Ultrafrilly
This was the mom antidote to your grunge phase. STUFF. We need more stuff. Finding Fido in this room is like searching a Where’s Waldo? book. Can you spot the dog in this picture?
Wicker Furniture
Demand for wicker furniture went wild. And we’re pretty sure these rooms had something to do with it.
Pattern x 1,000,000
PATTERNS! Oh, and did we mention PATTERNS? (Also, those window treatments. DYING!) We think designers secretly challenged each other to see how many stripes they could fit into one room. Counting the pleats on the lampshade and the flutes on the fireplace columns, we spy six (six!) striped patterns. We couldn’t talk about patterns from the ’90s and fail to mention gingham. The only thing that would’ve made this pattern more popular would’ve been if M. C. Hammer had worn “Hammer pants” in gingham. But the sofa from Full House was enough to cement the patern’s status as a mainstay in American decor. Gingham on ev-er-y-thing – even the ceiling. Which brings us to probably our favorite ’90s trend …
DECORATIVE PAINTING
The ’90s may have ended with a sponge that lived in a pineapple under the sea, but the sponge spent most of the decade as the essential faux finish and decorative paint tool. Raise your hand if your bedroom walls were sponged, rag-rolled, glazed, or painted with plastic wrap (yes, it was a thing). And if a faux finish weren’t enough, fanciful decals were the icing on the cake. (Why your mom could put stickers on the wall, but your Lisa Frank sticker border grounded you from your Game Boy for a week, we can’t explain.) Carpet in the bathroom—still not a good idea.
Wallpaper & Murals
If it wasn’t decoratively painted, it was wallpapered or made into a mural, much to the chagrin of the next set of homeowners everywhere. (Side note: This is what we imagine the closet of an older, more mature Cher from Clueless would look like.) We hate to break it to you, but when you moved away from your childhood home, the first thing the new owners did was paint over that mural and strip that wallpaper your mom paid a mint for. We know: “Wallpaper has made its comeback.” And we still insist we won’t regret it. Our kids will probably say, “Ugh! Chevron? Ikat?” But what fun is decorating if you don’t get to do it all over again every once in a while?
Elaborately Themed Kids’ Rooms
Any passing fancy could be turned into a kid’s room theme. Loved the idea of cowboys or spacemen after seeing Toy Story? Well, to infinity and beyond, you have yourself a kid’s room. Obsessed with Saved by the Bell? Your room could look like Kelly Kapowski’s closet exploded all over it. And yes, there were many rooms that were a holdover from the ’80s Laura Ashley obsession (but “princess” is a theme that transcends decades).
Greenery and Florals: Faux, Dried, Anything But Real
We’re not talking about a simple little arrangement on the coffee table—vines twisting across window frames, dried bouquets the size of small children—they were the ultimate in bringing the outdoors in.
Primary Colors
And not the fictitious book/movie that was a thinly veiled story on the Clinton White House. The red, yellow, and blue knew no style bounds: country, modern, and everything in between. Doesn’t this bath look like it would go perfectly with the D. J./Stephanie bedroom from Full House? Many times, yellow and blue lost red to strike out on their own. And what ’90s home decor was complete without a round, skirted table? Or seven.
Friends Purple
Every ’90s mom harbored a fantasy of single life in the city in which she was a prettier version of Rachel. But painting something in her house the color of Monica’s door was the closest she got.
Window Treatments: Large and In Charge
If the ’80s were defined by big hair, then the ’90s were defined by big window treatments. Apparently, one window treatment was never enough.
A Computer Desk
For your 6-ton monitor, hard drive, printer, fax machine, and stacks of CD-ROMs. Aah, the hours spent playing Oregon Trail … er … doing homework.
A Closet for Your CDs
AN ENTIRE CLOSET FOR YOUR CDs. Who would have thought that a decade later, the iPod would make this obsolete?
A NASA-Scale Entertainment Center
To which there were 17 remotes, and the VCR tapes were never rewound, despite your family having a tape-rewinding device.
’90s Minimalism
To be fair, the ’90s had its share of minimalism. (And if your house looked like this, your family probably shopped at the Mickey Drexler Gap and wished they were friends with Frasier Crane.)
’90s Urban
And if your house looked like this, Contempo Casuals (RIP) was probably your store of choice.
But This is How We’ll Choose to Remember the ’90s:
We prefer to remember the ’90s in all its decadent, overdone glory. Excuse us, we’ll now be binging on TGIF shows and Nickelodeon on Netflix and AppleTV all weekend, eating bowl after bowl of Oreo O’s and French Toast Crunch, and maybe taking a break for a round of Laser Challenge or Dream Phone.
