What current "looks" are going to date badly?

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I'm starting a house refurb next year and collecting various ideas for decor.

I'm conscious that I tend to be quite influenced by what's around at the moment... 5 years ago I probably would have chosen a house all in white and shades of grey, and a painted in frame kitchen, now I'm liking darker colours and handleless kitchens... I think I may be a recipe for a house that dates quite badly .

Please help me avoid that. What do you think is currently ubiquitous/on trend but will look all wrong in a few years' time?

Conversely what's going to stand the test of time?

It's for a Victorian house in London if that matters...

Yes! 'from CarpetRight' is the vat of salt in the already oozing wound.

(Tesco own brand table salt, not Maldon flakes)

I confess I am wincing at the thought of parquet being pulled out and replaced with laminate - but everyone's taste is their own. If you don't like it, then you don't like it!

I can't stand leaded windows. I find them claustrophobic and I hate the look of them. I also don't like loads of dark wood furniture - I find it oppressive.

Oh and we ripped out the parquet floors and replaced them with laminate from carpetright. Which would no doubt have the purists shrieking in horror, but I loathe parquet, I don't care if it's classic or stylish or whatever, I hate it and would rather have the cheapest tackiest looking laminate than parquet any day of the week...

I think I need to lie down for a few minutes!

echt I assume people are talking about those chunky L shaped sofas with the bit that sticks out?

Like this www.habitat.co.uk/forde-charcoal-fabric-left-hand-chaise-group-420026

I covet it madly!

I also loathe parquet - absolutely hate the look of it to the point I would avoid buying a house with it (not sure I'd have the balls to rip it out, put down laminate, and admit to it though).

Where I live in New England, people faint at the idea of painting your original woodwork/trim in older houses (ours is 19th century). They react the same way posters did about the ripped up parquet floor. It must be left natural. When we told the painter to paint the woodwork white, even he asked me was I absolutely certain. Didn't care though - it looks stunning.

I'm wondering about plywood kitchens (but not highly gloss - think of the fingerprints). Flash in the pan or nicely retro?

Sits on her massive corner sofa with a pouffe after painting her understairs toilet a dark navy and picking out a nice light grey for the rest of the interior walls
I'd just make sure the fitted kitchen and the bathroom suite are good quality and in a neutral colour, then you can crack on with the rest. I love a nice counter-top sink in the bathroom. Just make sure it's practical and that you and potential kids can easily wash your hands/face and brush your teeth without whacking into the faucet.

I don't like a lot of 'stuff' either but I think you need some to pull a room together. It doesn't have to be much but you need to style it a little bit. Check out minimalist homes on pinterest and houzz for ideas. Even a brightly coloured blanket and a throw pillow for the bedroom, or a stack of books on the coffee table, towels and plants in the bathroom.
We've recently bought our first house so I'm knee-deep in pinterest, houzz and instagram handles.

Although to answer your question, really dark rooms seem very popular and very impractical at the moment and leather beds with a built-in tv are the stuff of my nightmares.

But painting over woodwork can be reversed. Ripping up a wooden floor to replace it with CarpetRight laminate is pretty irreversible.

When I moved into my house I found two lovely little Victorian fireplaces that had been boarded over way back when. I raised my glass to the person who decided to hide them rather than remove them.

I think those spot lights that are recessed in rows like runway lights, ruining perfectly nice ceilings, will date. At least I hope they will soon. They are not that easy to remove and patch invisibly.

I find it interesting how our tastes change en masse. I thought loads of prior trends were tasteful and then they seemed awful and then ok again. I'm old enough to be thinking of the 70's decor trends here.

We have a massive six foot high by eight foot wide oak fireplace (it's a listed building and yes there is a wood burner in there) and the previous owners told us it had been boarded up when they moved in. Literally blocked off so you couldn't see it by the owners before them.

I honestly and truely can't understand why anyone would do that. It's probably the most eye catching feature in the house. Yet in the sixties they covered it up with some plywood to pretend it didn't exist.

We also have a beautiful walnut bur door on the downstairs loo and whomever blocked up the fire place had painted it white and the folks we bought from had had to strip it back. Why the hell would you paint a four hundred year old walnut bur door?

However in both instances at least they didn't rip them out and they were there to be restored...

things that are twenty years old look much more out of date and unfashionable than things that are a hundred.

They boarded everything up in the 60s, Bluntness - fireplaces, glazed doors (no bad thing - that stuff isn't safety glass!) spindle post staircases....

I ripped the boards off a staircase after a really bad day at work, once. There were a couple of damaged spindles and a couple missing, but it just looked so much better and less brown and dark!

Saw a listing, earlier, with a kitchen with a combination of flooring and LED lighting that reminded me of this :o
c1.staticflickr.com/2/1652/25781810476_87542695fc_z.jpg
That particular house had a livingroom with everything, even the flooring and cabinets, in grey. And yes, it did look like a black and white photo. A couple of the bedrooms had a "pop" of colour in among the grey. It was a shit house in other respects, so we won't be wanting to view it.

