There’s this meme from a while ago that observes the fact that the 80’s and early 90’s weren’t as colourful and flashy as most media make them out to be. In fact almost everything ranging from clothing to furniture to advertising was a drab shade ranging between dark brown to orange.
Every once in a while you’d get a toy or a household appliance that would be a bright neon colour and it would be considered hi tech advanced fancy stuff (until it broke the next day).
Nowadays you’d have to look hard for dark brown/orange drab stuff. They make dark brown/orange stuff but it usually is made of a veneer of fancy wood and it’ll cost you an arm and a leg. (And then it breaks the very next day)

62 Comments
ech@lemmy.ca · 63 pts · 183d
Easier to ignore the nicotine stains.
affenlehrer@feddit.org · 36 pts · 183d
And the burn holes...
RelativeArea1@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 183d
and covert shit stains
Zahille7@lemmy.world · 41 pts · 183d
Personally I feel like it was 50/50. All the interior at-home stuff was drab and gross, but a lot of the outerwear and clothing (not what your grandma would wear) was fairly vibrant.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 183d
And hangin with mr cooper had squiggly neon lines that were never explained and never referenced.
It's literally all I remember about that show
anomnom@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 182d
Trapper Keeper chic
borkborkbork@piefed.social · 32 pts · 182d
You always knew houses with smokers and without. Hit you walking in the door and put a sepia tint on reality - walls, popcorn ceiling, all kinds of shit. But what kids today will never know:
Plastic covered furniture. People covered their couches and easy chairs with plastic. it was wild.
Google it, people had fitted plastic covers made for all their furniture. I don't know if anyone ever took the covers off "oh the pope is coming over let's go all out" attitude but it was a distinct thing.
shneancy@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 182d
yeah that makes sense, my grandma only ever uses the good china for christmas and that's it. the only reason she'd whip it out twice in a year would indeed be if the pope came to visit her
borkborkbork@piefed.social · 2 pts · 182d
at least with the china she's already getting out the dishes. with the plastic, I have no idea how long it would take to strip the furniture, but it's not a quick process lol. it was so strange.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip · 28 pts · 182d
I wore shit like this out of the house, because of how amazingly fucking cool I was
FreddiesLantern@leminal.space · 11 pts · 182d
Holy shit, don’t tell me, you had a powerglove?
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip · 13 pts · 182d
Thorry@feddit.org · 23 pts · 183d
You often see the super colorful 80s in pop culture. But at the time there was also another movement going on where everything was black, white, metal and glass. I remember white rugs, a black leather couch with stainless metal, glass and black metal coffee table. Walls painted black or made entirely out of glass bricks. People wearing black and white clothes with sunglasses on. A lot of it was super classy and I wouldn't mind having that in my home again. It was one of the first times in my life I remember home decoration being aligned with fashion, and people doing interior design.
starlinguk@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 183d
I was a teenager in the eighties. I remember a "jungle" trend (khaki), purple paisley, bottle green, grey with abstract prints, light pink and grey t-shirts with the sleeves cut off and lapis blue. I have NO idea where the idea of "it was all neon" comes from.
XeroxCool@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 182d
The idea comes from the fact that there's multiple concurrent trends at any given time. But also the BTTF posters. Also consider how the monochrome movement made neon stand out even more than it did during the vibrant 60s and 70s. And yet, all of this varies greatly by region. We're all seemingly assuming USA, so an NYC/LA experience will not match Birmingham or Dallas
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 182d
Sounds like the last holdover of modernism before the nineties kicked in. And also expensive.
Thorry@feddit.org · 6 pts · 182d
Yes! I definitely had the huge ass tower of stereo equipment. It was a Philips branded stack and the main volume knob had a little red light on it, when you used the remote to put the volume up or down, it actually rotated the knob! It blew my mind when I saw that, so I just had to have it. It had a dual cassette deck, with fast rewind and fast copy options. A very good CD player, AM/FM radio and an amp with EQ. I think there was an option for records, but I didn't have that, this was the 80s we needed high tech! The CD player had stuff like random order, lead-in, lead-out, etc. Mine was all black with little silver metal trims. Big ass speakers that weren't optimized for volume or bass like these days, but for excellent sound quality and clarity.
I also had the glass shelves with a whole bunch of CDs and one of those towers where you put in the CDs at a 45 degree angle.
Man those were the days.
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 182d
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOdrpe1CUJg
RustySharp@programming.dev · 2 pts · 182d
Not to mention the 2000s video game aesthetics, where everything is "gritty" and is a shade of brown & grey. The drabness never went away, they just changed media.
daannii@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 183d
Wood paneling. Everywhere.
Brown carpet. Everywhere.
Anything that had been white was stained by cigarette smoke.
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 12 pts · 183d
Including all the leaves, apparently.
I heard rumors that the sky was of a grey hue.
I heard it from someone who'd been on a walk on a winter's day.
Jesus_666@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 183d
In the 80s the sky was the color of a dead TV channel and it was overcast.
