#1980s interior design
Post #153
1984 house - 5220 SW 72nd Avenue, Miami, Fla.
Note the lucite bar stools, track lighting, recessed can lights, brass vertical strips below the bar, brass mirroring above the bar, and golden/honey wood. All popular in the 80s.
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Post #149
1989 house for sale - 9833 NW 9th Court, Plantation, Fla.
Love the glass block, the matching high-gloss black vertical blinds and ceiling fan, and the 80s art deco ceiling light hanging above the front door (reminds me of the one in Christin'e apartment in the Miami Vice episode “By Hooker By Crook”).
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Post #148
1987 condo for sale - 20031 Waters Edge Circle #1204, Boca Raton, Fla.
<3333 the brass strips on the bathroom wall in the second pic!! Remember when department stores decorated with these?
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Post #146
1981 house for sale - 13455 Crosspointe Drive, West Palm Beach, Fla.
What a peaceful place to eat breakfast! I love the rural view out the window in that last photo. You don’t see a lot of those wide-open, rural countryside views in southeast Florida these days. Not since the early/mid 80s, when the developers started buying the orange and strawberry farms west of Interstate-95 and paving them over for gated communities and strip-malls.
Totally made my morning! :-)
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Post #145
1988 condo for sale - 5893 Sunswept Lane #B, Boynton Beach, Fla.
So much 80s pomo perfection in this house…
You don’t see a lot of bedspreads and pillow-shams from 1988. Very cool!
Also, note the black/off-white/salmon color trio echoed on both the bedspread in the bedroom and the couch pillows in the living room. This was a popular motif from about 1986/1987 to the end of the decade.
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Post #143
1989 house for sale - 19707 Bay Cove Drive, Boca Raton, Fla.
Love the mirrored canopy bed!
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Post #142
1988 house for sale - 5470 San Marino Way, Lake Worth, Fla.
The postmodern mirrored Formica credenza/hutch/sideboard is the obvious 80s centerpiece here.
But here are some more “definitely 80s” elements in this photo: vaulted ceiling with popcorn texture, white walls & ceiling w/ light-color floor (minimalist color scheme), cut-pile plush carpet that shows vacuum marks and footprints like a striped lawn, vertical blinds, sliding glass door, clerestory window, dark brown framing around the clerestory window and the sliding glass door (it would be white today), lack of crown molding, lack of casing around the doors and windows, and geometric shape to architecture (there is nothing “rounded” about this room.)
This room is a great blank canvas for some of the Memphis-Milano furniture like Phil the Shill had on Miami Vice (season 2, episode 11.)
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Post #141
The clock in the top photo is emblematic of the “neo 50s” look that was popular during the 80s…the same ethos that made 50s-style diners popular. And who else remembers the neo-50s ice cream parlors with the checkerboard floors, Wurlitzer jukebox, half a sawed-off vintage Cadillac hanging on the wall, and mirror and neon everywhere?
By neon artist Bill Buth out of Tucson. He sells his wares on Etsy under the name BillieBoi.
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Post #140
1984 house for sale - 3672 NW 23rd Court, Boca Raton, Fla.
Note how the cut-pile plush carpet, which was the mainstay of the 80s, has a memory for vacuum marks and footprints. It’s like a striped lawn.
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Post #139
Ell Design clock, current for sale on eBay as item #151598951028.
“Good Design - Joyful Life.”
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Post #138
The Atlantis condominium, located at 2025 Brickell Avenue in Miami. Designed by Arquitectonica in 1980, with construction completed in 1982.
One of the most strongly postmodern residential towers ever built, it shows a very clear Memphis-Milano influence. This is what you would get if Ettore Sottsass and Piet Mondrian had a love child.
Note especially the primary color scheme (red, yellow, blue) that was one of the definitive themes of the 80s, along with the abstract geometric shapes.
Also note the red Le Corbusier chairs in the lobby. Along with the Cesca chair and the Wassily chair, the Le Corbusier chair was one of the 1980s’ most widely-reproduced pieces of 1920s/1930s Art Deco furniture. The Le Corbusier chairs were also made in a matching couch, and in every concievable color combination of leather and metal framing (the original was black leather w/ chrome frame.) Despite the squarish look, they’re reputed to be sinfully comfortable.
