Actor Curt Jurgens with his wife and two female companions lathering up in a hot tub he had built in his den. 1972.Carlo Bavagnoli/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
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Welsh singer Tom Jones stands by his swimming pool. Circa 1970. Terry O'Neill/Getty Images
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Models pose with a transparent bathtub on display at London's International Building Exhibition. 1971.Central Press/Getty Images
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American basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain eats a meal by himself at a table under a massive chandelier in his specially-commissioned Los Angeles home known as Ursa Major. 1972.Ralph Crane/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
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Interior view of a mirrored room, covered in fitted floor cushions, inside Wilt Chamberlain's Ursa Major home in Los Angeles. 1972.Ralph Crane/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
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Dining room in the Long Island home of fashion designer and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt and author Wyatt Cooper (parents of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper). 1971.Horst P. Horst/Conde Nast via Getty Images
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English pop singer Engelbert Humperdinck. Circa 1970.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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Elton John reclines on an elaborately decorated bed. 1972. Terry O'Neill/Getty Images
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Dining room interior, with white table and four molded plastic pedestal chairs. Date unspecified.H. Armstrong Roberts/Retrofile/Getty Image
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American musician Frank Zappa poses with his parents in his home in Los Angeles. 1970.John Olson/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
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Le Palais Bulles ("The Bubble Palace"), designed by French fashion designer Pierre Cardin and architect Antti Lovag, located on the French Riviera, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Date unspecified.Eric Robert/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images
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Barbra Streisand at her home in Los Angeles. 1977.Terry O'Neill/Getty Images
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Op-art style bedroom in the home of French interior designer Francois Catroux. 1970.Horst P. Horst/Condé Nast via Getty Images
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Priscilla Presley (ex-wife of Elvis) poses at her home in Beverly Hills. 1975.Ron Galella/WireImage/Getty Images
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The television room in the weekend house of French Baron Guy de Rothschild, just outside of Paris. 1978.Horst P. Horst/Condé Nast via Getty Images
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Hugh Hefner with girlfriend Barbi Benton in his luxury DC-9 aircraft "The Big Bunny" at Heathrow Airport in London. 1970.Keystone/Getty Images
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Home of art director John Holmes, designed by William Kirsch and made entirely from used parts. 1972.John Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
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American businesswoman and Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown poses on her bed in her apartment on New York's Central Park West. 1979.Susan Wood/Getty Images
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British aristocrat and politician Henry Frederick Thynne at his home in Wiltshire. 1970.Keystone/Getty Images
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Plush carpet-covered furniture on display at the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition in London. 1971.Jackson/Central Press/Getty Images
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American socialite Lee Radziwill (sister of Jacqueline Kennedy) stands in her dining room. 1976.Susan Wood/Getty Images
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A waiter lights a woman's cigarette at Club Tekki, a health club in Paris. 1972.Paul Almasy/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
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A woman wrapped in a towel sits on the edge of the tub in a luxurious bathroom and tests the water temperature with her hand. Circa 1975. Tom Kelley/Getty Images
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The guest room in the Rome apartment of fashion designer Valentino. 1970.Horst P. Horst/Condé Nast via Getty Images
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Honeymoon Hotel in the Poconos Mountains of Pennsylvania. 1971.SSPL/Getty Images
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A chandelier hangs over a blue, Roman-sized tub surrounded by pillars. 1977.Ernie Leyba/The Denver Post via Getty Images
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A couple pose in a sitting room in London. 1976.Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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Living room of summer home constructed with redwood panels. 1970.John Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
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Designer and model Katarina Noever in her design shop, "Section N," in Vienna. 1972.Imagno/Getty Images
The Decade That Taste Forgot: Lavish And Luxe Interiors Of The 1970s
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To neo-bohemian Millennials hooked on "the Brooklyn look", the matchy-matchy maximalism and unhinged hedonism of 1970s luxury interior design must look as fussy in its forethought and dusty in its formalism as the century-old trappings of Downton Abbey or other binge-worthy period pablum.
These hypothetical hipsters aren't wrong: The 1970s was an age of bold-but-earthy patterns, inspired by the nascent environmental movement; cartoonishly decadent and overwrought entertaining areas of marble, brass, fur, and shag; and impossibly busy "op-art" textiles and wallpaper.
But the era's high- and low-end interiors, as Minneapolis Star Tribune humorist and author of Interior Desecrations: Hideous Homes From the Horrible '70s James Lileks argues, were just a product of the time:
"This is what happens when Dad drinks, Mom floats in a Valium haze, the kids slump down to the den with the bong and the decorator has such a desperate coke habit he simply must convince half the town to put up reflective wall paper."
And in order to experience the best that the so-called "decade that taste forgot" has to offer, it helps to see what the fabulously wealthy tastemakers of the time were doing with their interiors.
The gallery above aims to gather a collection of high-end 1970s interiors emblematic of an era of absurdly bold choices soon tempered by the garish iciness of the 1980s. Like that decade's cool remedy to what came before, the brash aesthetic of the 1970s wasn't created in a vacuum, as David Netto and Tom Delavan write in The New York Times Style Magazine:
"In contrast to the pared-down discipline of mid-century style, the '70s were sensual and decadent. People were unafraid to take risks. The furniture was made for hanging out, lounging or sex — activities infinitely more tempting than what was going on in the places where postwar design made its mark: schools, offices and hospitals. Imagine trying to make out on a Barcelona Chair."
Kellen Perry is a veteran writer on topics including television, history, music, art, video games, and food. His work has also appeared on Grunge, Ranker, and Looper.
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.
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Perry, Kellen. "The Decade That Taste Forgot: Lavish And Luxe Interiors Of The 1970s." AllThatsInteresting.com, July 6, 2017, https://allthatsinteresting.com/1970s-interior-design. Accessed December 11, 2024.
