The best of the 70s is probably not as good as the best of some eras, but I am not sure that the worst is much worse than some of what is really popular in house building right now. The worst of the 70s crammed every trendy building cliche into one small house. The worst of the 2010s crams every trendy building cliche into a bigger house. People just aren't tired of it yet.

Albert Hadley for Brooke Astor

Albert Hadley Living Room

Mark Hampton

Yves Saint Laurent

Billy Baldwin

Michael Taylor (might be early 80s)

Serge Royaux

My parents' BR. 1975 except for new bedding and curtains in 1987
{{!gwi}}
{{!gwi}}

I think high end wasn't bad, but that's not the norm.

grasscloth! it's coming back. We had our whole house done with it as a kid. Cat tore it up something awful about one foot high everywhere.

The Mark Hampton room i love. The Royaux isn't bad either. And the Hadley one looks, dare I say, pretty timeless.

"Or should one take down the mirrored walls, the shag carpeting, the wallpaper, and the disco ball ..." Sounds a lot like the house we're trying to buy, lol. No, seriously. Feast your eyes on the main bath. The owners just took the banana yellow, poop brown and dirty white shag carpet out a few weeks ago. Nice of them to leave the green toilet and tub though ;)

Obliviously the reason we want it is the lake access but I'm pretty stoked about rehabbing the property. I plan to use a mix of pitch and embrace.

The gold veined mirror tiles, swag lights and green potty have got to go but I'm thinking of keeping the green tub, not just as an ode to the era, but as a design choice too. I think it will look great with Pottery Barn's Charley shower curtain in blue/green and I envision a 70s-ish mosaic tile floor to replace the current carpet. (who puts carpet in a bathroom? yuck.)

In the main living area we plan to go more modern. Not sure if we're going to paint the dark paneling or drywall over it. We'd like to take down the walls that close off the kitchen - not so much because we're fans of open concept but because the space as it is won't even hold a normal sized refrigerator. Plus, that's the 'view' side of the house.

When we're done I'd like to have something close to House Tweaking's kitchen ( http://www.housetweaking.com/2012/11/01/kitchen-backsplash-tweaked-shelves/ ) but with more windows, a regular ceiling and a slightly warmer, more traditional feel.

I'm excited! Just gotta sell my house first.

Here is a link that might be useful: Round Island House

Hmm, except for the last one, withthe tile floor, and the third one, with the good art, I think you just proved the OP's original point.

Edeevee are you also Weedyacres?

This post was edited by mtnrdredux on Sat, Sep 14, 13 at 0:21

No, mtnredux. I'm just little ole me. Weedy has a much grander house to sell than mine. (Or is it sold by now?) All I've got is a subdivision cracker box in rural Indiana that we put on the market three weeks ago. So far we've only had two lookers, no nibbles. That's why I've been hanging out here more lately. Trying to soak up some knowledge/inspiration from all of you wonderful folks that will help me present my current house in the best light and prepare for remodeling the next house. I learn so much here!

I think grasscloth is the only good thing to come out of 70s decor. ;)

I'll be honest, I thought you were exaggerating until I looked at the Zillow listing. You seem to have a lot of the stuff about the 70's that is not that great, and I tend to love retro homes, though older than 70's. I don't even mind the paneling, but here it's in every room. However, the home looks larger than what it says thanks to the deck and patio, and is clearly in a nice location on a lake/pond. Is that enough to offset all the work you need to do? Seems like a fabulous price for a waterfront location. It would be well over $500K for that here.

This post was edited by gsciencechick on Sat, Sep 14, 13 at 8:30

While I can't say that I look with much fondness on the 70's photos or era, I can say that give it another 10-20 years and it will likely be looked at as being fresh and cool in a reinterpreted way.
I still shudder when I see what is called MCM. To me, born in the early 1950's, that was what I recall as cast offs in my dentist and doctor offices. (back when they had the office connected to their houses, it was the gently beat up house furniture that then got replaced in the house and was going to serve a purpose in the waiting room). I know MCM is quite hot now, but I really can't wrap my heart around it.
However, it's not about me- and I am sure that 70s vintage will most definitely catch on again but probably a bit later than sooner.
Everything comes around and everything old is new again. It's just a matter or timing.

