Microblog Memes

It’s more than that. Those colors were chosen to hide the ever-present, persistent glaze of nicotine stain over everything. There were no white walls back then, only shades of “cream”, “ecru”, and “off-white” because no shade of true white could exist in that persistent haze of cigarette smoke.

If you ever took over a house from the 70s you’d note the amber brown drips down the kitchen wall after making spaghetti or heating a tradition tea kettle on the stove. Or after a shower in the bathroom. Scrubbing, priming, and painting would help, and then you’d make another pot of spaghetti and see another amber sludge nicotine drip from somewhere on that wall.

To this day I cannot abide beige, any rendition of off-white, or pale yellow. They’re all shades on the nicotine glaze color palette.

They used brown everywhere because all the smoking would have eventually made it brown anyway. If they start there they could pretend nothing was wrong.

Idk, this has more personality to it than the beige nightmare a lot of folks live in. Even if that personality smells like stale cigarettes and Cutty Sark.

Cozy as all hell though. Better than the drab gray cookie-cutter-prison aesthetic for sure.

Bring back carpet, earth tones, and separated rooms please 😭 I want a good hidey hole to curl up in.

I can smell this picture. Mildew, thousands of cigarettes, and whatever gas-soaked disaster grandpa has on his basement workbench around the corner. It's the same era that brought us matching ceramic ash-trays for the coffee table, and bi-centennial themed kitsch like pewter minutemen that are actually cigarette lighters in disguise.

As a guy who grew up in the 70s - this looks perfect. I'll take it

These colours were chosen specifically so we wouldn't notice the nicotine coating everything.

Meanwhile millennial having everything greyscale, definitely not going to be a sign of the times lol

This was an attempt to emulate the rich, wood-paneled, dark, rich luxury of old money.

Looks cozy af

In this example image, those be some "earth" colors. Used to be a big thing. Lots of dark green, dark yellows, oranges and browns.

And they liked that.

It's a whole vibe. I don't know who vibes with that, but it definitely has a vibe.

It was a reaction to the artificial colors that got popular in the 60s.

These colors and the vibe felt the best. I was too poor in one way or the other to have this. I’d love to have this now.

I recently bought a house that had used that '70s paneling as a sort of wainscoting in the kitchen; the panels had been cut to 4' and applied in various ways (everything except just fucking nails) around the base of the walls. It had been painted white so it wasn't quite as hideous as its original state and I didn't feel like replacing it all, but I did have to repair one section of it that had been badly water-damaged. I was surprised to find that Lowe's still has that shit in stock so I bought a piece of it and brought it home ... and discovered that it wasn't really like the original stuff. It looked the same but the grooves between the alleged "boards" were not recessed, they were just printed on the surface, so once it was painted it would have just looked like flat board. So I ended up having to rip that shit into fake planks and nail them up separately with small grooves between them. All that work just to simulate '70s hideousness.

Thank god there was no shag carpet in that house.

What a wonderful way to describe that. All you've done is make it even more appealing.

Back in the 70's brown was considered neutral, neither oppressive or energetic, selected to not stand out.

Wow, I can smell that. Musty basement with a Tyco slot car race track in it.

I kinda like it, feels cozy :)

I remember the wood paneling from when I was a wee lad.

"Ahh yes, this will hide the cigarette stains."

elimination of wood, cotton, and wool as materials and fast fashion/plastic fashion means that classical fabric (or finish, or furniture) looks have been forced out, so that race-to-the-bottom Chinese goods can replace them.

now you buy a $1900 couch made of cardboard and foam. And every wall is “agreeable gray”.

This is also a response to the 1950s:

And 1960s:

"And the brown and the beige and the brown and the beige and the brown!"

Documentary Now - Co-Op

That first step is a doozy.