Midcentury Modern Interior Design
Because of its versatility, simplicity, lack of pretension, and relaxed quality, midcentury modern (MCM) is one of the most popular interior design styles. MCM was popular from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. It reached the height of its popularity in the 1950s and 1960s. The serene and organic shapes and neutral colors used in modern midcentury-inspired homes are only one variant of MCM style. Original midcentury homes were frequently awash in color and pattern. They were usually less neutral than modern takes on the style would have us believe.
Midcentury trends ran the gamut from kitschy to refined. The aspects of the style that most influence modern design are the sophisticated and refined elements. These include simplicity, functionality, clean lines, and the elevation of natural materials.
Rather than cover furniture surfaces with applied decoration, MCM furnishings emphasize shapes, textures, and pops of color. However, if you love pattern, this style offers zingy and fanciful options that can add fun-loving touches to your home.
A Gallery of Modern Midcentury-Inspired Interiors
The following gallery features contemporary interiors inspired by midcentury modern interior design. Most of these examples emphasize texture and material over color and pattern. However, authentic midcentury modern homes often incorporated both bright and dark hues and pops of color. See the section on midcentury color palettes below for examples.
The Post-War Housing Revolution
After World War II, many U.S. veterans took advantage of the G.I. Bill. This government program provided vets with low-cost mortgage loans, tuition, and living expenses. These benefits created a boom in the number of people who could afford to buy homes and enter the middle class.
During the 1950s, the U.S. federal government undertook massive highway expansion projects that connected suburbs to urban centers. This led to an exodus from crowded cities into new bedroom communities. Many veterans and others who had benefited from post-war prosperity bought property in these new, less expensive suburban neighborhoods. There, suburbanites could afford to live in sprawling single-family ranch homes with back yards and built-in garages.
Ranch homes provided better views of natural surroundings than homes in crowded urban environments. They also created a clearer connection to nature. Enclosed back yards and large picture windows let parents watch over their kids from indoors. Ample storage prompted people to buy and store more consumer goods. These changes in opportunity and lifestyle led to vast changes in home architecture and interior design for many millions of people across the U.S.
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Midcentury Design Principles
Flat, wide homes & furnishings
The horizontal emphasis of midcentury ranch homes influenced the shapes of their interior furnishings. As homes got wider and flatter, so did furniture. Tall china cabinets and highboy dressers in tall, vertical shapes that took up less space in crowded, multi-level homes were replaced with lower, flatter dressers and credenzas. Upholstered sofas and chairs grew lower and wider. Low coffee tables took the place of elbow-height side tables.
Ceilings were often lower in ranch homes. To allow for open-plan rooms with few load-bearing walls, rugged beams often hung overhead. These let open interior spaces be wider without needing columns or walls to hold them up. As a result, hanging light fixtures got wider and shallower to keep from hanging too far into the room. Starburst and satellite-style ceiling-hugging fixtures became more popular.
Open-plan designs
Midcentury homes were usually small—it was common for a family of four to live in a 1200-square-foot house. However, they were less dark and cramped than earlier working-class homes. Bedrooms were small, and a single bathroom might be shared by the whole family, but separations between main living areas began to disappear.
The kitchen and family room began to be built as a single contiguous space. It might have pony walls (i.e., half-height walls) or pass-through openings, but these made the most of interior lighting and sight lines. People could see beyond their kitchens, making childcare and conversation easier. Built-in kitchen dining areas took over from formal dining rooms. Decks and patios extended entertaining and daily living to the outdoors.
Easy living in comfort & style
As life grew more casual, so did home furnishings. Modern families prized comfort, as well as technologies and materials that made life easier. Formal sofas, couches, and arm chairs were replaced with simpler, more comfortable versions. Bent-wood chairs with upholstered cushions added style without taking much space. Lighter cotton and linen curtains, often with busy patterns, replaced heavy draperies. Bulky highboy chests and china cabinets made way for low, sleek dressers and sideboards or credenzas, and multi-level side tables. Midcentury modern interior design focused on human-scaled rooms and furnishings.
Charles and Ray Eames, a hugely popular and influential husband-and-wife design team of this era, took a lighthearted view of life. The playfulness evident in their work—which included their lighthearted short film Powers of Ten and the toys they designed—was as important to them as the practicality and beauty of their designs. In addition to furniture, the Eameses used their industrial design skills to create necessities from innovative medical splints to children’s playthings. They were photographed being silly and joyous, but they were seriously talented designers with a keen ability to create beautiful versions of functional furnishings.
