Trends are everywhere, influencing everything from clothing to homes, hairstyles, and even dances. And while many of them come and go in cycles—just look at the fashionistas nowadays rocking outfits resembling what Britney wore in the early 2000s—some never seem to regain the popularity they once had.
Today, we’re focusing on home trends that failed to stand the test of time. One redditor recently started a discussion about them, asking fellow netizens what some fancy home features are that have faded into history, and many people went down memory lane, recalling what they had in their own homes or saw in other people’s. If you’re curious to see what features are no longer considered fancy—nor legal, in some cases—scroll down to find their answers on the list below.
#1
Living rooms with 1-3 steps down.
Decorative tile in bathrooms in god-awful color combinations -pink/black, etc.
Image credits: challam
#2
Laundry chutes. In one house it was from the second floor to the basement, in another from the kitchen to the basement.
Image credits: MissHibernia
#3
Phone nooks.
nakedonmygoat: My house has one. I use it for knick-knacks.
Image credits: glaurieb
#4
Solid oak doors. Oak everything. This house was built in the 90's but to old standards. It was oak plate rails in the walls. I was going to have them removed when I repainted, but they are glued and screwed to the walls. Removing them would have cost a small fortune, so I left them up... As a result, this house is incredibly solid and very, very quiet. Even my WIC has solid oak doors. Why? Who knows. I'm pretty sure this house could take a direct hit from a nuclear missile and not be worse for wear.
Image credits: CrazyIrina
#5
China cabinets in the dining room.
Image credits: RedLensman
#6
Finished basements as “recreation rooms,” long before family rooms were built.
Image credits: challam
#7
Trash compactors were big in new $$$ homes when I was a kid. We were impressed when people installed them in their existing homes.
Image credits: MeanderFlanders
#8
Bright pink or turquoise or green tile bathrooms with matching tub and toilet and sink. Whole house attic fans that could suck all of the heat out of the house in minutes.
Image credits: Kingsolomanhere
#9
Central vacuum.
I always thought there would be a clog in the pipe inside of a wall somewhere which would render the whole machine useless. I never had one but I had friends who did.
Interestingly, though, I'm seeing these videos on instagram now showing people using them and all the comments are like the people just discovered fire. "WOW!! What a great idea!! No more lugging a vacuum around. Brilliant!!".
Image credits: Eye_Doc_Photog
#10
I think hand cranked dumbwaiters are pretty much gone for good.
Image credits: Awkward_Ad714
#11
Glass brick —very desirable in the 1950’s.
Image credits: challam
#12
To show you how poor I grew up: fold away ironing boards. Ooh la la!
Image credits: Overall_Lobster823
#13
Milk doors. Small doors usually adjacent to side entrances, where the dairymen would leave products.
Image credits: ThinkAndDo
#14
Bread warming drawers.
Image credits: Airplade
#15
Maybe not particularly fancy, but the house I grew up in (from the late 1950s) had an incinerator in the basement. You could just throw in burnable items and *POOF* they were rendered into ashes.
This now sounds like a nightmare and a disaster waiting to happen, and I am pretty sure they are now illegal, or at the very least, inadvisable.
Image credits: WEugeneSmith
#16
High-fidelity radios in the walls of each room. Saw that once in one of the richer towns in the SF Bay Area. Thing is that they were all early '60s models and by the '80s they were dated and sort of beside the point.
Image credits: Tall_Mickey
#17
I've seen photos homes built in the 70s and the living room area is kinda designed like a "conversation pit"...dude that is so cool and I would love to have a home like that
#18
I was thinking just the other day how much I miss a water bed and was wondering if you could still get one. We used to have a couple of water bed stores, but they are long gone.
#19
Knotty pine. Our 1950s house has Knotty Pine kitchen cabinets and flooring throughout. We didn't know about the knotty pine floors when we bought the house, as the owners had them covered with carpet. The floors were in pristine condition, as they had always been covered since the house was built. We kept all the knotty pine. One other oddity was every closet in the house was cedar-lined.
Image credits: historiangirl
#20
We had that intercom in our 1973 built house. We used it as a baby monitor, would put the baby’s room on listen and pipe it to the family room which was downstairs. That required a bunch of switch flipping at the central station to figure out. They weren’t exactly flexible or user friendly. Had to do everything at the central station.
That was the only practical use we got out it in over 40 years.
#21
Plate racks built into the wall.
Image credits: CrazyIrina
#22
Matchy-matchy draperies, wallpaper, carpeting in every room.
#23
Many homes used to have all-around porches for shade to help in the summer.
#24
My dad’s house where he grew up had a ballroom. It was long out of use by the time they bought it.
#25
A bar in the home. They are *wildly* impractical unless you are entertaining (aka giving out free alcohol) a few days a week, at which point you're just throwing away your money.
Image credits: there_is_no_spoon1
#26
Popcorn ceilings.
#27
My friends bought a home in FL that was built around an indoor swimming pool. The house was a U-shape and every room (except bathrooms) opened onto the pool deck.
#28
Round beds.
#29
Mirror-tile walls.
#30
Floor outlets.
I actually had some installed in a condo I owned as the rooms were fairly large and to run a wired lamp across the floor would have been a real trip hazard.
Image credits: ejdjd
#31
I was surprised to see a motor device embedded into a friend’s house kitchen countertop. They said it’s a built-in blender motor that was there when they bought the house. Seemed like a super fancy thing.
Image credits: Xanadu87
#32
Double-hung windows are another thing that isn't common these days. My house has them, and guess what they are made out of. And then! And then! My storm windows are also double-hung. They are an absolute PAIN to clean, but then I can heat the house in January with a match.
#33
Our house had a brick indoor planter box by the stairs. Never had a plant in it the entire time we lived there. We mostly put junk in it that we couldn't find a place for anywhere else.
#34
Most of the houses built in the 1950s in "Lamorinda" area of the SF East Bay have brink fireplaces in the kitchen with a separate fireplace for a rotisserie.
#35
Kitchen counters that wrapped around a corner with a little 4-layer shelf thing at the curve.
#36
Four-poster beds with canopies.
#37
An oven embedded in the kitchen wall. I can only imagine what a pain in the butt it would be to have to replace!
#38
Foil wallpaper.
#39
I wouldn't call it fancy but some older homes had open bricks in the attic, I mean just holes where there wasn't a brick, in a cute pattern so there was air flow.
#40
Not sure if it was a "fancy" feature, but you rarely see new homes with detached garages.
#41
A small tube tv in the kitchen.
#42
I still have a rotator on my TV in the shop/man cave.
#43
Atriums, unfortunately. Besides bringing the chores and smells of the outdoors indoors, people were lazy and didn't want to maintain them. Plus, they were a security hazard, an easy way-in for thieves.
#44
At one time people liked wood panelled walls. I think they're horrible, dark and depressing.
