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I don't know why, but I am a total sucker any time Apartment Therapy has a “DON'T DO THIS, IT INSTANTLY MAKES YOUR HOME LOOK DATED!” article. So let's talk about it, readers — if you've been shopping for a home recently, what are the trends and features you absolutely hate to see in a house? If you bought a “fixer upper” or scored a bargain on a house with an outdated trend, how did you handle it?
If you've sold a house that had one of those dealbreakers, did you try to handle it before putting it on the market — or just sell the house at whatever you could get, so the buyer could do what they wanted? How about those of you who have inherited older homes after a parent died or moved to assisted living — what did you do with more dated features?
{related: tips and tricks for buying a home}
I remember looking to buy a studio apartment in NYC in the mid-2000s. The one that had the layout and location I liked had a major dealbreaker: The previous owner had glued mirrors to most of the walls in the house. (I still bid on it multiple times, and lost, multiple times. Le sigh.)
When my husband and I were looking to buy an apartment a few years later, we seriously considered an apartment that we called “the Miami Vice apartment” because stacked glass blocks were a big feature in the kitchen and in the living room.
We wound up going with another apartment with some weird features — an unusual layout with lots of diagonal walls, painted in super dark colors. But those were features we felt up to tackling, so we ended up with that one and were really happy we did.
{related: how to decorate your first real apartment}
Something that bugged us from the start that I wish we'd tackled: the orangey parquet flooring. Refinishing it or replacing it before we moved in would have been ideal, but I just didn't think about it that way at the time. Of course, after you move in it's a massive pain to do the floors…
{related: what to do first when you buy a home}
I know I've seen friends complaining about house hunting in the suburbs and seeing dated kitchens, an untrendy color of wood on all the trim throughout the house, wallpaper everywhere, bathroom carpeting, and more.
What are some of your biggest pet peeves in apartments and houses? If you've been looking to buy or sell recently, what did you perceive as the biggest dealbreakers?
(Side question: What are your favorite sources for real estate content? I'm addicted to Zillow Gone Wild on Instagram, and I like playing the NYT game of “Which apartment did they buy?” I also like drooling over the WSJ real estate section. And of course, Apartment Therapy. In the past I loved House Hunters, and Property Brothers was literally all I watched during one of my maternity leaves.)
Stock photo via Pexels / RODNAE Productions.
Anne-on
I am now SO conscious of the ‘trends’ that seem to influence kitchens/baths. Some particularly eggregious ones are super bright colored tile in bathrooms (pink, baby blue, and seafoam green were some ‘favorites’ in many apartments and houses I toured that were obviously from the 50s/60s), the tiled eighties kitchen counters (google images of the house from Home Alone for what I’m referring to) and the ‘faux Tuscan” trend in the 90’s/early aughts. I think the ‘shiplap’ and large scale hexagon tile on walls are going to look similarly dated in a decade, ditto for encaustic concrete tile flooring in many spaces where it simply isn’t traditional. My parents love ‘river rock’ bathroom floor tile which is now apparently so ‘out’ that they had to hunt it down for a recent reno. I tend to lean towards Maria Killiam’s philosophy of ‘boring now is classic later’ with regards to materials (cabinets/tile/paint) and will go trendy with accessories as those are MUCH easier or cheaper to change out (paint to a degree too, but that’s an easier swap than tile or cabinets).
Aunt Jamesina
Hah, I have a blue and a peach bathroom from the 60s and love them for their kitsch and homey-ness (they are in excellent shape, though). It’s so subjective. But I share your dislike of river rock!
Anon
Agreed! I am now in my 4th place with the 50s colored tile and I actually love it. It feels like it’s on the verge of being so old it’s now cool.
Aunt Jamesina
I think it also works if it fits the context of the place. Our house is very MCM ( we bought it from the original owner and everything aside from the mechanicals and the roof were pretty much original) and something like Maria Killiam’s “classic” picks would look out of place with our house.
Senior Attorney
YES! See my comment below.
Anon
I love it too. The stuff that’s current is so sterile. I don’t want to live in an AirBnb.