Timeless midcentury furniture designs
Eames designs were mass produced and widely copied, and many are still in use. Their most famous furniture works include the classic Eames lounge chair and ottoman designed in 1956, and the Eames desk unit designed in 1949. Other popular designers of the time, including Eero Saarinen of Finland, Arne Jacobsen and Hans Wegner of Denmark, and Isamu Noguchi of the U.S., also used sleek curvilinear shapes and modern materials and techniques in their furniture designs. Their iconic examples of midcentury modern interior design remain functional, comfortable, and stylish today.
Connecting indoor & outdoor spaces
Connecting the inside environment with the outside world is integral to midcentury design. During the 1950s and 1960s, large picture windows took over from smaller windows. Often, windows were completely replaced with sliding glass doors to provide greater natural light and floor-to-ceiling views. Aluminum-framed sliders were a popular feature that connected gathering spaces like kitchens and family rooms with backyards. They also allowed families to enjoy indoor/outdoor spaces like patios and decks more easily. Formal living rooms gave way to more casual family rooms, and laid-back outdoor and kitchen-based entertaining grew in popularity.
Space-age living
After suffering economic deprivation for a decade during the Great Depression, the U.S. faced serious rationing and materials and labor shortages during World War II. Every family had to make do and make lifestyle sacrifices during the war years. After the war ended in 1945, U.S. housing developers invested billions in building new housing tracts, neighborhoods, even cities. The federal government spent big money on numerous huge public projects that provided benefits to people at all income levels. These included expanding the nation’s highway infrastructure, and supporting scientific research, including for space exploration.
Cold War fears made people both fascinated by and terrified of atomic power. But despite their fears, atomic age decorating motifs were popular elements in home decor in the fifties and sixties. The U.S. took immense pride in technological progress, and wanted to display the latest mod cons (modern conveniences) in their homes and during leisure activities. Middle-class home owners celebrated the march of science by installing problem-solving devices like intercoms to their homes. Furnishings took on a space-age look by using stylized shapes that evoked dreams of interplanetary travel. Starbursts, boomerangs, and other amorphous shapes and patterns appeared in mirrors, tables, light fixtures, floor coverings, wallpapers, and fabric.
Shabby wasn’t chic
The shiny, dark, reddish-brown cherry furnishings popular in the 1940s were out of fashion in the 1950s and 1960s. Furniture with a weathered or pickled finish would have been seen as damaged. White-painted furniture was common, but whitewashed furniture that shows the grain through a light coat of white paint wasn’t. And what we’d call “distressed” furniture was considered shabby in the worst way.
The concept of “shabby chic” wasn’t invented until the late 1980s. Midcentury surfaces were meant to be evenly colored and free of damage. Smooth, carefully finished pieces without chips, distressing, or weathering were the norm. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, heavier, darker, lavishly decorated Mediterranean-style furniture came into fashion. Exposed wooden legs on sofas and easy chairs were less popular. Sofa and easy chair legs of the seventies were usually hidden under a flap of upholstery fabric.
In the sixties and seventies, “distressed furniture” meant stained wood furniture that had been sprayed lightly with random dark speckles before it was varnished. By the early 2000s, “distressed” came to mean furniture that had been intentionally damaged by being unevenly sanded down, or even bashed with chains to create small dents. But distressing of any sort wasn’t part of the classic midcentury modern interior design style popular before the 1960s.
Lighter & brighter
Recessed ceiling lights, such as can lights, weren’t popular until the 1970s. Before then, many rooms had little or no overhead lighting. Homes relied on desk and floor lamps, and rooms were often dark in the corners. Homes usually felt much darker over all. Interior lighting was much dimmer during the midcentury period than in the average house or apartment today.
Hallways and bedrooms often had an overhead glass fixture with a single 60-watt bulb inside a glass shade to diffuse the light. But many bedrooms had no overhead lighting at all. They relied solely on bedside lamps, which often had dim 25 or 40 watt bulbs.
Track lighting, invented in 1961, was a popular innovation. It allowed people to adjust the location and direction of overhead lighting. Floor and desk lamps with heads that swiveled and bent let people customize their lighting options in an instant.
