As a location scout, prob 50% of the places I scout are houses, and it’s always interesting when you see The Hip New Thing suddenly start to show up everywhere. Like the stove with the red knobs —
You know this sort of thing when you see it, because your reaction is always the same: “Hey, there’s some minor thing I never thought twice about, being done in a dramatically new and eye-catching way!” Another is the grass-grid driveway —
For most of contemporary history, we were all perfectly happy with black/stainless steel stove knobs and slabs of concrete for driveways… And then these hit, and it’s like everyone collectively goes: “Yeah, why didn’t we ever think of this before??”
It’s fascinating to me from a sociological perspective, because I have the exact same reaction as everyone else when I first see it. Except, because I scout so many homes, the novelty of these overnight trends very quickly becomes stock and mundane for me, and I’ll find myself unconsciously starting a countdown in my head: how long until everyone considers this outdated? Because just as suddenly as these trends go viral, they end without warning. The classic example is the gray tile backsplash —
This one spread like wildfire. It was like overnight, every single kitchen I’d scout had this exact backsplash. But it also became passé quicker than most, I think because of its ubiquity. Because it was so common, directors/production designers would explicitly avoid it.
The one that kills me is the recent popularity of the gray laminate floor. Again, I’m speaking from a filmmaking perspective, NOT interior design; but on screen, the gray just so easily falls into the vibe of corporate office building, which is too bad, because literally any other vaguely natural shade of wood would likely stand the test of time for far longer.
Finally, at the opposite end of the trend timeline is the garden window, which I believe peaked as The New Hip Thing sometime in the 1980s:
Whenever I see them on homes around LA, rarely with the intended flowers inside, it always occurs to me that they once caused the same reaction as the red-knob stove: “Why haven’t we ever thought of doing this before?? Windows don’t need to be flat!”
And then, one day for no particular reason, we all collectively decide that in fact we prefer our windows flat, our stove knobs black or steel, and our driveways a single slab. And the thought of these ever being trendy seems like a strange dream…
Just to make it clear one last time, I’m speaking from the perspective of a location scout, NOT an interior designer! If you have any of these things in your home, I’m not criticizing your choices or saying you have bad taste!
And I’ll fully admit it: I think the red knobs are cool too.