In the 00s the sky was the color of a dead TV channel and it was clear.
Today nobody knows what a dead TV channel is supposed to look like.
Zanshi@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 182d
Today dead channels are either blue or black with a floating "no signal" because the signal is not analog anymore
Jesus_666@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 182d
Honestly, given that TV viewership is falling and people are increasingly using on-demand services instead of tuning in, I'd argue that 404 error pages and NXDOMAIN browser error pages are in the process of replacing the dead channel conceptually.
bstix@feddit.dk · 4 pts · 182d
That song was written in 1963 in New York.
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 182d
The prevailing colors of winter probably didn't change much in the 20-30 intervening years, though 🤷
over_clox@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 183d
Pressure wash the smoke/nicotine stains, sun dry it for a few days, and replace the indoor Incandescent lights with white LED lights..
Its probably not nearly as dark and drab if cleaned up and placed under good modern white lighting..
mholiv@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 183d
Do - do you like the 5000k bulbs? Do people consider cool white lighting to be modern?
moonshadow@slrpnk.net · 6 pts · 182d
There's no way, no one likes the 5000k bulbs. They're for BMW drivers and aliens performing abductions
over_clox@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 182d
Oh to hell with 5000k bulbs, that's just too damn blindingly bright white! I just mean sensibly whiter and brighter than the inherently yellow color of incandescent bulbs.
foodandart@lemmy.zip · 9 pts · 183d
My grandparents had that sofa - same print pattern but in a blue-gray. Holee shit.
kahjtheundedicated@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 183d
In the not-so-distant future we’ll look back and say everything the 2020s really was just grey, wasn’t it?
starlinguk@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 183d
Grey, black and beige.
stelelor@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 182d
We already do. It's all grey, greige, white, off-white. If feeling adventurous, add taupe accents and light wood. "Soothing" my ass, it all gives mental institute vibes.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 182d
they call it millenial grey for a reason. ugh.
Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 182d
I can smell the potpourri.
Themosthighstrange@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 182d
I can smell stale smoke
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 182d
No, that's fondue.
twistypencil@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 183d
This does not track with my reality
FreddiesLantern@leminal.space · 4 pts · 183d
Thank you for your multiverse theory confirming comment. 🙏
Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone · 7 pts · 183d
The biggest point a relative of mine made when building a house in the mid 90s, at which point people were getting colorful with home decor again, was that there was NOT going to be anything brown in it, haha.
Zier@fedia.io · 7 pts · 183d
60's Paisley, tie dye & macrame 70's Brown, orange & golden yellow. Plus a little beige. 80's Neon, black, sparkly, & hairspray. 90's pastel colors plus burgundy and forest green.
FreddiesLantern@leminal.space · 4 pts · 183d
Turns out I grew up among hand down materials from the previous decade.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 182d
they're remembering what was at the tail of the decades, so hey
Lojcs@piefed.social · 6 pts · 182d
Lasagna couch
db2@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 182d
*Davenport
Adderbox76@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 182d
Chesterfield actually. "Davenport" was a name brand of chesterfiled-style-sofa that became popular enough to become synonymous (Like Kleenex became synonymous with tissues, or Chapagne became synonymous with almost any bubbly wine)
Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 183d
In the 90s we had..
Blue couch, black chairs, gray carpet, etc
I dont recall anything brown, except a couple of wooden furniture pieces like my bed, which was from like .. 1930ish (with a new mattress)
SGforce@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 183d
My dad had bright pink inflatable furniture from the 70's. Grandma's house looked like OP's pic.
starlinguk@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 183d
I had a bright orange sofa and yellow walls.
fibojoly@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 183d
New presidential couches?!
FreddiesLantern@leminal.space · 3 pts · 183d
“We’ve got the best 👌brownest couches 🛋️ you’ve ever seen 👀 I gotta say 👐,.. Epstein.”
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 182d
i was going to say, this is the worst representative couch. i remember a lot of stripey couches with oranges.
FreddiesLantern@leminal.space · 3 pts · 182d
It’s a random picture I found.
I mostly remember brown green velvety material with lots of oak. A sort of mocka colour like the picture.
After that during the 90’s I had the luxury of growing up with fancy black leather couches. ❤️
buzz86us@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 182d
Ugh this was my mom's furniture
GreenBeanMachine@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 182d
lightnsfw@reddthat.com · 2 pts · 182d
My grandparents had this exact couch and 2 chairs with the same pattern.
acme401@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 182d
The sky was yellow and the sun was blue
Battle_Masker@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 182d
I thought leaves were brown and the sky was gray
acme401@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 182d
Depends on what drugs you took
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 182d
Ngl i saw the thumbnail and thought it was like dinner rolls or some kind of bread
artiman@piefed.social · 2 pts · 182d
i sat on this exact couch
hanrahan@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 182d
Good for Trump for when he shits himself again
three@lemmy.zip · 0 pts · 183d
bacon_pdp@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 182d