Overhead fluorescent tube lights were also popular during this time, especially in businesses and institutional settings such as schools. They created unflattering light, and often flickered and buzzed. Because of their harshness, they were usually relegated to kitchens, bathrooms, and basement areas that needed plentiful, bright lighting. Incandescent lighting was far more popular in most living areas.
Danish modern style
During World War II, Danish designers were creating functional, elegant furniture. When the war made materials scarce, they turned to inexpensive, accessible, versatile plywood. Using steam, they bent the wood (usually teak) into intriguing and comfortable shapes. Their work was strongly influenced by the bent-wood furniture created by U.S. designers Charles and Ray Eames.
After the war, Danish manufacturers used mass-production techniques developed during Germany’s wartime occupation of Denmark to make huge quantities of furniture quickly. They shipped these attractive and affordable pieces all over the world. Danish modern housewares and decor items made of wood, ceramic, and metal were also extremely popular, and could be found in millions of homes by the end of the 1960s.
Danish modern style was hugely popular during the midcentury modern period, and had a lasting impact on home furnishings. It’s making a big comeback now that midcentury furniture and decor are such hot commodities.
To learn more about the Danish designers who made such a big impact on the world of home interiors, read my article, When Danish Modern Style Ruled.
Midcentury Furniture in the Modern Home
If you’re using authentic midcentury pieces, you might have to be creative to make them fit your needs. Here are a few examples of ways to make vintage midcentury furniture work in a modern home.
Entertainment centers
In the fifties, TVs often stood on their own wooden legs or were encased by wooden boxes. By the sixties, stands were often just wooden or metal carts or simple tables. They didn’t have space for cable boxes or game consoles. You might want to use an open-backed room divider or credenza with multiple open-backed shelves as your entertainment center so that you have room to place all your tech equipment, and have easy access to cables and controls.
Upholstered seating
Sofas and chairs of this period often had wooden frames with bare wooden arms and legs, and upholstered backs and seats stuffed with rather thin foam. These cushions provided little support and lost their shape quickly. Though you can always add extra pillows behind, but it’s hard to adjust for an unforgivingly hard seat. If you don’t mind reupholstering an original sofa, you can add thicker (or at least denser) and more supportive cushions for greater comfort. However, if you increase the size of the cushions, you could throw off the original proportions and lines of the piece. Boxier sofas with freestanding cushions are more forgiving of this treatment.
Reproduction midcentury-style sofas also often have a single, thin foam seat cushion that provides little support and tends to sag fairly quickly. If you’re tempted to buy a midcentury-style sofa with low cushions, test it out first. Ask yourself whether the cushions will be comfortable enough for you to sit through a two-hour movie on them. If not, that might not be the sofa for you.
Non-upholstered seating
Bent wood or curvy plastic Tulip chairs are quintessential MCM shapes that add a lot of visual pizzaz. They can add welcome organic curves to an otherwise boxy room. However, they can be rather small compared to a contemporary upholstered chair. They may feel out of place next to a full-sized sofa.
Uncushioned seating isn’t comfortable for long. Chairs or benches look great in a nook or a spot where they can serve as lovely sculptural elements when they’re not in use. They’re less successful when used as easy chairs throughout a whole evening.
Combining midcentury with other styles
If you love this aesthetic so much that you want your whole house to feel like a midcentury modern film set, go for it! It’s a fun and livable style. But using nothing but vintage decor and furnishings can make a room look like a museum. That might not provide the welcoming, relaxed ambience you seek.
Midcentury furniture and architecture play well with several popular styles. Scandinavian, Japandi, industrial, rustic, contemporary, minimalist, and even simpler Art Deco pieces can mix well with midcentury decor. Just consider how well their wood tones, colors, textures, shapes, and sizes work together.
Elements that shout “I’m midcentury modern!” include Eames chairs, kidney-shaped glass or wooden coffee tables on hairpin metal legs, Sputnik light fixtures, and starburst mirrors. They go well with the organic shapes of contemporary Scandi or Japandi design. Curves, glass, and reflective mirrors or metalwork mixed with sleek minimalist wood furniture will keep things lively.