I am not saying that you need to like anything about the 1970s rooms I posted, either, but my point is that there was a Lot of 1970s design that didn't look like a porn movie shot in the San Fernando Valley in 1977. People who decorated with every cliché then didn't have particularly good taste then, any more than people who covered everything with bonneted geese and milk-painted wooden cutouts in the 80s. Or are decorating with ______all over right now. Much of what people despise of past fashions were cliché and trend-driven then and yet they embraced it only to hate it later. And the cycle continues.

If you wanted to, you could take a 1970s house and remodel it with sympathetic and appropriate references to the era without trying to create or maintain a time capsule.

gscience, I only WISH I was exaggerating. It does need a lot of work but almost none of it is structural. It has a new (although green) roof, new windows, a fabulous double lot on a private lake. And with the exception of the kitchen and 2nd bath, the rooms are well laid out and feel spacious. As for the price ... the downside of living in a place where you're able to buy waterfront property for $150K is that your house in town seems overpriced at $93,500. If I get up the nerve, I'll start a new thread with a link to my current house. Maybe you guys can help me get it sold so I can go hang up my disco ball in the new place.

When we married, we moved into a 50s ranch that had been redone to a 70s style. It was bad. Today, it would still be considered bad. The entire house was paneled including the wall above the ceramic tile in the bathroom. The bedrooms were paneled in the awful gray paneling that had even started to buckle. One of the bedrooms even had a drop ceiling in it. The bathroom vanity was homemade out of the same dark brown paneling. The carpets were shaggy. We kept and lived with the kitchen cabinets as they were so sturdy and easy to clean (formica clad plywood in dark brown faux wood grain).
So we changed the house over, room by room, one project at a time to something we could live with.

The 50s wallpaper we discovered under the paneling was even worse! Not at all what would be sought after in today's view of MCM. It was ugly, ugly, ugly. So just like with old movies, every era has it's really bad stuff, but time filters out the worst of it and what survives is the best of what the era had to offer, an idealized vision of the reality.

What worked for us though was the structure and the layout of the house. The plan was reasonably open concept in the public spaces which made the smaller rooms feel large, the kitchen was where it belonged...off the garage, the yard was fab, the large picture windows let in tons of light and the brick exterior was easy to maintain, and the house was very well built and structurally sound.

The pics that pal posted are 70s interiors, but not necessarily 70s structures. When you're buying a house, you're buying the structure. The interior can be changed relatively easily, the structure requires more work. So use your eye to peel back the wall treatments and window treatments and furnishings and look at the structural soundness, the layout, how it will function for your lifestyle. The rest you can customize...at lightning speed like mtnrd likes to...or at a more leisurely pace as we did.

Yes, edeevee, we did sell our house, though not closing for another 7 weeks.

I'm not talking about nondescript 70's-built homes with small, fake-wood baseboards and hollow single-panel interior doors. Those can typically just have the innards replaced with better looking stuff.

I'm talking the full-blown 70s aesthetic like this house:

I haven't been inside yet, and this one's overpriced at $175K. But it's on a small lake with some big windows overlooking it. It's still got a whole lot of original aesthetic, though the kitchen cabinets have been painted and the bathroom has granite counters. Walls are covered with grass wallpaper.

What I'm wondering is if any of it can/should be preserved because it has redeeming value or appeal. Or would an ignore-the-70s approach make it look unharmonious?

Pal, your photos are all of rooms with lots of light and high ceilings. Do you have any of a modern/updated take on the 70s? All I found on a short search of Houzz of "1970s" were a lot of people talking about how they changed their 1970s room/house, not how they restored the style.

I think the bones of the house and the decor are two different issues. I would not attempt to make a house look like it was decorated in the 70s. Frankly, though I love the exterior of Victorians, I don't think I could live with a historically accurate interior.

I grew up in a 70s townhouse. I loved the openness of it, and everything was very functional. (My parents decorated with more of a world-traveler type flair, though we did have some typical items as well, like grasscloth.) We then moved to a 40s Georgian. While I prefer the Georgian, I think it is, in part, because it was a higher quality house to begin with.