Anonymous
Oh man, the colored tile. My parents bought a house built in the 60s. Bathroom tile colors include baby blue, yellow, and avocado green.
Senior Attorney
Haha, I bought my first house in the 80s and I was so excited to have tile countertops because they were a big upgrade from the Formica I’d grown up with!
pugsnbourbon
My childhood home had Formica countertops with the gray and pink boomerangs. And a peach and green tiled bathroom.
Senior Attorney
<3 <3 <3
AIMS
This is obviously a matter of personal taste, but I think some trends age much better than others and quality always matters. So to my eye, the color bathrooms can be cute (I had a peach one once) and the tile counters can be charming when done well (I would LOVE to live in the Home Alone house!). Both of these often physically hold up better for decades than some of the stuff I see now even after a few years, which is part of the reason why it works – it was done well to begin with.
I think a lot of the stuff that’s easy to do on the cheap and mass produce without much thought ends up looking dated quickly – so all gray color schemes (or their beige/brown 90s equivalent), cheap shiplap, particle board griege furniture, etc. But part of this is just that it was kind of shoddy to begin with. I think things that are done well are easy to keep and update.
Ekwacillin
I loathe the gray wood floors that have come to dominate renovations over the past decade. They are the exact opposite of timeless and such a waste.
Anon
I agree, I hate, hate, hate the gray floor in the all gray reno/flip. I guess because it’s easy enough to paint the walls but changing the floor is an undertaking.
anon
Chevron patterned wood floors. Bonus points if it’s a modern farmhouse with white paint and black accents.
Anon
I predict chevron tile is not going to age well.
Anonymous
I love the grey wood personally. I hate orangey tone wood. My style leans towards greyscale (from white to black) for all the major stuff (walls, floors, big furniture) and bright colors in rugs, cushions, accent furniture, curtains etc. I just moved into a house with new grey floors and was so happy they picked it.
Anonymous
I can’t staaaaand mulitple types of wood in a house. When we were looking in the suburbs, there were so many 90s era houses that had one type of wood on the floor, another for the bannisters, and another for the cabinets and trim. Yuck.
Anon
South Dakota has a wood + wood + wood thing going on (or, sometimes, it seems any place in Asheville NC and points west). I like a sauna, but I’m not sure I want my whole house to have that vibe.
anon
+1. I live in a suburban home in the SEUS. My kitchen has maple-colored cabinets, which I actually do not mind. But then in the same sightline, the living room has oak-colored cabinets. It makes no sense! Why don’t they match? Or if they’re not going to match, why isn’t one painted? Why would you decide to put those 2 different woods in? (They were both part of the same 2003 renovation.) Our goal is to paint the oak-colored cabinets, but it’s probably years down the road in terms of changes we’ll make.
Senior Attorney
So funny because I get a little twitchy when all the wood is matchy-matchy. But I do like a significant contrast so it looks intentional — like something really light with something dark.
lifer
+1
I agree completely.
So hate matchy-matchy.
anon
Yeah, maybe matching exactly wouldn’t be great either. But there had to be a better choice than oak for the living room cabinets. On the other hand, at least this way, we get to choose the paint color for the cabinets. How the parents of 4 kids chose that particular shade of brown for the primary bedroom walls… but I digress.
Anon
I don’t know that I have ever been in a house where the floors matched the cabinets which matched the banisters, etc. I wouldn’t expect the cabinets to match the banisters, for sure. To me it would be really monolithic and quite dull to have every single piece of wood in the house be the same color.
IL
The one way in which our new house was a compromise was the vinyl siding. I really wish it had been built with fiber cement siding but alas. The vinyl is very easy to care for at least.
Anon
Not a trend, but all too common in houses built in the last 30ish years but I HATE wall to wall carpet in all contexts (except maybe a basement). I also really dislike houses where the first floor has hardwood (or, more likely – laminate) on the first floor and then has wall to wall carpeting on the second floor.
In general, I much prefer old houses with character so I prefer real wood over laminate, plaster walls over drywall, colored 50s bathroom over modern marble (well, the real preference is 1920s subway tile).
Anything that looks “builder grade” from the 80s on makes my skin crawl.
