If you want to add a retro touch to your style, the best thing you can do first is learn about it. Only by fully comprehending everything that this style has to offer will you be able to execute it flawlessly. The retro style never goes out of style, which is why it’s crucial to grasp its origins and the key aspects that make it up. You’ll be able to blend retro objects into your home without disrupting the overall aesthetic.
The key is to not go overboard with retro accents and to know how to pair them with other decorative elements that you enjoy and make you feel good. Continue reading to get all the information you need and to give your home a unique, retro, and entirely personalized look.
Origin of The Retro Style
You’re on the right track if you associate retro style with the Mad Men period. Primarily, retro style relates to the mid-century period, during which a variety of styles in terms of colors, patterns, furnishings, and décor emerged. Retro style has its origins in the color and design ethos of the 1960s and 1970s, but it waned in the 1980s until the early 1990s, when more contemporary design styles were fashionable.
This isn’t always the case; while a mid-century modern interior can be considered retro, it isn’t necessarily. Retro-style interiors can also be influenced by art deco, rococo, or other historical design elements.
Key Features
Mid-Century Modern furniture is synonymous with retro style, especially when it comes to curved or angled pieces with strong colors or metals like chrome. This look is also noted for its usage of certain colors.
Consider avocado green and psychedelic hues. Mustard yellow, orange, and cherry red are also popular retro colors. The plethora of patterns and textures is also not to be overlooked, with bright wallpaper and shaggy rugs serving as prime examples.
Decoration Tips
Those who create a retro-style environment should do so with caution. Please don’t take retro to the point where it gets theatrical unless you’re aiming to construct a historically authentic movie or theatre set. Instead, plan and develop your style around a specific piece of furniture, light, or wallpaper from a specific era, and then build your design around that one influence.
Don’t be concerned about paying respect to a specific era. In a large area, combining a mid-century inspired swivel bucket chair with various patterns is very appropriate.
For instance, we like bold-colored mid-century modern sofas or chairs, but we balance them out with elegant wood or rugs, a contemporary coffee table, and white walls. When it comes to retro style, it’s all about balance…always in balance!
Elements of The Recent Retro Style Revival
Millennials are particularly fond of the retro look. Millennials can experience a similar sense of nostalgia in classic and recognizable designs, much as Generation X did with the mid-century designs that their grandparents admired. This style feels approachable and under-appreciated, which is why these antiques are frequently a steal, especially when considering their build quality and the sustainability component that comes with buying used.
Following this decorative design has monetary advantages as well. Buying these vintage parts is a terrific method for young professionals to stretch their budget while getting something that will last a lifetime.
These abandoned items are now seen as unique and purposeful. Millennials are increasingly gravitating toward vintage style for all of their surroundings, rather than just one or two pieces of furniture. In a thrift store, furniture or décor that was previously dismissed as outmoded or tawdry suddenly works in a room designed to look retro…and it’s happening more and more frequently.
Retro fashion has never truly gone out of style; rather, it has become more popular as a result of technological advancements. We’ve always combined interiors, borrowing from the past and blending with the present, in every century and decade inside a century.” In comparison to when we had to wait for a monthly magazine or some TV shows that were only available in specific regions, the internet and social media have increased the exposure of retro style dramatically…
As a result, it is now much easier to design and select the style that best suits our needs and personalities. We now have a wider range of options to pick from, which expands the decorative possibilities to an almost limitless realm.