Check out this dining room makeover from Better Homes & Gardens in 1956.
Clearly, the dining room was “hideous” before, deemed “gloomy” in the copy, with its hardwood floors, bare window, high ceiling, and chandelier.
The designer fixed these problems by painting the high ceiling pink to “bring it down,” covering the window with drapes, installing wall-to-wall carpeting over the hardwoods, and replacing the chandelier with “adjustable ceiling lights that turn to dramatize table centerpiece or arrangements of accessories.”
If I bought this house today, 50 years later, I’d be working to make the room look like that “before” picture again. Would you?
If You’re Hooked on Retro Rooms:
- I Can’t Get Enough of 1950s Kitchens
- Then & Now: Retro Kitchens Today
- A 1950s Kitchen with a Portable Stereo Cart
- Retro Living Rooms from 1956
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{ 23 comments }
Well the first thing I would do is call Layla from The Lettered Cottage and tell her I needed a doorway to be widened
That’s funny how trends come and go!
Bella
I prefer the before. Hardwood floors are gorgeous. And pink in a dining room?? Please. :/
heck yeah, i would! it’s a crime to cover beautiful hardwood floors with wall-to-wall!
I totally agree with you! It’s funny, but interiors are just fashion and just as fickle!
Those ceiling lights in the re-done room are a hoot! I agree that today I too would definitely be going for the original look in the room.
Hi Julia
I am completely frightened by the after. What in the world were they thinking?!
rue
Now we know why everyone covered their hardwoods with carpet…..BH&G TOLD them to.
Lesson learned: never go with the trends.
The before is so much better!! Don’t like the new room at all. The only reason the old room looks “dingy” is because they made it black and white!!
That’s hilarious that they painted the ceiling pink and then the wall red….I like the before picture way better.
This was probably really mod back then. That’s why I like traditional design. I don’t want my house to look like this 40 year’s from now. ha!
oh boy – where can we get that chandelier in the after picture???!!! Yep – we’d be taking that room back to the before in a heartbeat!
Karla & Karrie
Oh, I definitely like the before picture better. I love hardwood floors!
Hmmm……… let me think about it……….. Hardwood floors definitely!
Don’t bring back these looks! Wow… these leave me speechless!
Hey! Where did you get a photo of my mother’s 1954 dining room? Not really, but it does look very familiar! That was the year that my parents decided to take off the base (heavily carved legs, with ball & lions paw feet) of their golden oak library table! They replaced the legs with those u-shaped black wrought iron beauties, so they could use it as a dining room table. Even as a kid I mourned the loss of that table base!
Both parents regretted that in later life. I often wonder where that table base ended up?
Oh, the before is definitely better!
What a gas! It is all so cyclical, isn’t it?
Before I got to your writing, I thought, “Um..yeah…my rooms look exactly like ‘before’! But I think that’s more flattering than, say, looking like a Glamour magazine “Don’t.”
How funny!
Been off the gird, so I am just catching up with all your recent posts.
Well, I love the after, but I would rip up the carpet.
Ah so that’s why we have to renovate & restore all these houses?
Thanks a lot BH&G circa 1950s.
I much prefer the ‘before’ ! And isn’t it funny that the copy for the before picture complains about the single, small window in the room, yet the after picture shows the same window completely covered up with curtains!
Yeah, don’t do it! It reminds me of my childhood lol
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