Anonymous
I love old houses, but trying to find someone to repair plaster walls is a pain. (My house growing up was built in the 1920s and all I want in my dream house is to replicate the hardwood floors, black and white subway tiles in the bathroom, and the glass door knobs)
PLB
I love old houses, but trying to find someone to repair plaster walls is a pain. (My house growing up was built in the 1920s and all I want in my dream house is to replicate the hardwood floors, black and white subway tiles in the bathroom, and the glass door knobs)
Anon
I love wall to wall carpet haha (except in kitchens and bathrooms obviously). It feels so much better to my feet. Wood/tile floors feel sticky and gross to me unless the house is constantly being cleaned. I know it’s an unpopular opinion!
Lindsey
Also love wall to wall carpet. And see nothing wrong with hardwood on the first floor and carpet on the second. What’s the issue?
Cat
Anything that’s ubiquitous in Flip or Flop or similar mass market home shows is already dated. Sparkly accent mosaic tiles in the bathroom – especially in a centered niche, which is going to just focus your shampoo bottles front and center when in actual use, shiplap, barn doors, gray fake-wood floors, chandeliers that look like they’re still in protective packing cages, all of it.
Senior Attorney
The best thing I did when I remodeled my bathroom recently was to put the niche (which is admittedly super handy) on the wall facing INTO the shower, so you can only see it when you’re showering. (And yeah, I knew to do that because the nicely-centered niche in my last bathroom [not sparkly, thank goodness] looked great right up until it got its first shampoo bottle.)
Cat
Same – I put a (LARGE, those show-sized ones don’t account for shampoo and conditioner and shaving cream and soap and a pumice stone and a razor…) niche on the wall that’s perpendicular to the door. No unsightly bottle array FTW!
Anonymous
BRILLIANT
Anon
I loathe boob lights.
newlyanon
our guest bedroom has a b00b light and the ugliest “came with the house” dark beige and every time I enter I cringe. It’s the last room to be changed, and it’s so fugly.
AIMS
+1. But lightning in general is so hard. So many lightbulbs now are hideous. I have to work way to hard to get normal soft lightbulbs for my house.
Senior Attorney
I have Many Thoughts about this topic. Here is my theory: EVERYTHING is going to look dated at some point unless it is perfectly in keeping with the original style of the house. E.g. a Craftsman house with beautiful wood floors and Bachelder tile is going to look amazing. If that same house has acres of carpet and a, say, a carved intricate marble mantle, it’s going to look odd and dated. Those pink and baby blue bathrooms? They still look great in midcentury houses that have kept true to their roots. Notsomuch in a 1920s Tudor that was updated in the 50s or 60s.
So. Your choices are “embrace the period and grit your teeth until it becomes classic,” or “admit that everything becomes dated and will therefore need to be UP-dated from time to time.”
And that said, yeah, The Full Chip and Joanna Treatment is going to age worse than something you picked because you love it and it reflects your own style.
Oh, and one last thing: Step away from the accent tile. Always.
Senior Attorney
Oops, nesting fail. This was for Anne-on, above.
Aunt Jamesina
My thoughts exactly, SA! My stepmom just redid their kitchen in a very 2022 style that she swears is so classic in their 1970s contemporary house. She has good taste and it’s a nice kitchen. But it will absolutely look dated.
Senior Attorney
Which is fine, right? Not everybody wants to live in a time capsule and I, for one, have gotten to the point where any house I buy is going to be remodeled to my specifications anyway (eventually) so I don’t much care whether your kitchen is dated or not.
Aunt Jamesina
Absolutely (although funny remembering her statement about how “classic” their kitchen was when they renovated not quite 20 years ago!).
anon
I think kitchens especially look dated every 15-20 years. Nobody wants the kitchen original to a 1920s Tudor house, or a 1950s mid-century modern, or a 1980s whatever–and you can always pinpoint the decade, even the 5-year period, of a kitchen. Even kitchens from the early 00s look dated.
