Easier to ignore the nicotine stains.

I wore shit like this out of the house, because of how amazingly fucking cool I was

Personally I feel like it was 50/50. All the interior at-home stuff was drab and gross, but a lot of the outerwear and clothing (not what your grandma would wear) was fairly vibrant.

You always knew houses with smokers and without. Hit you walking in the door and put a sepia tint on reality - walls, popcorn ceiling, all kinds of shit. But what kids today will never know:

Plastic covered furniture. People covered their couches and easy chairs with plastic. it was wild.

Google it, people had fitted plastic covers made for all their furniture. I don't know if anyone ever took the covers off "oh the pope is coming over let's go all out" attitude but it was a distinct thing.

You often see the super colorful 80s in pop culture. But at the time there was also another movement going on where everything was black, white, metal and glass. I remember white rugs, a black leather couch with stainless metal, glass and black metal coffee table. Walls painted black or made entirely out of glass bricks. People wearing black and white clothes with sunglasses on. A lot of it was super classy and I wouldn't mind having that in my home again. It was one of the first times in my life I remember home decoration being aligned with fashion, and people doing interior design.

I can smell the potpourri.

Wood paneling. Everywhere.
Brown carpet. Everywhere.

Anything that had been white was stained by cigarette smoke.

i was going to say, this is the worst representative couch. i remember a lot of stripey couches with oranges.

Including all the leaves, apparently.

I heard rumors that the sky was of a grey hue.

I heard it from someone who'd been on a walk on a winter's day.

60's Paisley, tie dye & macrame 70's Brown, orange & golden yellow. Plus a little beige. 80's Neon, black, sparkly, & hairspray. 90's pastel colors plus burgundy and forest green.

Ugh this was my mom's furniture

My grandparents had that sofa - same print pattern but in a blue-gray. Holee shit.

In the not-so-distant future we’ll look back and say everything the 2020s really was just grey, wasn’t it?

This does not track with my reality

Lasagna couch

Pressure wash the smoke/nicotine stains, sun dry it for a few days, and replace the indoor Incandescent lights with white LED lights..

Its probably not nearly as dark and drab if cleaned up and placed under good modern white lighting..

The biggest point a relative of mine made when building a house in the mid 90s, at which point people were getting colorful with home decor again, was that there was NOT going to be anything brown in it, haha.

In the 90s we had..

Blue couch, black chairs, gray carpet, etc

I dont recall anything brown, except a couple of wooden furniture pieces like my bed, which was from like .. 1930ish (with a new mattress)

My grandparents had this exact couch and 2 chairs with the same pattern.

i sat on this exact couch