Personally I donâÂÂt think 1970âÂÂs homes are so bad at the moment. It may be due to the state I live in, Florida and my age, early fifties. My next house will be a down size so the cool old Spanish style homes, many of which are two story, are out. There is not a vast variety of old houses with character here like other states; some of those homes did not survive the hurricanes over the years. I love the 1950âÂÂs through sixties homes (exterior) but most have been added on to in a nearly unlivable hodge podge way. In most cases the cost of redoing that is ridiculously high and not an option. So, back to 70âÂÂs homes! The floor plans are normally very doable, the master baths are not grossly oversized and are often just right. They have decent sized closets; the kitchen layouts are usually acceptable. They clean up real well. If you think of them as a blank canvas they are fairly easy to breathe some life into. And of course in my state itâÂÂs perfectly acceptable to add barrel tile roofs, metal roofs and other to add character to some 70âÂÂs styles. ItâÂÂs common here on 70âÂÂs remodels.

I've noticed something interesting in these photos.

To some degree, there were less options available when it came to textiles and finishes. This was noted by one of my design instructors who was in his prime during the 70s and 80s. (It was also easier to get custom colorways in small quantities though.)

Note that Brook Astor's library (by Albert Hadley) and the living room by Mark Hampton have the same chintz on the sofas. And the living room by Mark Hampton has the same carpet as the living room with the cactus. They are in different colorways so they don't look exactly the same.

The last house you posted has reasonable room sizes and proportions. Its hard to say whether it is all really as dark as it looks. I can take snapshots of my house that make it look terribly dark, and it's not. Your house is full of a bilious yellow color that makes the trim look pink, but I see lots of real estate photos here where all the rooms are painted a 2010s version of bilious yellow that make the floors look red, so not much has changed.

Weedyacres, I'd call around to decorators, and have as long of a conversation with each as they'll allow, then hire one. I think you could embrace a house with lots of natural light on a lake!
It's great that you have new windows! That's the one thing we have not done.

"If you wanted to, you could take a 1970s house and remodel it with sympathetic and appropriate references to the era without trying to create or maintain a time capsule."

That's what we're trying to do. No ducks, mauve or wood cut outs - all that is gone. We've turned 70's country into more contemporary western. And at least this house does have good bones, if not a good bath design.

I live in Baton Rouge La, and like jterrilynn, there are things here that are acceptable that aren't elsewhere. But, real estate is very high here, too.
It was high before Katrina. I had noticed on the internet how much less homes are in Houston than here. Then Katrina hit and RE here escalated, since so many from NOLA came here. It never settled back down really, even after the crash. And, schools in my area are among the best in the state, so you pay even more.....

I'd posted this before, "The 70s are back" with some updates of 70s design.

I actually like the fireplace in the corner of weedy's post and also the kitchen cabinets in the lake house.

Here is a link that might be useful: 70s design updated

In my 1976 house, I've been slowly removing much of the old 1970s finishes. That said, I love the location, the layout, the large rooms, the vaulted ceiling in the main living spaces, fireplaces, and the exterior of my house. As I slowly renovate, I'm pleased to not have to move walls or build any additions. But I've eliminated the harvest gold and want to eliminate the popcorn ceilings.

I could live now in the Albert Hadley room and the Mark Hampton room with very few changes, and I did curiously notice the same fabric.
The yellow tufted chairs would have to go , however......

But is that truly 70's style? To me, it's a classic/timeless style executed in the seventies.

Having grown up with orange shag that I had to rake, avocado appliances, orange countertops, (with lots of old, mcm from relatives), those pics seem quite subdued.

They are 1970s design, because they were executed in the 1970s using furniture and textiles available in the 1970s. Both the traditional and the contemporary rooms have a viewpoint or execution that places them in that decade rather than the 1960s or 1980s --the same designers would not have done these rooms exactly the same way in the those other eras. People were decorating like this, whether it was with designers that books are written about, with local designers, or by themselves. It might not be what the masses were doing, but classically based design isn't really what the masses do in Any decade.

I have books and issues of Architectural Digest that back this up. The content in the design books of the period has only a loose relationship to the editorial content of 1001 Decorating Tips, or what the manufacturer's advertisements were pushing in the same era. Architectural Digest published a cross-section of the classical to the trendy to the awful, but under the direction of Paige Rense, that was the order of business. She wanted something vulgar in every issue.

This post was edited by palimpsest on Sat, Sep 14, 13 at 18:24

southernstitcher: I'd be interested in some photos of your "keep the decor sympathetic to the 70s" house. Oh, and we're moving to a small midwestern town with a median home price of $100K. I doubt there are even any designers that live here.

