In the 1950s, a bestselling carpet – 2,000 miles of it – was produced by Kidderminster and was called “Skaters’ Trail”. It consisted of squiggly lines in vivid red and grey accompanied by a sprinkling of stars, replacing the brown linoleum and austerity floor coverings of wartime Britain and rationing.
Open up any interior design magazine today, say Livingetc or House and Gardens – or browse on the website of Lulu “golden-wallpaper-at-£840-a-roll” Lytle – and the patterned carpet is very definitely back, apparently the choice of anyone under 50 who likes to be on trend. If, of course, they can first afford a roof over their heads.
Those who learned to crawl on Skaters’ Trail are now well past 60, the target age for McCarthy Stone. Last year, the retirement property company provided “later living” for more than 20,000 people in 475 developments. If McCarthy Stone’s decor is similar to an expensive “later living” establishment that’s opened close to where I live, it will be achingly modern, a cruise ship riot of stripes, spots, glass, foliage, chandeliers and burnished gold. The ghost of Liberace at the piano is expected.
McCarthy Stone’s website declares: “We want to provide a more positive view of what it means to be old.” This makes its study of the design tastes of those aged over 65, published last week, seem very rum indeed. The study peddles antiquated stereotypes before knocking them down with fresh research. According to those stereotypes, patterned carpets, floral wallpaper, avocado bathroom sets, garden gnomes, lace tablecloths, net curtains, grandfather clocks and china figurines are deemed “outdated” by two-thirds of pensioners. Of course they are – and, arguably, they were for many of their parents too.
Those travelling through the unknown territory of later living today were raised in the kingdom of Habitat, launched in 1964, and Ikea, arriving in Warrington in the late 1980s; stripped back, flat-pack, bare floor boards, primary colours and white, white, white. In the 1960s, too, women began to move into paid work so the fewer objects to dust, polish, vacuum and dedicate your waking hours to, the better.
More recently, many of that same generation have experienced the heart-splintering task of dismantling the households of a late mother or father or aunt. Yes, there is the occasional grandfather clock, garden gnome and china figurine – but these, too, have often been inherited from a previous generation.
My late parents were, not untypically, teenagers serving in the forces during the second world war, and, like many of their generation, saw their family homes flattened by bombs. To throw away the possessions treasured by relatives, no matter how period, was deemed sacrilegious. Their offspring are often, reluctantly, more brutal.
The furniture and sentimental objects mostly end up, sadly, in charity shops or condemned to the tip on grounds of health and safety. Having dismantled one or several households (with no avocado bathrooms and few “fluffy loo seat covers” but an awful lot of DIY), the mantra for many of my friends is, less is better. Not least because we don’t want to leave a legacy of “stuff”, whether ancient or uber-futuristic, so our own children have to go through the pain of discarding the reminders of a lifetime.
In 2021, McCarthy Stone reported that 27% of over-65s in the UK say they have been subjected to ageism. Having grown up at a time when, at 20, anyone over 40 was regarded as an acquaintance of Noah and the Ark, that seems like progress. Not enough, but still progress.
A further help would be to avoid daft stereotypes and to delve instead into the genuine scale of the huge diversity that represents older age today, moulded by affluence and poverty, health, geography and luck. And taste too, in all its manifestations.
Meanwhile, back to Lulu Lytle’s website at interior design company Soane. Ironically, it’s an eye-watering riot of the kind of multi-patterned wallpaper, carpets, upholstery and knick-knacks that my great-aunt Rose used to favour when she was in her 80s in the 1950s. Now, as we all know, it’s much loved by Carrie Johnson, resident of Downing Street, aged 34.
And in the May issue of World of Interiors, music producer Mark Ronson, 46, reveals his five-bedroom Manhattan townhouse is decorated in art deco, with pride of place for his record player and vinyl records. In decor, old-fashioned slips effortlessly into 21st-century style, if the price is right.
