Heather Nette King is a Melbourne-based interiors stylist and writer for many leading interior titles and newspapers. The hallmarks of her styling are colour and vibrancy, and she writes passionately about peoples’ homes and how they live in them.
1990S STYLE – MAJOR MOMENTS IN THAT HARD TO DEFINE DECADE
One of the things you will notice as you read about décor and design through the past fifty years is that as we move forward in time, trends - while still being very important - have become much less prescriptive, and far more about personal tastes. Whereas once things were very black and white – ‘green is in, yellow is out’ or ‘velvet is in… no - now velvet is out’, today we are presented with loads of different styles or trends to pick and choose from. And I firmly believe this really started in the nineties.
A quick perusal through old magazines and Pinterest will show you that all of these design trends held sway in the 1990s, despite some of them being almost polar opposites. And… some are (well, with a few tweaks) making a reappearance today.
Recognise any of these?
- Travertine as a wall, floor and furniture finish
- Lime plaster and faux stone finishes on walls
- Plywood, everywhere
- Rustic country style
- particularly French and Tuscan
- East meets West décor
- Pale creams, pinks and taupe chintz
- Frills, ruffles and more frills.
Interestingly, some of the most iconic furniture design pieces from the era were quite modern, perhaps due to the imminent arrival of the new millennium and the dawning of an unknown future. The best known designs of the times are the ‘S’ chair by Tom Dixon, the ‘Air Chair’ by Jasper Morrison, and the fibreglass ‘Felt’ chair by Australian Marc Newson.
So, what we had, décor-wise, is the first of the real ‘anything goes’ decades, where individual tastes and lifestyle preferences were given free rein. Pretty refreshing, right?
Popular flooring materials in the 90s were hardwood floorboards, including parquetry, with a very high-gloss finish. Tones were often very warm, from orange to red. Tiles were big news again, particularly stone finishes and large flagstones for that rustic farmhouse vibe. Interestingly, there was a big leap forward in manufacturing during the 1990s which saw the widespread adoption of engineered floors, which made installation easier and timber floors much more affordable. Look for the ‘Engineered Timber’ flooring tab on the Carpet Court website to explore more.
In such a disparate interiors landscape, it is probably easier to pick the materials and finishes that have made a comeback rather than the styles. We are again seeing ruffled fabric in contemporary interiors, particularly English-inspired rooms.
Travertine and stone furniture pieces are very much in demand, and you can see how they worked beautifully in the Carpet Court ‘Into the Pale’ campaign imagery.
The East Meets West aesthetic has grown in strength and popularity since the 1990s as well. A refined natural palette with honest, robust furniture and accessories that honour nature in all of its imperfections, called ‘wabi-sabi’ is an interiors approach that is enduring and evolving with the decades. Carpet Court’s beautiful range of sheer curtains are perfect to achieve this calm look, and I particularly love the ‘Sicily’ curtain fabric in Glacier.
So whichever styles resonate with you today, there is a great chance that they might have started off in the 1990s, and maybe they were a 1990s reincarnation of an earlier style. Either way, there is nothing surer in interiors that what goes around comes around.
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