From the Times, April 2017
If you want to sell your house, avoid:
Off-white kitchens
Unusual layouts
An extension that’s bigger than the garden. (Don’t overextend.)
Pebbledash, Artex and the usual avocado bathroom suites (Though pebbledash may be right for your 30s villa.)
Purple, pelmets and patterns. (Avoid that 80s “window treatment”, this is “the age of plantation blinds”. And “chintz-patterned wallpaper... divides tastes.”)
Fountains, dark paint, garish carpets. (Says an architect.)
“Stark modern interiors... have a short shelf life and will look outdated in a couple of years.” (Says an estate agent.)
“Overly vibrant décor and sitting rooms that contain a supersized bed (an arrangement considered weird for all sorts of reasons.)” (The Times’s Anne Ashworth)
Also per the Times, these have had their day:
Venetian mirrors (with an ornate surround also made of mirror)
Cowhides or sheepskins draped on furniture (Leave them on the floor. Or out by the bins.)
Fake Eames (the plywood furniture designed by Ray and Charles Eames in the 50s)
Flos (Furniture and lighting with a retro look. Attractive but costly.)
Black and white tiles (“We all went mad for them when there was a bit of a buzz around the Standard Hotel in New York.” Oh, didn’t we? But now apparently they make you feel you’re living in your bathroom.)
Tin (and copper) pendant lamps
Zinc worktops
Roll-top bath
Painted tongue-and-groove walls
Kilims
Sisal carpeting (stick to rugs)
Velvet mustard sofa
Giant clock in the kitchen (“Just too gastropub to be safe any more.”)
MORE CRIMES
Yarn bombing. (Sorry, but it’s twee.)
Annie Sloan chalk paint for that “distressed” look – created 26 years ago.
Transform your old chest of drawers with colourful ceramic knobs!
Pampas grass is 70s naff. (Carol Midgley)
Nesting tables (but they might be useful).
Paintings of roistering cardinals
Suspended ceilings
Doing up a genuine a Tudor house/restaurant/pub with artex, fake beams, fake candle wall sconces, Flintstones fireplaces and Jacobethan furniture.
Beaten copper hood over a gas fire (relic of arts and crafts copper hood over open fire)
Standard off-the-shelf Regency fire surround in a Victorian or modernist house.
Victorian décor crime: vast black and purple marble fire surround like a baroque altar in a room much too small for it. These survive, while elaborate Edwardian overmantels don’t.
Cutting the legs off a kitchen table to make a coffee table (and manufacturing coffee tables that look like kitchen tables with the legs cut off)
Getting that expensive hotel look in your home is easier than you think. (@sainsburys)
Bedrooms where seduction is catered for with swagged curtains and dry-clean-only sheets, bathrooms with shelves weighed down by vanilla tea lights. (Eva Wiseman)
Revamped Victorian warehouses given mirrored plate-glass windows in blue or brown (70s, 80s)
Buildings with exoskeletons
It’s kind of decorative in a ghastly kind of way. (David Dickinson on a brass clock and barometer moulded with baroque curlicues and flowers, painted and sprayed gold)
living statues dressed as Yoda