Millennial Minimalist Restaurant Decor Is Dead - Enter the 'Nostalgic Tavern'

"Until very recently, the visual shorthand for a Very Cool Place to eat was easy to spot: a pastel color palette - heavy on the pale millennial pink, of course - with minimalist, Nordic midcentury modern furniture; Jean Cocteau-esque line art; ceramics in an array of dusty shades; and a sense that interiors were graphic-designed rather than lived in, inoffensively photogenic and social-media-ready."

"But at some point, we reached oversaturation. Instead of fresh, the decor style started feeling copy-paste. Hell, even Sketch is no longer pink. Lately, some of the most coveted reservations are for new restaurants whose decor leans away from the monstera-plant-millennial-minimalism of yore for a more robust, tchotchke-heavy eclecticism - an ambiance that hearkens back to a time of worn wood booths, Kit-Cat Klocks, and the glow of an overhead Tiffany-style lamp on your beef dip,"

Restaurant interiors are shifting from pastel, millennial-minimalist aesthetics toward lived-in, eclectic designs filled with dark wood and collected objects. The previous shorthand featured pale millennial pinks, minimalist Nordic midcentury furniture, Cocteau-esque line art, dusty-shaded ceramics, and interiors that felt graphic-designed and social-media-ready. Oversaturation made that style feel copy-paste and sterile. New popular spaces favor robust, tchotchke-heavy atmospheres that evoke worn wood booths, Kit-Cat Klocks, and Tiffany-style lamps. Patrons now gravitate toward environments that read as lived in, nostalgic, and tactile rather than as off-white, photogenic backdrops assembled for Instagram.

Read at Eater