Kitchen Decor: 1970’s Designs

A 1970’s Decor Kitchen

Decorating your kitchen with a 70’s theme is getting more popular every day. Here are a few things you can do to get the look in your kitchen and how you can display your groovy collectibles!

Flowers in yellow, orange, red, hot pink and other bright primary colors. Spread the flower love around the home, kitchen — or you! Accessories make it easy to change your look on a small budget. Get a quick dash of color with towels or curtains. Throw pillows for your couch or bedroom can add a lot of impact. Use either flower-shaped pillows or prints.

• Try flowers on magnets or stickers for your fridge, on your kitchen wall clocks, tea towels or kitchen curtains.
• Look for collectible tumblers with daisy prints on the glass or coffee cups, just like Eric Foreman!

Mushrooms, Owls and Forest Friends

These were a popular part of the ‘natural kitchen’ themes. Colors for this theme would be avocado or moss green, mission brown (dark), reddish browns (rust), orange and mustard yellow. Look for wall hangings, salt and pepper shakers and kitchen canisters.

Add a hanging plant like pathos or spider plants. They help clean the air and are fairly easy to grow. Put them in your macrame plant hangers!

70’s Lite

The ‘natural’ trend is also responsible for much maligned dark wood paneling, cabinets and dark walls in kitchens. Hanging plants added to the dank cave feel in smaller kitchens.

If you are giving your kitchen a 1970’s remodel, I would pass on the dark wood. Instead, try painting your cabinets in harvest yellow or lime green (or both). Or perhaps just keep them white. If you change your mind about your kitchen color scheme white goes with everything. And keep the hanging plants, they’re good for you and they go with everything too!

New curtians and kitchen linens are an inexpensive and fast way to give your kitchen a 70’s makeover. Look for kitchen towels with macrame tops you can attach to your green fridge or orange stove.

Country Kitchens

Country kitchen themes have been popular since the beginning of time. In the 70’s this decor theme took the form of ‘old fashioned’, country kitchens. Think homesteading, growing your own food and ‘putting up’ your harvest with canning or freezing.

Farm items were popular decorative items and if these items could still be put to good use in the kitchen even better. Collectibles included old milk jugs (filed with straw flowers you grew yourself), vintage spice or kitchen tins and washboards.

There were lots of new designs made to look like 1890’s advertising art. Grains and dried beans decorated the walls. Colors were mainly earth tones with a little bit of hippie Emporium thrown in.

Handmade ceramics in simple forms and natural colors were very poplar. You had to actually go to a craft fair (or a Renaissance Faire) to find these things. Today you can go online and find the same thing on an artist’s home page — and help support a fellow American get through our current hard times!

Try Handmade Especially Macrame

Hand made items were popular and very practical in those hard economic times.

An enormously popular craft during the 1970’s was macrame. Every mom seemed to be making macrame plant hangers, pot holders, covers or jewelry.

Many were macrame pieces were embellished with seashells, carved wood beads or organic looking ceramic beads woven into the design. Look for them in thrift shops and garage sales or just make new ones yourself.

Hanging plants were popular, what better way to clean the air indoors? Put your plant in a container that’s either green, orange, yellow or white and use a huge macrame hanging sculpture.

Other 1970’s Kitchen Colors to Use

• Chrome and silver were also popular. Add a stick-on mirror square to your wall. Mirrors add light and can make a small space feel bigger.
• Crazy geometric patterns and stripes round out the palette.
• Don’t be afraid to experiment with different colors!