For a more squared-off look, consider a midcentury leather sofa. Add fabric-upholstered chairs with a similarly angular feel, and a color or pattern that coordinates with the sofa. Combine them with a contemporary industrial-style coffee table with a glass top. Add a dark geometric rug, and a curving arc floor lamp.
Mixing vintage & reproductions
Want to stick with a fully midcentury style? Whether you choose to use authentic vintage pieces or modern reproductions may depend on questions of functionality. How much use will that table, sofa, or bed frame get? You might want to rely on modern reproductions for pieces that will get a lot of use, since they may be sturdier than 60-to-70-year-old pieces. Consider using less robust original vintage pieces primarily as visual elements, and not so much as functional pieces.
Multipurpose Modern Furnishings
Built-in appliances and multipurpose furnishings felt of-the-moment in the 1950s and 1960s. Fold-away TV trays let people make temporary work or play spaces wherever they wanted. Customizable storage units suspended wooden shelves on wall-mounted metal brackets. Floating shelves took the place of heavy bookcases, expanding storage high up on walls while leaving floor spaces open.
Small, versatile furniture took the place of larger, single-use furnishings. Sometimes, though, a single, larger piece of furniture did double duty. A stereo console might include a television set, a turntable, and a pair of speakers. The problem was that different parts of the console tended to wear out at different times. By the late 1970s, all-in-one entertainment consoles and built-in appliances became less popular as people realized how quickly parts or functionality became obsolete.
Multipurpose furnishings extended to a desire for built-in features in homes. Saving steps and space with built-ins was seen as a path to a more carefree lifestyle. For example, a bathroom might have a laundry chute hidden behind a cabinet door. An intercom system let people talk safely to strangers and delivery people outside the home. Some kitchens even included built-in appliances. I once lived in a vintage house that still had the original base and controls for a blender or hand mixer built right into the kitchen counter. Of course, when stronger, faster, or more versatile appliances came on the market, the built-in ones were still in place, taking up space.
Midcentury Color Palettes
Interior design color palettes varied over the course of the midcentury modern period. In the 1950s, midcentury style took one of two main paths—earthy tones (which were considered the more sophisticated colors for home interiors), or clear pastels and brights with white undertones. The clear, bright colors were most popular on signage, packaging, and on clothing.
Furnishings with coordinating instead of matching colors were popular during this period. Using contrasting colors in surprising combos, like turquoise with sea foam green and grey, or brown with blue and rust, provided exciting visual interest. This was a break from the matchy-matchy interior design trends of the 1940s. Color combos tended to use same value or brightness, though—no vivid orange with a mid-level blue, or avocado green with neon pink.
To learn which midcentury modern color palettes were most popular in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, see my article, Midcentury Modern Colors.
When Wood Was Good
MCM style spotlights the textural qualities of materials. Sometimes these are natural materials like textural molded glass, rustic-looking ceramic pottery, or nubby textiles. Other times they’re modern synthetic materials like brushed stainless steel or colorful vinyl. But more than anything, midcentury modern interior design, furniture, and decor elements celebrate the grain, colors, natural beauty, and versatility of wood.
Inexpensive, flexible, beautiful bent wood allowed designers to imagine entirely new shapes for use in furniture, light fixtures, serving ware, and decorative building materials. Traditional uses for wood continued to be important to midcentury style as well. Wall paneling was also popular during the midcentury period. Sometimes large sheets of good-quality wood were used to cover a wall, creating a smooth and elegant surface. More often, narrower planks of cheaper woods covered walls.
Golden-varnished knotty pine cabinetry and paneling were popular during the 1950s and early 1960s. Kitchens, family rooms, dens, and basements were often surrounded by pine cabinetry and paneling. The scattered dark pine knot-holes left after branches were cut off were filled in with putty or wood plugs. This created a visually busy, Dalmatian-like effect that can quickly overwhelm a room. Dark brown, evenly colored paneling became more popular in the later 1960s and 1970s. However, the effect could be so oppressively gloomy that many people pulled it out or painted over it in the decades to come.
Mixing wood tones was a no-no
The most popular woods were mid-toned woods with beautiful grains, like walnut and teak. These were generally sanded, oiled, and left matte, not varnished like maple, pine, and other yellow-toned woods. Danish modern furniture was carefully sanded to create slightly curved, organic edges. Even cheap woods could look state-of-the-art when stacked in thin layers on top of each other, steamed, and bent. They formed sleek chair frames, or were cut into amorphous forms to make amoeba-shaped tables.