I suppose in the 50s and 60s there was this post war optimism and an embracing of all that was new and modern, and I supposed nothing said 'old fashioned and outdated' like pre 20th century doors, floors, fireplaces etc. And I suppose that a lot of homes thought that once they had central heating installed that fireplaces were then completely redundant and what was the point of keeping them.

What a thrill though to uncover a massive inglenook fireplace and walnut doors! I envy you. 😊

I did snigger at a listing that used the word "modern", the other week. it wasn't even something obviously thrown together by a 60 year old - it was the blurb for a new build. Actually, it was MODERN in allcaps, in a listing full of DESIGNER and LUXURIOUS.

singingsilver, thanks for the pic. I rather thought that's what was meant. These sofas infest Australian furniture shops/style magazines, though the bigger rooms in a lot of houses here means they don't overwhelm the room.

Still shit though.

Thinking about bathrooms will those basins which are like a bowl on a stand date. I like them mind you.

One of the loos in Fenwick in Newcastle has the bowl basins, complete with poncey taps that you have to lift a lever to turn on - the area around them is always bogging.

PickAChew Fenwicks toilets are the biggest let-down ever. I expected them to be posh but I thought they were crap, but that was a while back. Were they the waterfall taps? Those were in our house when we bought it and they're one of those 'looked nice at the time, but I'm not sure in the long run' features. They also use more water apparently cause they don't have an aerator. Or something.

"Conversely what's going to stand the test of time?"
Anything that has already stood the test of time, IYSWIM. In a Victorian house, I would think 1930s, Art Deco, Arts & Crafts would look pretty good.

NotAMammy - the 3rd floor loos are still exacly the same as they were when they were done up in the 90s, when they moved the escalators into banks to ameliorate the right of passaged of getting lost in there. The ones with the waterfall taps are behind the designer bit and cafe 21 on the 1st floor. Perfect for sneering at unlined coats for £400.

I was discussing this recently with an old friend who I shared a flat with - ooh, 35 years ago. It was the early 80s, but our rooms were painted neutral colours, with lots of grey and green, dark wood furniture and enlivened with some 50s/60s kitsch. Neither of us have changed our tastes much since, though our budgets have improved. So I guess I'll probably be taking my taste for Farrow & Ball, grey and green, autumnal accents and a touch of mid century modern to the grave.

I think the trend for 'flow', with a unified look running throughout the house, will continue. And that probably means grey will survive, because you can either do this with white walls throughout, grey shades throughout, or taupey/cream colours throughout. All of which can look great. I don't think we're going to go back to that 80s thing of each room being a completely different colour any time soon, and I really hope we don't go back to 'hint of a tint' pastels in every room. I love grey, but will be glad to see the back of very cold greys unwarmed by any other colours. These rooms you see where everything is silvery grey rarely work well.

I also love metro tiles - always have - and they are cheap. Done with grey grout, they are practical. I'm not giving them up!

I'm really glad to see the back of shabby chic but I think slapping chalk paint on ugly furniture is a great idea and here to stay. (Caveat: I don't paint over nice wood, and I put matt varnish over the chalk paint rather than distressing it.) It's just so cost-effective. My kitchen chairs were a fiver each from a local restaurant and were covered with a hideous treacly reddish varnish that I would never have got off: but chalk paint has transformed them.

I think travertine bathrooms will go out of style (I pray), and 'boutique hotel-style' oversized headboards, and spotlight hell, and bi-folds, and glass box extensions, and rolltop baths, and oversized TVs, and coloured lights under your bath or kitchen cabinets or whatever. I like the Abigail Aherne 'paint everything inky dark' look but I think it's destined to be short-lived. I think big blocky kitchen islands are overdue a rethink, and that all those people who tell interiors magazines how they knocked down all their interior walls so that they could keep an eye on their children wherever they were, will soon be putting walls back up so they can have some rest from their teenagers.

I absolutely loathe parquet as well. Also the problem with all of this is that "classic & good quality" usually equates to v. V. expensive. Obviously wood floors are nice but I can't afford them. I hate hate hate carpet so we have laminate and fashionable or not it suits us. I also love the flat door glossy kitchen we have (not put in by us) because it is so easy to clean. I will never again have any kind of door that had places for greasy dust to collect.

I'm not a fan of these trendy plywood kitchens but I think (hope) we will get more flat panel wooden kitchen unit doors, painted in different colours - avoiding the fiddly mouldings on shaker kitchens and the high gloss of modern kitchens. Then we will be able to repaint our kitchen units as easily as we repaint walls.

Can't believe how many posters don't like parquet! I love it. It's on my wishlist of 'Things I will have when I have megabucks to spare', along with a proper hallway, a painted flat panel kitchen, new bathrooms, new radiators and kerb appeal.