The Atlantis was featured on Miami Vice as part of the opening montage before every episode, as well as being used as one of the interior sets in season 3, episode 22 (“Viking Bikers from Hell”). The exterior was also seen briefly in the movie Scarface.
The second-to-last photo – don’t you wonder where that ladder leads? Is that where the little mouse goes up into his giant piece of cheese?
Photo credit to Robin Hill for the last photo. That’s taken standing on the red spiral staircase in the “Sky Tower” cut into the middle of the building (highlighted in photo #4.) I would totally chill in that jacuzzi during a hurricane, drinking a Little Mermaid to match the building (extra rum!)
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Post #135
1980 house for sale - 8768 Escondido Way E., Boca Raton, Fla.
LOVE the lumadome in the bathroom…but it’s weird to have vertical blinds in your shower stall.
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Post #134
1986 condo for sale - 2 Eastgate Drive #A, Boynton Beach, Fla.
Note how the parallel lines motif permeated the graphic design of the 80s, particularly in the sphere of corporate logos.
One can also see the visual similarity to Shutter Shades, venetian blinds, and those black louvers they used to put over the back glass of 80s sports cars.
This is closely related to the grid motif (think Tron); both used forced perspective to allow 2D computer graphics to simulate a 3D environment. We’ll come back to the grid motif in a later post.
My good friend Kate over at Mirror80.com has astutely pointed out that sunsets - symbolic of “the good life” - were a recurrent design theme during the 80s.
The last photo is one of the Nuon Klocks (“nuon, the new neon!”) by Gemini Display Ltd. out of Elk Grove Village, Illinois. A catalog showing all their designs is available back in post #26.
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Post #173
1982 condo for sale - 6418 La Costa Drive #104, Boca Raton, Fla.
Love the bold geometric lines here! So 80s!
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Post #172
1982 condo for sale - 141 SW 96th Terrace #304, Plantation, Fla.
Such mirror! Many shine!
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Post #170
1987 house - 68 Northwoods Circle, Boynton Beach, Fla.
Peep the patio furniture stolen from the Golden Girls’ house, the amazing 80s torchieres in the living room, the abundance of sconces, the marble floors, the sunburst front door, and that awesome radius-corner wall between the kitchen and the foyer!
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Post #169
1985 house for sale - 2534 Monaco Terrace, West Palm Beach, Fla.
Amazing example of 80s postmodern geometric architecture! Looks like the homes used as sets on Miami Vice.
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Post #167
1989 house for sale - 726 Saint Albans Drive, Boca Raton, Fla.
The exterior of this house shows a lot of the distinctive 80s features highlighted back in post #114. Love the clerestory windows!
The sink faucets in the bathroom aren’t original, but everything else is, and the track lighting combined with the grey marble tile and handle-less flat-face Formica cabinetry makes this solid 80s.
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Post #166
1988 house for sale - 7111 Cutter Court, Parkland, Fla.
With the exception of the glaring absence of ceiling fans and the purple paint on some of the walls, this house is a great example of high-end 80s Florida architecture.
Peep the eggcrate lumadome lighting in the bathrooms! The grey marble tile on both floor and walls, as seen in the last pic, is another nice touch from the late-70s-thru-early-90s postmodern period.
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Post #165
1981 house for sale - 11925 SW 99th Terrace, Miami, Fla.
The checkerboard floor in the first pic is one of the things I miss most about 80s decor. It was an example of how the 80s tried to relitigate the 50s (remember the “50-style” diners that were so popular in the 80s?)
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Post #164
1983 house for sale - 17674 Scarsdale Way, Boca Raton, Fla.
Peep the smoked glass block!
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Post #163
1986 house for sale - 2855 Antietam Lane, West Palm Beach, Fla.
With the exception of the flat-screen TV in the living room, and the earthtone paint on some of the walls, this house is a great example of unmolested mid-to-late 80s architecture and decor, showing southwestern and chintz influence.
It’s reminiscent of the decor that Sheena Easton‘s character Caitlin Davies had in her house on Miami Vice, before she and Sonny got married.
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Post #157
1987 house for sale - 12351 NW 2nd Street, Plantation, Fla.
This could have been used for a set for Frasier Crane’s apartment.
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Post #156
1988 house for sale - 6530 Ridgelock Court, Davie, Fla.
Tune out the modern brushed stainless dishwasher and light fixture, and focus on the original Firmica cabinetry w/ integrated recessed lighting rail at the top.
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