What was it about that aesthetic that spoke so strongly to you, assuming you were the right age to be buying furniture and appliances at the time?
What was it about that aesthetic that spoke so strongly to you, assuming you were the right age to be buying furniture and appliances at the time?
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Why is everyone doing shitlap today? Design trend
If my parents having this in the rec room are any indication…because it was cheap.
No paneling in my parents, aunt’s and uncles or friends parents homes.
Yes a lot, or shiplap.
I hated the look No, not everyone had wood paneling.
Dude. Is ski chalet chic EVER going to go out of style?
Hell no.
More jello salad!!
Cheap, easier to install than wallpaper, and tougher. Speaking for my parents, I’m not quite that old.
Why was everything grey in the 2010s?
Cheaper than drywall (at least at the time).
It was like other trends, but I wonder if some chose it because it weathered smoke better than paint.
They’d just made the big leap from wallpaper to paint the previous generation. Paint is boring, wallpaper too retro, what’s left? Wood paneling was very cheap and in basements you didn’t even need to put up wallboard.
DYI was a growth industry then.
IDK, he same reason everything is white or grey today. Though I do kind of miss the burnt orange and avocado green appliances of my youth.
My parents house had wood paneling in every room except the kitchen and bathrooms. The current owner painted over all of the paneling.
People were trying to create cozy spaces that had a feeling of being close and warm. There was a lot of texture, lots of natural fibers used, pops of color, abstract art, tons of plants, water features, and furniture that was meant to invite conversations. I think few people had the budgets to do the entire look so you were left with a lot of stark walls.
Partly a trend pushed by designers. But it was also a step away from the grim looking plaster over lath and drywall of decrepit apartments and tenements.
Wood paneling helped signify home ownership, which was a relatively new phenomenon that was facilitated after WW2 by affordable housing development projects, subsidized home loans, etc.
My grandparents’ home was a classic example of the style embraced by many folks who’d grown up during the Great Depression and WW2. They used a lot of wood paneling throughout their home that was built in two phases. Not cheap stuff either. The quality paneling they chose would be unaffordable today.
The question you should be asking is why isn’t everything wood paneled today?
It went well with the Harvest Gold appliances.
We had one room with wood paneling. That was sheets of I think 4×8 that had overlap grooves like laminate flooring. Looked like it was easy to install, no wall prep, etc.
We had another wall with mirror tiles. That was also a trend. Those got put up on the wall with double sided tape. Also looked to be an easy install.
Now mirrors can make a room seem bigger. That is why they have them in the walls of small shops.
my old house had lots of cheap paneling, when we bought it… it was an inexpensive way to cover the old horsehair plaster that failed….. we ripped out most of it and drywalled… except the upstairs hall… went to rip it off and relised that there was paneling under the paneling… i painted the paneling…let the next owner deal with it.
It was just a fashion, in the same way that a ‘media wall’ has been a thing for the last couple of years or colour washing a room in one colour, including woodwork. I suppose the trend for tiny slats of wood is the current equivalent.
Yes. And the underwear was very chaffing.
Not everything. There were also sticky cork and gold marbled mirror squares used on walls.
Late 1950’s bunch of Avocado Green . Refrigerators & the like.
For the same reason everything today is gray and laminate: cost and trends.
It was cheaper than Sheetrock and way easier to install.
I wasn’t the age for it, but my parents were. It was cheap and trendy. Essentially the brown version of shiplap.
The decor vibe in the 70’s was earthy and natural. Thus wood paneling, earth tone colors, plants, etc.
I think a primary factor was that women had not really entered decision making roles in the workplace, so many of the decision on what products and designs to offer were being made by men. Men liked that wood look, that was an aesthetic that appealed to them. As more women started working in roles where they made design and product decisions, the range of designs offered expanded.
I think it was relatively cheap back then and once you put it up you never had to paint again. It covered cracks in the walls. My dad only used it for an enclosure around the furnace, but I had an uncle who covered every room of their house with paneling. Even the stairway to upstairs. I remember there was some kind of vent high up on the wall and he just cut a round piece of the panelling and drilled holes in it to cover it instead of going to the hardware store and buying a proper metal duct.
Same reason everyone’s doing that Joanna Gaines white farmhouse black trim look
Trends …. Why are tattoos cool for now? Around here it’s trendy to put knotty wood (pine, cedar, fir) on part of the front of your house and to build new homes that look like a bunch of stacked boxes. All these trends will die out and people will follow a new herd.
You don’t really get to decide the trends, you just have to decide which you’re going to buy. There are still clamshell shaped sinks in my house. Trust me, none of us asked for that.
“Wood” paneling was very cheap and easy to install. Putting it up was easier and cheaper than painting, and the paneling was, in a way, more durable than the paint.
Real wood panelling, made of planks of knotty pine or cedar was popular and a sign of affluence in the late 50s/early 60s. Cheap crappy laminated sheets of “wood” paneling could be tacked up on the studs and was cheaper than drywall.
Just like the rich had real woodies (vehicles with real wood on the exterior) and everyone else had station wagons with wood painted on them.
