sv / Getty Images
10.Textured Ceilings
Now, let’s not get confused; I’m not saying that everyone needs to go back to popcorn ceilings, but adding some texture into your spaces and exploring different ways to accent your ceiling has to be one of the most incredible things you can do to transform your space. It’s exciting to think of how textured ceilings can be utilized, now that we’re seeing a trend of people wanting a more eclectic look in their homes.
Not only are textured ceilings a great way to accent your space, but they are also a useful design technique for covering up blemishes on your ceilings. When it comes to aesthetics, I think anything and everything can look outdated if you don’t find ways to give it new love in a modern way. To be quite honest with you, if it was done nicely and in the proper space, I wouldn’t hate a popcorn ceiling. There are endless ways to incorporate texture into your ceilings that don’t feel ridiculous or old school, and I hope we move more toward exploring those options.
We Are / Getty Images
11.Marble
This one might seem slightly out of place because marble will never go out of style. However, I think how we use marble compared with back in the day has completely changed. We used to see rooms covered floor to ceiling in colored marble (especially in those “desirable” mansions in the ’80s and ’90s), but now it’s used more to add a heightened sense of luxury to people’s kitchen counters and bathrooms.
Well, I say, let’s meet in the middle. I think marble is far more useful than for just highlighting a kitchen or a bathroom. Marble floors, marble tables, marble walls; I’m into it. When I was growing up, the marble used in my family kitchen was the opposite of what you see with today’s trend. Instead of marble kitchen counters, the kitchen floor and tables were made entirely of black marble, while the counters were quite basic. The coolest part was that the kitchen table was the same marble as the floor, so it almost looked as if this huge table had been sculpted right from the kitchen floors. That’s the type of use a material like marble deserves.
It’s versatile, stunning, and luxurious, and I think it should take its rightful place as something that should always be used as a statement design for any room instead of an accent or aesthetic flair. Continually overusing it in the same way makes this luxurious thing feel super regular.
Runna10 / Getty Images/iStockphoto
At the end of the day, all of this stuff is subjective, and no one can decide what you can and cannot love or put in your home except you. So do whatever you want to ensure that your home is truly your temple.
Have any home design trends you wish would make a comeback? Let me know in the comments!
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