Good point about the lighting, Pal. Realtors around here take appallingly bad listing photos.

soccermom: Thanks for the link. Those photos actually get my designing juices flowing a bit. I'm thinking a modern type feel, with lightened-up rooms might work.

Perhaps my question should have been phrased differently: "How would you update this 70s house? Would you keep any of the original finishes? Are there changes that you would avoid making because they would be un-harmonious with the bones?"

In any case, I'll be inside the house on Tuesday, along with a couple other time-warpers. We'll see if anything comes of them.

IâÂÂll probably get a smack down here but I really do not like granite in seventies homes. Personally, I would stay away from that and maybe do Quartz for any countertops. The cool thing about seventies homes is that it looks best to keep your building products simple, but well-made simple. Down where I am a large majority of these homes went through the 2006-ish HGTV flip that house look where many of the kitchens are dark cherry with the speckle builder grade granite and some even have a roman column here and there. It all looks so horribly outdated now. The original cabinets might not have been much better with some sort of a picture of wood look on a flat panel door. Still, a good quality flat panel full overlay door can be stunning. I guess my point isâ¦fine tune the bones first with simple but nice quality products and I think after that you will have a fun time with the decorating.

This post was edited by jterrilynn on Sat, Sep 14, 13 at 22:44

Right now, all our furniture from two BRs and the DR are residing in my LR, but I'll post photos later - I haven't really taken any of the LR. My kitchen photos are here in the gallery somewhere. But, trust me, our LR is nothing special. We aren't quite there yet with decor.

The kitchen cabinets are stained knotty alder. My collection of antique kitchen items sits on top of them. It has a tile floor, and the curtains are a loosely woven cotton, like burlap, but more refined than that. All of that keeps the country theme without being frilly. I also make quilted, elasticized table covers for the kitchen table to cover the fact that it is in need of refinishing - but that also adds to the whole country thing. I try though to not go overboard with it. I have my Mom's Ethan Allen kitchen table that is solid as a rock and fits in beautifully.

We had the popcorn scraped in the kitchen re-do, and now are doing it in every room but the LR. Too much $$ for this go round.
We added a sola tube in the LR, which I LOVE.
We have the 70's obligatory fireplace, which I always thought was a ridiculous waste of space in the deep south.
Our home is called an "Acadian" style - ala 1975 - but one story, and without the gables. And very simple. If you google Acadian style, most of those but a couple are larger than ours. I do like the symmetry of the front of the house.

I guess I'm not the norm but I like many 70"s houses most specifically walk out ranch style (preferably L shaped) and tried hard to find a suitable one the last 2 times I moved. I like the one level living with extra space below when needed. A medium size ranch usually has several well proportioned rooms and a few cozy ones. It's not ostentatious like many of the new homes that often have a silly looking (imho) mix of styles. If space is not as open as desired it is usually easy to take out a wall. While I like the 9 ft ceilings in my current 2000's walk out ranch, I can live with the 8 ft if at least one room has a vaulted ceiling as is often the case.

Pluses are getting a "big enough but not too big" home on a lot that is usually appropriately sized. So often big new homes are squeezed onto tiny lots. Established trees and neighborhoods are another plus often with amenities like schools and libraries nearby.

Here is a link to one that I wanted to buy a few years ago and another link that shows some of the updating that the new owners did before selling it recently. Some of it is the same stuff that I planned to do - bathrooms, open the wall to the entry in the dining room, facelift the kitchen. It looks like they took out the parquet and carpet in the main floor public areas and replaced it all with hickory floors. One nice thing I had not considered doing was they bumped out a wall in the three seasons room and put in a nice gas fireplace. Now its a 4 seasons room! Notice the private back yard and greenery. You don't often find that in new construction. I also like the small den opening to the kitchen area as it's nice to chat with my husband while I'm cooking and have him near but not in the way.

I liked that it was on a quiet dead end street but one could walk or bike to grocery, library, PO, restaurants,etc.

So why didn't I buy it? My husband insisted on a too low offer and offended the elderly owners. Grrr! If I had realized it was back on the market 3 years later with the updates i would have insisted we seriously consider it. I feel like I would be happier in it than the larger, newer, more expensive home we purchased (also in a less convenient location).

We would have done a few other or different things (expand forward the garage, different counters) but overall they did a nice job.

