Friday Follies - 70's Décor- Who Threw Up a Rainbow?

Harvest gold and avocado green appliances, carpets disguised as psychedelic, colourful acid trips and patterned wallpaper.  Bell bottoms, synthetic fabrics, crocheted tops and daring miniskirts.   The are the basic ingredients you needed in the 1970's, the decade fashion and style took a questionable turn.

Not my room, but wow!

Looking back on old photos is always good for a giggle.  I love the photos of our old houses with their crazy wallpaper (Mum loved to put up wallpaper), colourful appliances and bathroom fittings, and wildly coloured carpets.  You immediately know what era the photos are taken by the style of furnishings. 

Red shag carpet, and foil wallpaper in the background.
And the gorgeous dog Dofor.

No matter where we lived, we seemed to end up in a house that had at least one room with red or red-patterned carpet - usually shag.  One house had this crazy red/gold patterned carpet in the family room that would not have been out of place in a casino.  On the upside, these carpets were great for hiding a multitude of sins - a dropped morsel would be gone from sight forever.  Also good for cats that yack up hairballs!  One apartment that I lived in when I was in my late 20's had the gold/yellow shag carpet that had not been changed since that crazy decade.  At first I hated it - the whole apartment was dated, with avocado green stove and fridge, and horrible dark wood veneer kitchen cabinets. But it was big and got lots of sunlight, and that's why I loved it.  The shag carpet became a very positive feature over time.  I had two cats, and then three when Mum and Dad moved overseas and I was bequeathed Fred, and I can tell you that no hairball vomit or knocked over plant could defeat that carpet.  It just didn't stain - or if it did, you couldn't see it.  I spilled full glasses of coke (okay, rum and coke) and red wine.  Once it was cleaned up - no stains!  I grew to see the advantages of shag carpet and knew why it was so persistent in North American households.

Note 'casino' style carpet

Another 70's carpet style factor was having different coloured carpets in each room.  Each bedroom and living area would be it's own unique colour.  None of today's consistency and colour unification - too boring for the swinging 70's.

Shagadelic

As I said, Mum loved wallpaper.  When I look back at some of the kitschy wallpapers, flocked wallpapers, floral wallpapers and foil wallpapers we had over the years, I can see how she stretched her interior decorator wings and flew close to the sun. Not that I ever, ever want wallpaper in my house again.  The kitchens always had kitchen-themed patterns, of course, and my bedrooms had striped floral patterns.  If you were really lucky, the Sears catalogue would sell matching wallpaper, bedspreads and curtains.  Oh, those were the days, surrounded by busy, busy patterns.  I'm surprised we could sleep!

One of our kitchens

Other part of the same kitchen

No matter what your décor, there was always a macramé plant hanger and string art somewhere in the house, and normally the basement room walls were lined with fake wood panelling.  Lots of fake wood panelling.  And it looked fake.  I think that was on purpose.

So knotty

Owls seemed to be popular in the 70's.

Oh, look at all of that wood.

 

I think they have ticked everything on the checklist.

The 70's were colourful and innovative.  Everything was big and over the top.  Television was coming into it's own, and music was breaking all of the rules.  Women were fighting for their rights, people were protesting the war in Vietnam - social upheaval was in the air.  For those of us that grew up in the 70's, our thoughts turn to bright geometric colours and décor that was larger than life.  But the thing that I remember most from the 70's was that our house was full of love.  Big, crazy, rainbow-filled love.

This would have been very chic in its day.

It looks like Snuffleupagus died here.