It was the new aesthetic. It was a cheap, easy way to turn an old house into a fresh modern look. Kind of like all the gray paint that people have been putting on their houses now, inside and out.
A) it was cheap
B) it was easy
C) corporate design of restaurants and hotels featured woods in a color palette of browns and orange, so people at home followed suit. We saw the same thing with white, chrome and light-colored wood when Apple stores were in the news constantly a decade ago. (We remodeled our kitchen in 2015 and the two big trends were “Apple store minimalism” and “farm kitchen kitsch”. We blew our designer’s mind by combining those with mid-century modern.)
Nope, remember most everything was from the 30s to 60s. So the idea things were wood panalend is hilarious to those that lived though it. Ok wood paneled were a bit popular 78-82 and that’s it, ripped up a couple of years later.
It was an extremely cheap and easy way to cover walls- even finishing walls without Sheetrock.
Partly because people were DIY’ing “rec rooms” in their basements and nailing up paneling is easier than hanging and taping and finishing drywall.
Same reason everything has rough wood boards now.
Cause it was classy 😂
Even the cars were ‘wood’ paneled
I purchased my first house in 1981 and it had green wood paneling. Can you imagine that was actually a styling trend!?!
The dining room in my house growing up had fake fake wood paneling. It was wallpaper that looked like fake wood paneling. It also had oak hardwood floors covered up by wall to wall carpet. 🙄
I think the 1970s were the first time that average people had the money to start improving their homes in meaningful ways with aesthetics, rather than function, as the main consideration. Paneling was cheap and covered a multitude of issues. Removing wallpaper and putting up new stuff is difficult and time-consuming. Covering it all up with paneling is easy. Paneling was far more DIY friendly in a time when people didn’t have YouTube to teach them skills. You didn’t even have to cut it perfectly if you put up molding to cover the top and bottom where it wasn’t quite perfect.
Paneling was also easy to maintain and easy to cover up any small imperfections. You really didn’t have to clean it so carefully and if there were nail or pinholes in it, they were harder to see.
A lot of it was also just a change in design culture. People liked to come home from an over-stimulating day to a dark, natural-looking, space that they could just relax in. I prefer brighter spaces and more modern looks, but I do believe that some people feel cozier in a darker place.
Main reason, other than it became normal and even trendy (style) was that it was cheap, durable and easy to work with for a normal handyman.
If you were going to finish your basement, or build a rec room, you could buy it cheaply, it transported easily – it was light and did not break, and you could cut and install it yourself with nothing but basic tools. NO FINISHING NEEDED except perhaps some trim (if you want). We paneled our whole basement room in like two days. Day one glue furring strips to wall, day two cut screw and attach paneling. (Day three to 7 hang suspended ceiling which we had no idea how to do and no youtube or laser levels back then!)
As opposed to sheetrock, which is heavy, harder to move, harder to work with, requires different tools, and requires finishing with tape and mud and paint and sanding and mess. Sheetrock is also far more susceptible to damage later from rambunctious kids and dampness.
Paneling avoided ALL of that, came pre-finished, and had a nice cozy look right out of the box. This is why so many paneled basements still exist – they are durable. *(Many have been painted over now).
It’s going to be the same question 50 years from now about waterfall countertops, black fixtures, shiplap, vinyl plank flooring, etc. Trends come and go.
Let me tell you about my father’s wood paneled station wagon… 🤪
They put that shit on cars, man.
Same reason we see so much grey LVP now, cheap, easy to install, did the job, trendy/modern look.
Look at all the new houses being built with a fake rock covering on top of stucco. The style hasn’t changed, only the materials.
Wood paneling just went so well with the ubiquitous avocado green wall-to-wall shag carpet.
Idk, but in the 80s, my dad took the wood from pallets (he was a truck driver) and diagonally wooded my sisters entire bedroom. It was a look lol
Plus, it went well with the shag carpeting. The ‘delightful color choices of green, blue, yellow,red, or burnt orange.🤮
It wasn’t as much of a thing in SoCal as I recall.it was huge in the Midwest!
And I agree about the cheap part. I was a way to make your walls look more even and smoother. Of course another way to cover walls is with art, but that’s less common.
The same reason everything is beige and grey today. It’s the fashion.
Where I grew up in British Columbia, we had an RV manufacturing plant called Vanguard. Entire “lifts” of that panelling was stolen and sold to the public. I saw a lot of that shit in my friend’s basements.
Nothing was really wood-paneled in the 70s. Everything was Fake wood paneled.
Lots of orange and sunflowers too
The same reason young people paint everything gray now – it was the fashion.
people thought it looked classy? I can remember my MIL painting one wall in her dining room a darker shade of paint than the other walls, a SIL having flowers and vines painted on her staircase walls and chair rails in some rooms. I think a lot of trends come and go and it’s just home decorating. is wallpaper still popular?
A Minnesota Senator in the seventies had a company called Plywood Minnesota. Their big deal was paneling, and it was so successful he won the seat. Trivia, who won the seat from him, and what happened to that person that caused Walter Mondale to run again?