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Mod-inspired geometric patterns and funky-shaped chairs particularly define this decade.ġ970s: As we entered the ‘70s, the shapes of furniture started to shift, with bulkier designs coming back into style. A lot of designs that still appear “modern” to us (à la the Space Age) were born out of this decade as America looked to the future.ġ960s: A lot of the furniture shapes and styles remained the same through the ‘60s, but the introduction of bright colors and psychedelic patterns is what sets this decade apart. Non-upholstered pieces no longer had to be made strictly out of wood. Plastic, vinyl, plywood, and laminate were all newly developed materials that enabled radical design developments.
#Space age furniture design free
Nicholas Free // Getty Images Here’s what you can expect to find within each decade of retro furniture:ġ950s: The ‘50s saw a big transition in furniture design and manufacturing because of the new materials accessible.
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A good example is Smeg’s ‘50s-inspired kitchen appliances. That said, you can also find new furniture that was made to look retro, intentionally referencing the trends of this era. Antiques are typically defined as being at least 100 years old, whereas retro furniture mostly dates from the 1950s to the 1980s. To distinguish what retro furniture is, it’s important to point out what it’s not. Their appeal is fairly subjective, and while some pieces might be conventionally attractive, others are liked for the nostalgia they evoke or the fact that they’re deliberately kitschy. The category of retro furniture is less specific than a certain style, like mid-century modern or French provincial, and more overarching to describe pieces that are decidedly outdated but appealing today because of their outdated-ness.
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That’s because the idea that something is so retro simply means it is obviously or purposefully date-able to the recent past. However, there’s one category of furniture I’m pretty sure most of us can easily identify, and that’s retro. There’s contemporary design and then there’s modern, you’ve got traditional and transitional-the nuances of each style, although important, can be hard to discern without a decent amount of research. To the untrained eye, identifying the specific style or era a piece of furniture is from is not always easy.
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