I appreciate many styles of homes and have lived in one and a half stories, 2 story colonials, true mcm, and walk out ranches both new construction and mature homes. I find that all have their charms and advantages and disadvantages. But at this point in my life, I like the convenience of a walk out ranch and there were a lot built in the mid 60's through the 70's that can be tweeked to fit today's living.

405 Del Rio Dr, Chanhassen, MN

http://tours.vht.com/Viewer/PhotoGallery.aspx?ListingID=50040379&Style=ERM

Three years later:
http://www.spacecrafting.com/n7tx.

jterrilynn,
No I won't knock you down, though I put 2cm granite in my kitchen. DH wanted granite, but I would have been fine with a plain laminate. We wound up choosing a granite that is a bit busy. The rest is simple, so it works. I also did the normal 70's style 4 inch back splash, which everyone here claims to hate, lol. But, it works for me! I have a stainless panel behind the cook top.

Your comment about simple reminds me as I've posted here before, of something my Mom always said. If you try to get too elegant or overdone where it should be simple -- it'll look like you cried for it.

mnzinnia,
I love the 3 seasons room. I like the house itself in it's original form. I saw lots of potential there. But, I wasn't able to get the second link to open.

Southern, you need to remove the . at the end of the link and it will work.

Wow, mnzinnia! I like both versions of the home. It looks very spacious. I think the 2nd looks more cohesive (flooring and overall palette) but even the 1st looks like a "home" vs just a house.

Mzinnia, that is a fabulous job with the house. Sorry it got away. It seems there were had some good bones to work with. I love the paneling in the sunroom and good to see it was not ripped out. I agree, the single floor plan is a huge bonus--that is what we like about our current 60's home.

Weedy, would you believe DH and I saw online a waterfront home built in 1980 (so mostly still 70's décor), and the asking price was $350K for a half acre lot. It seems like nearly every space needs to be redone, which is probably why it's been sitting for 6 months already. The kitchen even has a "western saloon door."

This post was edited by gsciencechick on Sun, Sep 15, 13 at 9:44

mzinnia, thanks for sharing - that would be a house we'd love. Much larger than it appears in the first frontal photo. The only thing I didn't like was the fancier crown against the popcorn ceilings in one of the rooms. Otherwise I thought it was interesting to see they put white crown with stained baseboards and vice versa, and to my eye it doesn't look bad, but purists would disagree.
Carpet in the bath would have to go, lol. But, otherwise, they did a great job. So open and inviting!

Personally, I wouldn't want to maintain any of the 70s look...but there is a lot of potential to create a wonderful decor for 2013 :)

mnzinnia - That house reminds me so much of ours! Similar woodwork (including the white crown mixed with stained baseboards in the master bedroom), similar fireplaces and paneled sunroom, and many other features. We also have a 70s house - also in MN - and many updates have been made but there's still so much to do. Near the top of our to-do list is remodeling the bathrooms.

I often feel like my house is woefully inadequate when browsing others' photos on this forum but seeing the photos in your link helped remind me that our 1970s home can still be lovely even if it isn't new and perfect.

mnzinnia - That house reminds me so much of ours! Similar woodwork (including the white crown mixed with stained baseboards in the master bedroom), similar fireplaces and paneled sunroom, and many other features. We also have a 70s house - also in MN - and many updates have been made but there's still so much to do. Near the top of our to-do list is remodeling the bathrooms.

I often feel like my house is woefully inadequate when browsing others' photos on this forum but seeing the photos in your link helped remind me that our 1970s home can still be lovely even if it isn't new and perfect.

In case anyone cares, I toured the house whose photos I posted above. Sadly, it doesn't have the potential I thought it might, and it needs a lot of work. All the windows are the original aluminum, and the floors slope toward the center of the house, indicating something amiss in the crawl space. The ubiquitous grass cloth wallpaper is peeling/damaged/missing in places. It really is that dark inside.

But all that can be fixed with money, if the purchase price is right (and this one should be around $100K). The deal killer was that the master bath is itsy bitsy teeny weeny with no practical way to enlarge it. So I guess we won't be remodeling this 1970s relic.

House hunting can be so discouraging! All we can do is keep looking until the right home comes along. I just looked at a 70âÂÂs home two days ago and I think the owner must have been on crack when he came up with his asking price, $425,000. The kitchen had plastic cabinets and the cheapest appliances you could possible find in BrandsM. The house showed well though other than the fact it had miles of beige ceramic tile. I guess because he put cheap black granite on top of the plastic cabinets he thought that justified the $100,000 overprice.