Mixing radically different wood tones in a room was frowned upon. Golden maple furniture might be used throughout a bedroom, for example, and you might mix in a little yellow pine. But style-conscious consumers avoided mixing them with reddish cherry wood or dark stained oak. In the dining room, chairs, tables, and sideboards were expected to be part of a matching suite, or at least to be in the same material, such as teak or walnut. If you wanted to vary furniture tones, you might introduce metal furniture like desks or carts, put painted wood furniture in a room, or keep woods in the same tone family. However, you’d avoid putting “clashing” woods near each other.
Wooden decor
In the 1950s and 1960s, dark wooden carvings from African countries became chic in U.S. homes. So did carved wood Scandinavian platters and serving bowls. Mixing authentic handcrafts with sleek mass-market design in one’s home was meant to show sophistication without pretension. Placing bongo drums on your kidney-shaped Danish modern coffee table next to a carved wooden bust of an African man’s head were meant to show that you were both hip and deep, Daddy-o.
Midcentury Design’s Origins
When a style becomes popular, it’s only a matter of time before architects, artists, and designers crave its opposite. Midcentury modern is a reaction to highly decorated architecture and interior design styles of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This includes the widely popular Beaux-Arts style so popular in large public buildings at the turn of the 20th century. Midcentury modernism was also a result of the breakneck speed of technological developments in the mid-20th century that resulted in thousands of new materials and original ways of putting them to use.
European modernists
In the 1920s and 1930s, European Modernist architects and designers like Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe reacted against the highly decorative architecture and interior design styles of their youths. They believed in Mies’s motto, “Less is more.” They taught that simplicity of form allows us to focus on design and quality. Designers who taught or studied at the Bauhaus school or supported the school’s principles believed form should follow function. They designed simple, useful buildings, interiors, and household items. These designers held that simple homes and furnishings were functionally and aesthetically superior to what they saw as structures and objects with “useless” detail.
In the twenties and thirties, Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto furthered the use of unconventional materials and organic shapes. In 1939, Aalto designed the world’s first kidney-shaped swimming pool. He also used that shape in curvy, organically shaped wooden furniture that became widely popular during the midcentury period.
Modernists believed in connecting interior spaces with the outside world. They did this by adding more windows and making them larger, and bringing natural and rustic elements into the home. Homes should feel like they’re part of nature, not separate from it, according to their principles.
Frank Lloyd Wright
U.S.-born architect and designer Frank Lloyd Wright shared many of the European designers’ principles. Wright established centers in the U.S. where he could live with and mentor other architects. He developed his own style, which included some purely decorative treatments in stained glass windows, furniture, and building blocks with repeating patterns. Like the European modernists, he emphasized horizontality and compatibility with natural surroundings.
Modern design in the U.S.
A number of influential European designers moved to the U.S. around World War II. Many lived out their lives teaching at U.S. universities or creating businesses here. They taught many of the designers who rose to prominence from the 1940s through the 1980s. Their design insights and innovations were critical to the development of the style we now know as midcentury modern.
To learn more about the modernist architects and designers of the 1920s and 1930s whose design innovations led to the midcentury modern design movement that flowered in the 1950s and 1960s, see my article, The Birth of Midcentury Modernism?
Democratic Design
By the 1950s, widespread mass production made things cheaper and easier to produce. A booming U.S. economy lifted more people into middle-class lifestyles. This made it harder to tell people’s socioeconomic status at a glance. It also meant that handcrafted items became less common and more desirable. Where wealth was once advertised by ostentatious display, high-end midcentury design was less overt.
Midcentury modern interior design did have signifiers of wealth and sophistication. They were just less obvious. When objects aren’t covered with applied decoration, their quality, finish, and condition must be impeccable. Pieces that rely on clean lines and unusual curves or angles must be precise.
That said, people of modest means could afford simple versions of top-quality items and still create stylish, well-put-together homes. This democratization of interior design style was midcentury modern designers’ greatest achievement. It’s not so much about showing off money, which you can be born into. It’s about showing what you can do with creativity and originality, no matter your family, education, or income.
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This modern, monochromatic take on midcentury modern style makes the most of texture and sleek comfort | Spacejoy for Unsplash
