The 1960s saw the frivolous rise of fun - embracing pop culture and iconic furniture to craft tones that still echo throughout our modern interior design choices. Here’s the very foundations of what we still aspire to.
As sweeping societal change revolutionised the 1960s, all ideas on interior style were suddenly in-line for a dramatic revamp. With feverish eagerness, we swapped the final throes of postwar austerity and formal hosting for a hefty dose of fun and an insatiable appetite for pop culture.
Unconventional decorative touches and surprising our friends when they came to visit was the new name of the game. We yearned for quirky interiors that took cues from what was on at the cinema while the ordinary was transformed into something extraordinary via striking pop art.
Quite simply, no home was complete without at least one piece of furniture or optical illusion that would have looked at home in Barbarella’s Alpha 7 spaceship. With the addition of an Andy Warhol canvas or two upon the wall, nothing in our homes was ever going to be boring again.
Sixties furniture no longer looked constricted by gravity. Instead, it was inflatable or oddly shaped, or perhaps both. We didn’t know we needed an egg-shaped chair, until we had one. No longer were square and uncomfortable contours accepted. We wanted playful and fluid features that practically embraced us.
Meanwhile, previously traditional finishing touches of wood, brick, paper and cloth were hastily replaced with brightly-coloured and modern plastics, laminate, vinyl, tubing and metallics. It all revolved around an eager and cultural push towards the future, including interior aesthetics.
The global reach of many British bands would have a heavy influence too - from the Rolling Stones to the Beatles. We bought the latest single, listened and then decorated in ways we had never before dared.
In 1965, audiences were inspired to enthusiastically embrace interior design after seeing The Beatles in the film Help! One of the sets was that of a shared house that featured bright pop art colours, a revolving library and a sunken bed, an Arne Jacobsen egg chair and a dramatically curved Arco lamp. If you didn’t know how to decorate by then, you certainly knew now!
Two fingers to the establishment - vivid colour and the Paisley
The 1960s knew nothing of modesty. Being bland simply wasn’t cool.
As a newfound optimism quickly spread through a much more liberated society, pared-down decor simply didn’t fit the mood. Authority was being notably challenged while philosophies from distant places welcomed new ideas on music, culture and how we spent our free time.
One result was colour. Bright, unashamed colour. The sixties used every shade in the box!
During the fifties, flashes of bright hues had begun weaving their way into homes - a bright red fridge here, a polka dot curtain there - but now there was full permission to go all out with the vivid hues. In the sixties, no colour was regarded as too much.
If you wanted an eclectic home of bright red, purple, tangerine orange, fuschia pink, turquoise and custard yellow, no-one was going to stop you. In fact - if you had a bright, colourful home - all the cool cats would be sure to drop by at your place to admire and encourage your bold palette. There was nowhere better to hang out.
But what of the striking colour clashes that would inevitably meet each other upon the walls? The answer was to combine them in a big, daring pattern. There was a desire for eye-catching colour clashes but in a sort of peace and love sixties kinda way with flowing, curvaceous shapes that often vaguely resembled florals.
Of all these patterns, the teardrop motif of the Paisley pattern burst onto the sixties scene.
With its swirling shapes, Paisley symbolised free-love, the integration of the Asian community into Britain and exotic luxury. Soon, it could be spotted on men’s shirts and ties and women’s dresses as well as our upholstered sofas and chairs back at home.
Not content with Paisley wallpaper in the house, John Lennon famously requested that his Rolls-Royce be finished in Paisley. Artist Steve Weaver was more than happy to comply. As the psychedelic Phantom hit the road, two fingers were promptly given to the establishment with a blue, green and red Paisley on yellow.
Historical Plunder
Having spent the previous decades being lectured by modernism, all clean lines, noble restraint and the faint smell of moral superiority, the 1960s decided to raid the dressing-up box. The past, so recently rejected as fussy, bourgeois and hopelessly overstuffed, suddenly became irresistible. Victorian, Edwardian, Art Nouveau, the 1920s - nothing was safe. History was no longer revived purely for an ITV period drama, but plundered with glee for the street-pounding stylist..
