Let’s face it: even pro designers and design enthusiasts have made decorating decisions that they’ve later come to regret. We asked nine interior designers to chime in with design trends that served them well at one point but turned out to be major regret as time went by.
“In the mid-2000s, before I was working in interior design, I was fully on board with the Palm Beach regency trend: think faux bamboo galore, a palm frond chandelier, and a black and white painted stripe entry a-la Dorothy Draper. Used sparingly, any of those pieces could be incorporated into a space successfully today, but when combined together, my DC apartment looked like a vintage shop. Thankfully, my aesthetic has evolved and I’ve become more adept at the art of layering pieces from different periods. Sometimes less really is more.” — Designer Lindsay Speace
“One trend that I wish I would have stayed away from in my own home was installing a hanging chair in my bedroom. Although it is super dreamy and I love the look of it, no one in my home has ever sat in it, and it stops our closet door from opening all the way. We sacrificed function for form, and it was a valuable lesson to learn! ” — Designer Danielle Chiprut of Danielle Rose Design Co.
“I was so excited to decorate my bedroom in my first home. I made an upholstered headboard with a colorful Suzani fabric and added yellow Moroccan tile print euro shams and mismatched hot pink ikat pillows. The result was exactly what I wanted—playful, interesting, and a little bit bold—but it was so energizing, I couldn’t sleep at night! The bright colors and mixed patterns got me so revved that I couldn’t rest. I had to pull it all apart and work out a more subdued bedroom.” — Designer Lindsey Gregg of LSG Interiors
“My biggest regret is buying into the farmhouse trend of 2015 and 2016. I spent tons of money on ‘gather’ and ‘fresh egg’ signs and was big into collecting word mugs. I used to decorate a faux milk jar rack for every holiday. It was cute for a minute, but it got oversaturated very quickly! Besides, I lived in the suburbs outside of Washington, DC, so there weren’t any farm fresh eggs anywhere!” — Designer Valerie Darden of Brexton Cole Interiors
“In 2007, I painted my kitchen what I hoped would be a fun apple green, but it turned out to be lime green and I left it up an unfortunately long time. I got on the word wall trend, which was never cute. There may have been a ‘live, laugh, love’ decal up somewhere at some point. And we also bought a black pub-height kitchen table back in 2007 as well. It was too large for the small space it was in, and those tables are just not my style at all, but it took me a few years to realize that I hated the style and it didn’t fit the space.” — Designer Aston Moody of Aston Moody Interiors
“Louis XIV ghost chairs, bright colors, and everything acrylic—especially when it had an Ikea faux sheepskin draped on top. It was the lifestyle blogger look circa 2012, but I wish I’d been investing more in my vintage and antique collection at that point rather than splurging on the furniture equivalent of fast fashion. There were so many decor items and prints in my apartment that everyone had. Add in the brightly painted furniture of that era and I have so many regrets.” — Instagrammer Heather Bien of @hmbien
“I was desperately trying to create a modern, glam take to pretend I lived in an urban New York City loft. At one point I was even going to have herringbone inset doors made. That is how committed I was to this look. It was fabulous, right? I could not have been more wrong. These doors are now the bane of my existence. They are never level and always slide to one side or the other, leaving half of the closet visible. Sometimes these doors even slide all the way off while we are trying to get items out of the closet. They have chipped the paint off the walls behind them and on the corners of the closet. Black marks from the wheels scraping the wall often have to get cleaned with magic erasers.” — Designer Hannah Skaar of August Jane Interiors
The trend I personally regret was really popular back in like 2011 or 2012, I want to say. It was when everyone was painting their walls with chunky gray and white horizontal stripes. Not only did I fall victim to this; but even worse, I did it as just an accent wall in my studio apartment in NYC. At the time I thought it was really fun and different to do a striped wall, and it probably was for the time. But it aged very hard, quickly. The good thing is paint is always an easy fix and I painted over it with white eventually, which is always a classic.” — Designer Taylor Bowling of Home Taylored
“When we first moved into our current home in 2016, I tried out the DIY shiplap trend in our dining room and bedroom. While I loved the way it looked at the time, I tired of it pretty quickly, and it was a major undertaking to get the walls back to their former state. All the drywall work I had to do to fix them wasn’t even remotely worth the six months I enjoyed having the shiplap.” — Instagrammer Brit Arnesen of @britdotdesign
