That 70s style Brown is back
The 70s are back, with over-sized patterns, hot orange . . . and brown decor. Kylie Klein-Nixon reports.
The headline leapt out at me in stark black and white: ‘‘Brown is the new grey!’’ I read it twice to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me. Brown? Like, actual brown is the new grey?
Images of tawny walls, taffy coloured tiles and – good Lord – chocolate living rooms spattering the page like splashes of mud. A ‘‘warm, sophisticated’’ beige renaissance is coming, The Daily Mail piece threatened. Forget neutral greys, crisp whites, and cosy creams, big bad, beautiful brown is back.
‘‘Not on my watch,’’ I thought.
Don’t get me wrong, brown is beautiful. Brown evokes warm, cosy feelings, from warm teaks to toffees, umbers and ochres; from cowrie shells, mahogany, chocolate to molasses and rich black coffee, a swirl of just-poured cream folding slowly into it.
Steak, chocolate, toast, the soft gooey core of ripe black ‘‘chocolate pudding’’ sapote fruit, banana cake – a lot of really wonderful food is brown.
But living rooms, halls and kitchens? It’s a hard sell to suggest slapping the colour of your dinner up on the wall.
‘‘I do know that there is a bit of a 70s vibe coming through,’’ Resene colour consultant Brenda Ngatai told me.
‘‘But it’s warmer, browny-pinks, like washedout terracotta. I’ve not heard that ‘brown is the new grey’. Back to beige? No, surely not.’’
From your mouth to the decor Gods’ ears, Brenda.
See, when I read ‘‘brown decor’’, I’m assaulted by visions of fawn tiles, chocolate and violent orange carpets in eye-bending geometric patterns, coffee-coloured corduroy, and beige formica.
I see smoked glass coffee table tops that show every speck of dust and smear of hand grease, and that horrible bottle-bottom decorative glass that was everywhere in the 70s and 80s.
I see beige.
Not in the good, natural fibre way, but in the sweaty polyester, the ‘‘Beige Brigade’’ of cricketers Richard Hadlee and Martin Crowe stepping up to the crease sort of way.
There’s a reason the beige versions of Kartell’s highly sought after, Giotto Stoppino-designed, 70s stacking tables are worth hundreds less than the chic primary or black ones.
Beige is irredeemable. Isn’t it?
Maybe that’s just a hang-up from my 70s and 80s childhood, but I just can’t deal with that colour.
Dita Von Teese, whose glorious, maximalist home you can take a video tour of, thanks to Architectural Digest’s wonderful celebrity homes series, also grew up in those dark days of decor, and I think she sums Gen X feelings for the colour perfectly:
‘‘Brown is my least favourite colour.’’
If there’s one thing watching decor trends has taught me however, it’s that nothing can stop a vibe whose time has come. The 70s are in and we’ll just have to embrace it or get out of the way.
It helps to understand why the 70s was the decade of brown decor.
Debating the phenomenon on Reddit one day, someone suggested brown’s prevalence was a ‘‘backlash to the electric, high-chroma, ‘psychedelic’ colour palette of late-60s hippie culture’’.
That sounds plausible – after coming down from all that high-key, unrealistic vibrancy, brown must have felt calm and grounding.
‘‘People were suddenly in the visual mood for something more muted, contemplative and restrained,’’ The Artful Codger wrote on the Reddit thread.
‘‘The faintly mournful ‘autumn’ colour palette – dark orange, oxblood, copper, brown, harvest gold, avocado green – filled that need so well that it literally became symbolic of the decade.’’
That colour palette, made up from earthy, natural tones, is found anywhere you look in nature.
That’s fitting because, although the earth movement had been around for years, with its focus on environmentalism and a more natural way of life, it really became mainstream in the 70s.
I grew up in the suburbs, but we had chickens and a vege patch back then. Our neighbours had a pet lamb, another neighbour had a loom and spun her own wool.
The Good Life, a sitcom about a couple of London high-fliers who decide to chuck it all in to turn their suburban garden into a miniature, selfsufficient farm, was primetime viewing.
Macrame, homespun wool, fresh eggs, a beigeuniformed national cricket team and the alltimber, all the time Lockwood home: this was New Zealand in the 1970s and early-80s.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but environmental awareness, sustainability, selfsufficiency and natural materials, even macrame, are all huge right now, and they could be bringing brown decor with them.
‘‘It’s still black-white, sea fog, quarter truffle, concrete, those really light, soft colours, that are still the most popular colours for interiors,’’ says Ngatai.
‘‘Unless something restricts you, like aluminium joinery, carpet or a kitchen that has to stay, and those colours won’t work, that’s generally what people go for.’’
As ever, when you’re thinking of redecorating your home, the trends should be way down on the list of considerations, she says.
Establish your main theme colour, make sure it ties in with your carpet and flooring, that gives you ‘‘a good foundation’’ to be experimental with colour elsewhere in your decor.
‘‘Then you can follow through in a statement colour or wallpaper, making sure that the colour and pattern fits the size of the room. Keep it harmonious.’’
Or as they said in the 70s, keep it real, man.