One of the things that suffered in the 1970s was building quality, and I think this was a function of the high interest rates. Also, because of the energy crisis at that time, the response was to build smaller with small windows in many areas, because they didn't have the technology for efficiency was just starting to be developed.

Down here as long as you stay away from the wood framed 70âÂÂs homes and stick with the cement block and stucco you are getting a fairly solid home (aside from interior things). However, the thing that gets you (on insurance premiums) is the fact that they did not do roof tie downs then. It took a few good hurricanes long after for the new codes. Also, if the windows havenâÂÂt been replaced already with hurricane glass itâÂÂs something you just have to plan on doing when you are moving up in age and want that security but it is expensive (but you save on insurance premiums). Some at least have accordion pull across hurricane shutters though so one could replace at their leisure.

"The deal killer was that the master bath is itsy bitsy teeny weeny with no practical way to enlarge."

That's our problem too. I have told my DH that if anyone ever falls in the tub/toilet room, the paramedics will need an axe to get them out, as the door opens inward! It's that small.

Palimpset, yes, I've thought that must be it, when wondering about things like the tall narrow windows in my home. I'm thankful in some of the rooms, as the house is small, so narrower windows afford more furniture space. We married as older adults, so it's "yours, mine, ours, and then the inherited stuff" as furniture goes.
Thankfully, the bones of the house are good. The cheesier stuff was easily changed out, except for those tiny bathrooms.
If we ever need a handicapp accessible bath, the hall bath will be able to be enlarged enough.

What worked for us though was the structure and the layout of the house..... When you're buying a house, you're buying the structure. The interior can be changed relatively easily, the structure requires more work. So use your eye to peel back the wall treatments and window treatments and furnishings and look at the structural soundness, the layout, how it will function for your lifestyle. The rest you can customize...at lightning speed like mtnrd likes to...or at a more leisurely pace as we did.
Exactly, Annie. When we were buying our house, we at first passed over it. We avoided getting seduced by a lovely house when we realized that the layout wouldn't work for us. We made an offer on a lot and building. We developed a list for everything we wanted in a house to guide an architect. Then realized that the ugly duckling house had everything that was on our list and would cost a lot less than the architects we met with were estimating for a new build.

After spending about $20K (in 1985) on new flooring, window treatments and paint, we moved in. The shag carpet and wall paper (some metallic) that we took out were awful, At least it only had paneling in the family room.

The plentiful large windows, the yard design, the semi-open plan all were great. In retrospect, we should have spent a bit more and replaced the yucky yellowish bumpy kitchen tile, but we didn't realize that it would take us over 20 years to get around to a kitchen remodel.

Ours was an MCM mid-1970s build so it had some character to work from. The one annoying 70's structural feature that remained for a long time was the family room fireplace - a small fireplace with a huge fake rock hearth and wall (and resident fire ogre - revealed by another garden webber):

The updated fireplace wall - which I think we kept consistent with the 1970's MCM bones of the house:

I'm with ogrose on her 70's house that she and her husband updated. We have done the same thing over the years. I still like my BIG fireplace even though we don't use it and keep the TV there. Still like the semi-open kitchen (open to breakfast area but can't see the family room; in the family room, can't see the kitchen; in the breakfast room, can see both) and it all connects w/o doors. The paneling was painted over in layers of dark and light taupe tones with the ceiling beams in the darkest shade; the popcorn ceiling is gone; still love the three large french doors to the two patios and lots of big windows so I can enjoy the roses. Of course, of course, the olive green shag is long gone and we now have ceramic tile throughout except for the softly-colored carpet in the living room. Yes, you can tell it's a 70s house, but I wouldn't have some of the modern garish types I've seen. Mine seems more serene.
Like ogrose, we love our neighbors and we love our house, outside and inside.

Love the fireplace monster...and that it's gone! Nice job, cloud swift!

Lou- Well said :) Older homes mean larger trees! What a great home to have french doors, two patios and lots of roses...if we didn't live in the country, that's the kind of house I would try to find. Large rooms, lots of light...and not too open.

