1960s Kitchen Trends to Use in Your Own Kitchen

Remodeling a 1960s kitchen? It's no simple task since the '60s were a time of great change. The decade began formal and ended funky. In 1960, Dwight D. Eisenhower, that icon of 1950s sensibility, was still the U.S. President. Ten years later, it was the Age of Aquarius, Woodstock, and the Vietnam War.

Interiors and architecture reflected the trends of the time. New materials were introduced, as well. Synthetic materials like Corian solid surface were invented. One room that changed during the '60s was the kitchen. A kitchen in the early '60s might look angular, and understated, while a kitchen a decade later might exhibit bold colors and Space Age lines.

See a few '60s kitchen trends that you may want to incorporate into your own kitchen remodel.

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Wall Cabinets Hung From the Ceiling

Via UglyHousePhotos.com

Clean, wood-veneered wall cabinets divide the kitchen and the dining room with this popular '60s kitchen trend. Wall cabinets ordinarily go on walls. But in a '60s kitchen, the cabinets were freed from the confines of the kitchen's perimeter and moved to the center of the open area between the kitchen and the dining area.

Conventionally sized 8-foot ceilings could hold the cabinets from the joists. Higher ceilings required special supports, some draping from far above and some coming up from the kitchen base cabinets.

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Solid Color Laminate Countertops

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From 1969 is a kitchen with a solid-color yellow laminate counter. Wilsonart and Formica were, and still are, major suppliers of laminate surfacing materials.

These bold, in-your-face colors reflected the influence of Pop Artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Peter Max.

Bold colors, too, enlivened the kitchen and brought energy to the workspace. Other items in the kitchen such as ovens, phones, tables, and dishwashers might complement the bright laminate colors.

Most laminate countertop manufacturers today offer several solid colors.

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Exposed Brick

Kitchen cabinets framed in brick, brick half-walls, and exposed brick everywhere. Wall ovens often were inset in brick walls. Not all '60s kitchen trends were Space Age and synthetic. Brick, copper, and wood were found in '60s kitchens, too. Typically, the brick was left exposed but sometimes it would be painted.

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Slab Cabinet Doors

Slab kitchen cabinet doors and drawer fronts were also popular in '60s kitchens. Often, the pulls were understated or non-existent. Cabinet doors may have had grooves on the bottom edges, instead of pulls or knobs, to complete the smooth look.

Tip

Gold or green faux bottle-glass plastic was also found in kitchens in the latter half of the '60s and even continuing into the '70s.

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Natural Wood

This kitchen is from 1960. With its use of natural wood cabinetry, it could pass for a close-to-contemporary kitchen. Appliances are neutral colors (no harvest yellow or avocado).

If you're remodeling a kitchen like this, you may want to look at plank flooring (resilient material, not real wood), engineered marble counters, and faux wood beams.

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Resilient Flooring

H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock / Getty Images

Along with laminates, another synthetic product that surged in popularity in the 1960s was resilient flooring, sheet flooring in particular.

While sheet flooring in wide, 12-foot rolls is less popular today, in '60s kitchens it was valued for its durability, water resistance, and easy cleanability. Sheet vinyl could cover an entire small kitchen floor with no seams.

Vinyl, too, could be imprinted with any color or pattern: brick, marble, solid colors, wood, or faux tile, to name just a few.

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Bold Patterns

Tom Kelley Archive / Getty Images

Stars, triangles, chevrons, and boomerangs: anything bold, splashy, and eye-catching might be applied to '60s kitchen walls. Designs might be hand-painted on the walls with a paint roller and masking tape. Star-shaped kitchen clocks were as common in '60s kitchens as Sputnik ceiling light fixtures.

Other '60s Kitchen Trends

Electric appliances: The Gold Medallion All-Electric home was promoted heavily in the 1960s, over gas-burning appliances. All-electric homes often had actual gold medallions fixed to the door frame near the front door.
Knotty pine: Heavily knotted, streaked, and busy pine was used in some '60s kitchens for cabinets. Knotty pine evoked the feeling of a country cabinet. Few knotty pine kitchens remain, as most were painted over or replaced in favor of laminate or wood cabinets.

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