Forget about your original Eames chair and Wormley sofa for a minute. If your design goal is authentic mid century modern, you need to start with the available color palettes of the day. Today, we tend to take modern liberties with our interpretation of retro. If you’re a mid-century purist, or simply curious about what colors were offered, RetroRenovation has found original advertisements for the modern homeowner of the 1950s, 1960s, and even the 1970’s from Motorola, Eichler Homes, Kohler, and St. Charles kitchen cabinets.
If you start with any of these palettes and then add an unexpected element, you’ve instantly modernized mid-century and made it your own.
See what was mod back at the turn of the mid-century right here.