Aunt Jamesina
Hah, I have a 1961 kitchen in a 1961 house and actually love it! Even non mid century lovers comment on how cool it is. It will need to get replaced in the coming years, but we’re really taking our time as we want to be as true to the house as we can (and we’re saving up!) :-)
Anon
What? I desperately want the kitchen original to a 1920s Tudor house, and also the house.
And I am pretty happy with my original 1950s cabinets. I only wish I had retro appliances as well.
I don’t understand pointless kitchen remodels.
Anon
Everything does eventually become dated, but given the expense of home renovations, we choose to be judicious about what we do when we update, and try to choose what I define to myself as more “classic” choices on stuff that’s going to be really expensive to update or replace (think flooring, countertops, cabinets, appliances, etc.). Painting a wall or putting up/taking down wallpaper is no biggie. Changing out a faucet or toilet or light fixture isn’t a big deal. Other things are going to cost a lot more to replace. I’d rather go wild with the inexpensively-alterable accents than the big investments.
That being said, I also believe your house is your house and you should make the choices you want. You absolutely cannot predict the taste of the people who will be looking to buy your house, so if you want pink bathroom tile – go for it. Our first home was supposed to be our “starter house” and we were only going to be there for 5 years; we ended up living there 17 years. So I’m glad we did what we wanted (which in our case, was mainly painting some of the walls bold colors). We ended up getting the whole house interior repainted when we went to sell anyway.
Anon
I own a historic home and was having a promising chat with a gentleman I had just met and learned owned a firm restoring historic houses. We were discussing the possible restoration of the oldest room of my house – what would have been the good parlor for company originally. I mentioned a particular opening, and the fella said, “Oh, you could do a barn door there”… and I never called him again. No, sir, I guarantee you the middle class people who built our house and aspired to the upper class did not have a barn door there, and had they known about them two centuries ago, wouldn’t have wanted one in their good parlor.
Aunt Jamesina
Nooooooooo
Anon
I really believe this. Houses look less dated when people are working with the style of the house, however creatively. Almost any tile / ceiling light / wallpaper /paint color, no matter how much I love it, has some context where it looks perplexing and like someone got carried away with a trend.
Anonymous
I say choose what you love. Who cares if it’s in or out if you love it.
Leatty
To add to what others have shared:
– soffit everywhere that has no purpose, especially when it has canned lighting in it
– brightly colored laminate flooring
– peel and stick backsplashes
– barn doors
– open shelving in the kitchen
– Tuscan bathrooms and kitchens
– carpet in the bathrooms
– colorful toilets
Senior Attorney
OMG I grew up in the 70s and we had shag carpet in the bathrooms and the kitchen. WHYYYYYY?????
Anon
“– open shelving in the kitchen”
Preach. I live in a dusty part of the country. Open shelving would necessitate twice-weekly dusting of the objects on the shelves to keep them looking even halfway clean. I have better things to do with my time, so no thank you to open shelving in the kitchen.
Rachel
Gigantic hot tubs indoors. They’re dated and not super functional in bathrooms. But I saw several in living rooms and dens in Maine. The potential mold/moisture issues on the floors is the stuff of nightmares.
The house I ended up buying had older carpeting in the upstairs hallway and master bedroom that was installed in the early 90s. The amount of sand that I found underneath the carpeting was insane (literally buckets and buckets of sand). The previous owners had a dog, but the house was in very good shape overall. I can’t imagine what’s lurking underneath houses with older, full wall-to-wall carpeting.
Anon
We had wall-to-wall in several rooms in our house when we moved in. After living in the house for a year, I couldn’t stand it any more and we replaced the carpet with laminate. When the flooring people pulled up the carpet in my son’s room, they found buckets of powdered carpet deodorizer all over the subfloor – apparently the previous owner’s pets had had accidents in that room and they used the deodorizer to cover it up. I was appalled that my son had been sleeping in that room for a year with all that mess. And this was after we’d had the sellers clean the carpets before we moved in, and I’d had them cleaned again six months after moving in.
I just think wall-to-wall carpet is so, so gross. I’ve cleaned carpets and also have seen the water runoff from having our carpets cleaned – yuck. And so few people get their carpets cleaned on a regular, frequent schedule and I believe even after cleaning, it’s never really “clean.” It’s just nasty. Hard surface floors everywhere FTW.
