20 Wild Decorating Fads That Took Over 1920s Homes

In November 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter opened the tomb of King Tutankhamun in Luxor. Word of the find spread quickly across the world, and throughout the mid-to-late 1920s, American homes embraced Egyptian style, from lotus-flower drapes to scarab-bejeweled everything. A dead king who had been buried for more than 3,000 years suddenly gave America winged-sunburst sconces, obelisk bookends, and pharaonic mantel clocks.

The Murphy bed was perfect for cramped apartments because it allowed a living room to be both a bedroom and parlor; the bed could simply swing up and disappear into a closet. The pivoting wall bed was patented by William Lawrence Murphy between 1900 and 1912, and its design became popular during the 1920s apartment craze in cramped urban dwellings.

The tiered bookcases and desks of the Skyscraper line introduced by furniture designer Paul T. Frankl in 1926 drew their profiles directly from New York’s 1916 setback zoning laws, which helped give skyscrapers their distinctive stepped shape. The furniture was made of California redwood, birch, sycamore, oak, or maple, and was lacquered green, black, or red, or in brushed silver leaf. Soon enough, the skyline outside was showing up inside the living room.

The dark, heavy ceiling beams at the center of many 1920s Tudor Revival living rooms were rarely structural beams. Instead, the faux medieval English manor look could be had for a fraction of the price with boxwood or molded plaster beams. Why buy the manor when you could fake the ceiling?

One of the hottest materials for upscale modern bathrooms and kitchens was opaque structural glass. Marketed as Vitrolite or Carrara Glass, the gleaming, moisture-proof surface transformed walls with colors like jet black, ivory, jade green, and cobalt blue. The average suburban bungalow wasn’t getting the full jade-green treatment, though; the material was typically found in upscale urban buildings.

The hissing cast-iron steam radiators that heated the majority of homes and apartments were often hidden behind wooden or stamped-metal covers. This concealed the bulky pipes, tempered the industrial look, and provided a handy shelf on which to warm plates or dry mittens.

Master bedrooms in the 1920s were inspired by silver-screen starlets and featured mirrored vanity tables and smoked glass dressing screens. Women could bring some of that movie-star glamour home with dressing tables and silvered accessories, making even the morning routine look a little more Hollywood.

Foldaway features were considered the height of modern convenience, especially in small kitchens. Builders hung a drop-leaf porcelain-enamel table on the wall and tucked the ironing board right up against the cabinet to free up space in tight quarters. Fold-away items such as these were touted as conveniences by mail-order houses, including Sears Modern Homes.

In a late 1920s home, radio knobs, door handles, and light switches were often made of Bakelite. Belgian-American chemist Leo Baekeland had patented Bakelite in 1909. Once the patent expired in December 1926, competitors rushed to produce this heavy, moldable, heat-resistant synthetic resin, and prices dropped fast.

An inexpensive alternative to woven carpets, printed linoleum rugs offered a washable, waterproof surface that could be cleaned with a mop instead of being hauled outside and beaten. A definite upgrade if you were the one doing the cleaning. Products from brands such as Congoleum Gold Seal were sold as rugs sized to a room and featured floral borders and Oriental-style carpet patterns that decorated 1920s kitchens or bedrooms.

Builders started adding phone niches in the hallways of kit homes and apartments to accommodate the heavy desktop candlestick phone as well as the telephone book. In the late 1920s, the phone niche became a standard feature of modern living, although ownership in rural areas lagged far behind that of cities and suburbs.

Slag glass filigree table lamps gained popularity during the Craftsman era and remained popular at least through the 1920s. The shades featured a cast lead or iron filigree patterned overlay atop marbled colored glass, which together cast a lovely, warm glow over the parlor or living room.

To reflect the relatively new electric light around a room, decorators used Dutch metal alloy leaf or bronze powders on ceilings and friezes. While only the affluent applied 24-karat gold to the ceilings of their estates, the middle class used less expensive metallic alloys with a similar effect. From across a room, aluminum leaf or gold-colored alloys were hard to distinguish from real gold, which was really all that mattered if your guests never got close enough to tell the difference.

Spanish Colonial Revival houses frequently featured hand-painted polychrome, or multicolored, ceramic tiles used as decoration on fireplaces and stair risers, especially in Florida and California. Two companies, Malibu Potteries, founded by wealthy Malibu landowner May Rindge in 1926, and Catalina Clay Products, founded by chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. in 1927, made these tiles.

Brimming with leisure appeal, sunrooms boasted brightly painted wicker furniture and potted palms, bringing the outdoors in. Not everyone was sold on the sleek new Art Deco look, either. Many suburbanites preferred the floral interiors touted in publications such as Ladies’ Home Journal. Glazed floral chintz drapery and cushiony slipcovers covered in plump cabbage roses were representative of 1920s suburban decor.

During the 1920s, the gilded sunburst became a common Art Deco motif, and sunburst wall designs and mirrors adorned many living rooms and foyers. These were often coupled with geometric wallpaper featuring chevrons and even more sunbursts, all designed to play with the relatively new electric lighting. The reflective surfaces helped diffuse the light around the room.

The compact kitchen of a 1920s bungalow went from cramped to functional with the built-in wooden breakfast nook, also called a breakfastette or Pullman alcove, popularized by Sears Modern Homes and other mail-order home catalogs. Fixed benches surrounded a table, often tucked beneath the kitchen window, squeezing an eating area into space that might otherwise have gone unused.

By around 1927 or 1928, some Art Deco light fixtures had done away with the little thumbscrews normally used to hold glass shades in place. Instead, molded frosted-glass panels slotted directly into cast-metal frames. Lightolier and other manufacturers’ trade catalogs show that these “slip shades” had become popular options for ceiling fixtures by the end of the 1920s.

Walk into some stylish 1920s homes, and you might’ve been greeted by a black-and-white checkered tile floor. Bold patterns graced foyers and bathrooms, giving them plenty of formal drama right at the door. In the living room or bedroom, however, the mood was cozy as exposed oak floors were polished to a gleam and hand-hooked scatter rugs were added for warmth underfoot.

Early radios had been little more than exposed wires and equipment sitting in the parlor, but by the 1920s, manufacturers were turning them into actual furniture. Radio sets morphed into hefty walnut or mahogany console cabinets. Especially after commercial radio took off in the early 1920s, these cabinets became the living room’s centerpiece, around which furniture was arranged and families congregated by the late 1920s.

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