Trends, Fads and the New Neutral

Chicken wallpaper borders. That’s was a fad. Short-lived. Thankfully. Brown everything? That was a trend. Lasted about ten years.

Fads last six months, or a year, tops. Chicken wallpaper borders. Big words on the wall: ‘eat,’ ‘love’ ‘read more.’ Overly distressed furniture — which, I have to be snarky and say is usually the result of someone discovering chalk paint, sandpaper, an online how-to and going just a bit crazy.

Gallery walls that are purchased, not created. A group of family photos, or images which really have meaning to the homeowner, is what gallery walls are about, not a collection of Ikea mirrors. AND gallery walls of words. Stop that. Please.

A trend is a style direction. Like using geometric prints is ‘on trend’ for 2017, and it will probably carry on for a few years because geometrics are timeless. The color of the year can be part of a trend, but because it changes every year, it’s usually a fad.

Remember the orange color of the year a few years ago? A few cushions in Winners and it’s done. But the gray it was mixed with? That’s still here; it was with yellow last year, might be with green this year. But because gray is at the end of its lifecycle, most probably you will see the new neutral being paired with the jewel tones.

If you have been waiting to buy that perfect gray rug, now is the time. Chances are you may have a difficult time finding a good selection of gray rugs in a year or so.

In the 70’s the design world embraced brown. And orange worked with brown; as did green. This trend lasted until brown fell out of favor, to be replaced by black, forest green and navy in the 1980’s. Then in the next decade, the 1990’s, gray was it.

At the beginning, the trend was to use pale blue, pale pink or soft peach with the gray. This morphed into a new fad of using grayed sage green.

What happened in the 2000’s? Brown came back with a vengeance —the Tuscan phase. Brown houses, brown roofs. And the dreaded pink-beige carpet.

Which brings us to the gray trend which gained steam about eight years ago in urban markets, but didn’t really reach the rural areas until five years or so ago.

And now it’s already on the way out with black replacing gray as the neutral of choice. It’s classy and sets a mood of affluence.

Any woman who has owned a good black dress will agree that a classic basic outweighs tons of fad anytime.