"the mirrored walls, the shag carpeting, the wallpaper, and the disco ball" I grew up in a 70 ranch and spent most of my life in one. And am now looking in such neighborhoods. I have very rarely seen the things you are mentioning. Maybe a few with shag, but shag came back again in the 90s. But by all means, get rid of carpet if they have it. If you are lucky, there will be hardwoods underneath. Carpet is only tolerable when brand spanking new. But please don't turn the home into the ordinary. I see that way too much. The home I grew up in had a vaulted ceiling. There were many with a Spanish style, which I rarely see mentioned when talking about the 70s for some reason. I don't know why everyone else forgot. My cousins lived in a great one. It didn't have any high ceilings, but had wonderful windows. There was another style of ranch that became popular mid-seventies that featured a split roof with windows that let lots of light in from above. I think we called in something to do with skiing, aspen, colorado or mountain. One of those is what I really want. One of common features I want most is the utility/laundry room off the kitchen by the back door and/or garage. (That's where it belongs. Not upstairs in a gigantic master suite. ) Ideally on a corner lot with a detached garage that forms a great breezeway patio between it & the house. Some of the best things about the 70s homes include the avocado green or harvest gold appliances that didn't cost and arm & a leg and whose colors you could change by turning around or swapping the panels held on by great brushed aluminum banding. And colorful laminate countertops. And I don't recall there was a single beige or grey house when I was growing up. Why do people want to be surrounded by depressing colors now?

Wow. I saw several mentions of people removing avocado green fixtures & appliances. I wish you had sent them to me.

I read and understand that I've no idea about seventies.

Probably because our seventies were your fifties and sixties..

So I associate seventies with mid century modern. That's why I like it actually-reminds me of childhood.

eighties-yes, I already remember some shift..but probably toward eighties?

I never saw colored fixtures until I came here..so to me this is like, wow, cool.

Our current house was built either 68 or 70. It's a ranch. A Spanish ranch. I really love it. Even though I struggled with having standard ceilings in most of the house..that's because our standard ceilings were minimum a foot higher than standard ceilings here..and we lived with even higher ceilings, older houses, built pre-war etc. So that part was really new to me.

Luckily previous homeowners put some skylights in. And we also put one in our addition. Totally changes your perception of height. And I also painted the ceilings the color of the walls, each room..or rather the proportion of the color that would look like it's the color of the wall. Makes it less ..white lid effect. Less oppressing. Also added layered lighting everywhere, including central lights-although many advise against it since it accentuates ceiling is low? Well I didn't find it being true, at all. You have focal point, instead of just staring at the ceiling..it breaks it..takes your attention off the height.

Some things are strange or I dislike regardless the decade..say we were choosing bathroom fixtures etc and saw a stainless steel toilet, for 800 or so I think? in one of the stores

It's an exact copy of what they used to have in prisons.

I couldn't believe my eyes.

I still laugh when I think of that toilet..really? But probably someone who doesn't have other cultural associations finds it cool? If it's being manufactured? And costs 800 bucks, at that?

As for depressing colors..it's very personal, really. And cultural too I guess, to some degree. Every color has a potential to be happy or sad..some have bigger potential to alternate between both, like yellow.

It's like, in some countries black is associated with mourning. And in others, white is. I heard a story somewhere about a cruise ship from here that went to Far East..maybe China, but I'm not sure? Most of the passengers happily wore white-very summer-y color..and then they boarded..and then locals looked at them in a very very strange way..they didn't understand why so many people are dressed like they're going to a funeral, but have such wide smiles..:)

The worst thing about the 70s was the low ceilings, and I am talking about 8'-0" ceiling height. My current house was built in 1950, and the ceiling height is 8'-4", which doesn't sound like much, but it does make a very big difference. The house I had in Venice also had 8'-4" ceilings and was built in 1954. I moved into that house from an apartment with 8'-0" ceiling (probably built in the 1970s), and I really noticed the difference. One good thing about the 70s was that the closets got a lot bigger, at least where I lived. I lived in a house in Austin built in 1934 that had 9'-0" ceilings, and that is my preference. I have also lived in Victorians in San Francisco with 10 foot (and higher) ceilings, and those were very cold. I think the ceiling were so high at that time because they originally had gas lighting. The rooms were relatively small, however.

Stainless steel prison toilets are quite popular in NYC (or at least they were a few years ago), but I don't think they really caught on anywhere else.