This was not nostalgia in the soft-focus sense. The decade was far too cheeky for that. Instead, historical references were lifted, exaggerated, recoloured and thrown into thoroughly modern settings. A Victorian chair might sit beside a plastic lamp; an Art Nouveau curve might be rendered in acid orange; Edwardian military braid could turn up not on a battlefield, but on a jacket worn to a nightclub. The effect was witty, theatrical and deliberately irreverent. Terrance Stamp led the way.
Accessories became part of the trend. Static busby hats, military uniforms, coronation plates, royal memorabilia and Victoriana were no longer solemn heirlooms but props in a new domestic performance. The 1960s home understood the past as costume: something to try on, mock affectionately, and make strange again. It was history with false eyelashes, a cigarette holder and a very wicked sense of timing.
Conversation Pits
If the 1960s interior had a stage, it was the conversation pit. Sunken into the floor by a step or two, usually circular or U-shaped, it was less a seating arrangement than a social declaration - “come down here, loosen up, have a drink, say something interesting, smoke more cigarettes than thought physically possible”.
Unlike the formal dining room, where upright manners sat firm without protest and cutlery was forced to behave itself, the conversation pit belonged to the after-hours mood - intimate, plush and elegant as the clock moved towards a fresh sunrise.
Architecturally, it was a deliciously clever device. Built into the bones of the room, the conversation pit created a separate zone without the need for walls. In an open-plan space, it allowed conversation to gather and pool, while the lowered seating kept sightlines clear across the room. You could have division and expansiveness at the same time, which is no small trick.
Its glamour was quickly absorbed by popular culture: Don Draper’s penthouse in Mad Men, Willard Whyte’s Las Vegas crib in Sean Connery’s final EON James Bond adventure, Diamonds Are Forever, and the sleek, tense London interiors of Gangster No. 1 all understand the power of a sunken room.
The pit could be seductive, convivial, even faintly dangerous; a throne room upholstered in velvet. Rugs, often circular, graphic or boldly floral, softened the architecture and added warmth, turning the whole thing into a nest for talk, flirtation and intrigue.
Moroccan Trinkets
British interiors had been looking well beyond Europe for glamour, texture and romance by the heights of the 1960s, and Morocco offered all three in abundance. Northern African design language, a richly-layered blend of Arab, Berber and European influences, felt intoxicating to decorators weary of polite domestic restraint.
Here was unapologetic pattern paired with colour without timidity, and craftsmanship that made plain surfaces obsolete. The appeal accelerated as Morocco became a magnet for artists, designers, collectors and society figures.
Marrakech and Tangier were more states-of-mind rather than mere destinations - something that Jennfier Saunders and Joanna Lumley then brought forward into the 1990s with Absolutely Fabulous. Travellers returned with rugs, lanterns, ceramics, carved tables and textiles, each object carrying the suggestion of heat, dust, souks and late-afternoon shadows. Even a single Moroccan lamp could transform a room, casting perforated pools of light like a private spell.
Textiles were the easiest route in. Berber rugs brought warmth, irregularity and graphic force, sitting beautifully against both modern furniture and antique pieces. Hexagonal side tables, sometimes painted or inlaid with bone, added compact decorative punch. Zellige tiles and Islamic geometric patterns offered dazzling structure, while brass lanterns, rattan, bright pottery and patterned cushions layered the room with sensual abundance.
The result from all of these influences was not minimal, nor was it trying to be. Rather, people achieved decorative confidence in full flight. As the next generation carved into the scene, and the 1970s muted things down with browns and dank orange hues, the 1960s’ vibes appeared smothered until the 1990s, when Cool Britannia punched through the glass ceiling and restored everything that we loved about the era of John Steed, Simon Templar, and Twiggy.
But that’s a story for another time...