Interior Designers Say This Is the 1 Thing Making Your Home Look Dated—And It’s an Easy Fix
If you want your home to look modern and fresh, you”ll want to avoid the obvious offenders like brownish-beige wall-to-wall-carpeting, matching furniture sets, and popcorn ceilings. But according to interior designers, there’s one thing making your home look dated that you probably don’t realize. In fact, if you walk into any T.J. Maxx, HomeGoods, or Hobby Lobby right now, you’ll see this item in abundance. We’re talking about word art. You know, those wooden signs with inspiring, kitschy phrases on them.
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In a recent TikTok video, interior designer Phoenix Grey chatted with fellow designer Nickolas Gurtler about how much they both hate word art. Grey even went so far as to call it “the absolute cardinal sin of interior design.”
“Around Thanksgiving, [stores like HomeGoods] have every possible script and every finish that says ‘gather’ or ‘thankful,'” Grey quipped in the video. “Another bad one is the ones they have in, like, the laundry rooms, like dry, fold, in case you forgot the order of how to do it.”
However, it seems most designers agree that “Live. Laugh. Love” is the number-one piece of word art making your home look dated.
Interior design firm The Havenly posted a video asking its designers to name the one thing they’d never have in their own homes. “Word signs, like ‘Live, Laugh, Love’,” responded one designer.
“Word art signs have had their day (thank God), but I cringe when I still see so many at hobby lobby! Over played clichés: Kitchen sign to tell us it’s the kitchen? Live. Laugh. Love. 🤮 Home 🙄,” wrote an interior stager in another TikTok video.
In a recent interview with Ruggable, interior designer Temi Johnson shared, “I think people are moving away from these generalized live life love posters and signs into a more personalized form of [word art].”
However, Johnson said that not all word art has to be avoided.
“Whilst we all loved the ‘This Kitchen is for Dancing’ trend, seeing that quote in yet another kitchen will make your space feel outdated in time,” she explained. “However, something to bear in mind is how your sign is presented, as this is important too. You can usually get away with an overused quote if it’s amongst great artwork and framed accordingly to suit your interiors.”
Johnson added, “If looking at humorous quotations such as ‘this house runs on sarcasm and inappropriate humor,’ what better place than having that in the toilet? Context often makes the quote choice work. A neon sign is always going to look right in a cocktail bar. It’s never going to look outdated and always feels modern because of where it’s placed and most importantly, has context.”