Anon
It’s not sand, it’s padding that has crumbled and deteriorated.
Annie Nominous
So many newly constructed homes have five, six or seven gables on the front. Gables are everywhere and often result in weird roof lines from other angles. It’s too much.
Senior Attorney
Yes, and then you go inside and it looks like they went to the builders’ supply store and said “give me one room’s worth of every kinda trim and tile you got!”
Aunt Jamesina
When we were buying, our dealbreakers were location and houses with structural issues or clear neglect of major components. There are so many houses out there that have had a lot of aesthetic updates but then neglect the important stuff. I also prefer houses that haven’t had additions or major remodeling *most* of the time since I find that a lot of renovations aren’t at all cohesive with the rest of the house. Give me dated any day, dated is easy to fix (or in our case, embrace)!
Senior Attorney
Aunt J, it’s like we are the same person!!
Aunt Jamesina
I’ll take the compliment :-)
Anon
A lot of the new construction homes near us are on narrow lots, vinyl siding, no windows on the sides of the houses, HOAs. I worry that during an economic downturn, there will be no way to get rid of those things.
Split level homes look very dated. They also aren’t very functional, with all of the daily living areas on one floor (bedrooms, kitchen, bathrooms, living room, dining room), and often a giant game room on the bottom floor. It looks super fun until you have to live there.
pugsnbourbon
I LOATHE split-levels. They are my only true dealbreaker.
Split Level
I love our 1968 split-level and think it is very functional. The entry level is living room, kitchen, dining, and playroom (with sliding pocket door that I can close to conceal the mess). This level is where we entertain and I really like that I only have to clean this part of the house if people are coming over.
The downstairs is more of a “den” that we use if someone wants to watch a movie or hang nearby but alone, and it has a fireplace so it’s kind of a cozier family room than the upstairs open living room. This is where we do holiday celebrations and it feels special to use it for those. Downstairs also has a guest room and large guest bath, which is nice so guests are separate from us. Upstairs is our two kids’ bedrooms, a hall bathroom for them, and our primary bedroom with en suite bath.
I do agree a split level home can look dated on the outside. I am hoping to build a portico-type entry off the front to create more symmetry. But inside, we have kept with classic finishes (hardwoods throughout, simple cream tile in subway tile or hex for some of the floors), and I feel like it has been a great fit for us!
Anon
What you are referring to as a split level is the same as my house. Other people use the term to refer to what I call a bi-level or raised ranch.
Ellen
These comments are all so funny, and true! My dad bought our then 20 year old home in the mid 1970’s, when he came back from an overseas assignment with the goverment. He needed to work close to the National Laboratory on the North Shore of LI, so he bought a very large place north of Jericho Turnpike in a very fashionable town, where the house was very expensive but in need of somerenovation. On his a goverment salary, he deferred it b/f moving in. He told Grandma Trudy he would eventually remodel the place, but then did a 180 after he told Mom that he wouldn’t do it b/c both Rosa and I were conceived in our home, and he would rather spend stupid money on other things, like our education. So here we are, 50 years later in 2022, and we’ve owned the home for about 50 years, with the same pink tiled bathrooms and avocado kitchen appliances we had since then. Fortunately, Grandma Trudy is not cooking much any more, and Mom is used to her kitchen, so Dad gets his meals cooked the very same way he did back then.
Trish
My last house had almond colored formica kitchen cabinets and MAUVE colored tiled floors. Late 80s awful.
Annie Q
I bought a townhouse in Chicago last year (2021) that was renovated in 2005. The woman who did the remodel used very classic materials and the place still looks great. She did the master bath in Carrera marble with a combination of tile floors, a slab countertop, and a mosaic for accents. It looks as fresh and new now as I’m sure it did in 2005 (although some interim owner(s) failed to keep the countertop resealed and there is a faint water stain around one sink, so if you use Carrera, make sure you reseal periodically!). She used granite in the kitchen with maple cabinets that still looks great. The high end feeling of quality materials and the classic choices have really held up.